LUMPENPROLETARIAT—In order to make informed decisions about what positions to take, it is our civic duty as citizens to be informed about what’s going on in our world and its centers of power. A new documentary film, Risk, directed and produced by award-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras is somewhat helpful in that regard. Poitras is most well-known for directing the 2014 film, Citizenfour, which won the 2015 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
In Citizenfour, the whistleblower and protagonist, Edward Snowden was very methodical in his approach to avoiding the trappings, which go along with developing a cult of personality. Snowden, the whistleblower, made it clear to Poitras, the filmmaker, that he did not want the story she documented to be about him. Often, important messages are overshadowed by the messenger. Snowden made it clear to Poitras that the story he was presenting concerned state domestic surveillance and other policies, which harm the interests and Constitutional rights of the American people. So, not surprisingly, Snowden’s image in the film appeared heroic. Laura Poitras’ documentary focus was kept on the crimes of state, not any potential moral crimes of the messenger. His personal character never came under scrutiny. And Edward Snowden’s heroic portrait was further reinforced by Oliver Stone‘s timely iteration, which featured an ensemble cast starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the title character.
Risk, which is about the WikiLeaks organisation, or rather its founder Julian Assange, on the other hand, is another type of documentary film entirely. Laura Poitras began filming Risk, initially titled Asylum, before filming Citizenfour. It seems, perhaps, now that Poitras, having won an Academy Award for Citizenfour and earned a certain level of credibility, or even street cred, with having risked her personal safety and liberty with her involvement with whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations, she returned to her long-running work on her WikiLeaks documentary project with a different attitude. Here we see Poitras abandon the wide-scope view of social context, which she employed in Citizenfour. Instead of the wide-scope view to keep the focus on the sociopolitical message not the messenger, Poitras adopted a very narrow focus on Julian Assange, the messenger, rather than the message of the WikiLeaks organisation or its diverse members, or the important function of a publisher such as WikiLeaks. Perhaps, Assange: A Moral Case Study, might be a more descriptive title for Poitras’ latest documentary film.
In contrast to Citizenfour, Risk tends to put the character of WikiLeaks’ male leaders on trial. But then, Assange, with his less than charming facets, does seem to invite a form of attention, which Snowden has never done. And Assange’s associate Jacob Appelbaum didn’t help the image of Assange’s WikiLeaks organisation when he made an inappropriate (or culturally insensitive) analogy between condoms breaking, safe sex, and safe computing at a digital workshop in Tunisia. And, meanwhile Assange as a public figure and whistleblower is arguably facing much more difficult circumstances than Snowden. Assange, of course, caught a case of sex crime allegations from two women in Sweden. So, Assange sought and was granted asylum in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, to avoid extradition to Sweden, which would almost certainly lead to a later extradition to the United States for his work in WikiLeaks. It’s exceedingly obvious Julian Assange is one of the most wanted people by the USA, the world’s most powerful national government, essentially, for practicing good journalism, for engaging in the only profession protected by the U.S. Constitution.
Poitras was never quite explicit in the film, nor in succeeding interviews and discussions about the film, that Julian Assange is a sex offender. But at some point in the documentary, Poitras shifts her attention away from WikiLeaks and the broader world of whistleblowers to a microscopic focus on Julian Assange’s personal character. After a certain point, perhaps after Citizenfour, Poitras began to consistently insinuate and suggest allegations against Julian Assange, which appear to be subtle character assassination. Or, at the very least, Poitras seems to have taken decisive steps to complete her WikiLeaks project after her success with Citizenfour, in a way, which preserved most of her journalistic integrity whilst distancing herself from Julian Assange, who is still considered an enemy of the U.S. government. It’s almost as if Poitras simply decided her documentary film would no longer be about WikiLeaks and the broader important sociopolitical issues and, instead, be only about Julian Assange or some alleged culture of male sexual predation within WikiLeaks. According to WikiLeaks’ attorneys, Poitras’ defied her agreements with Assange and the WikiLeaks organisation by filming people who were not supposed to be filmed and by taking footage out of context. Also, according to Poitras herself, Poitras engages in gonzo journalism, or cinéma vérité, by becoming a part of the film. Poitras has to admit in her film’s narration, that she engaged in a romantic affair with WikiLeaks’ Jacob Appelbaum during the filming of Risk. At this point, the documentary film seems completely compromised by conflicts of interest. Eventually, Poitras’ Risk is forced to document the fact that the sexual allegations against Julian Assange were dropped for lack of evidence. Yet, the legal exoneration of Julian Assange doesn’t alter Poitras’ evident condemnation of him as some sort of male chauvinist, homophobic, anti-feminist pig, or from prioritising the gender issues within WikiLeaks over the larger sociopolitical issues of justice, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the First Amendment, and other human rights.
By 2015, it seemed Laura Poitras, Academy Award in hand, no longer needed WikiLeaks or Julian Assange to further her career as a filmmaker and industry luminary. (Poitras seems very comfortable now producing less-subversive or less-controversial (or less-radical) short-form human interest story documentaries for Field of Vision, a First Look Media project. First Look Media is the philanthropic journalism project founded in 2013 by billionaire e-Bay founder Pierre Omidyar with the expert legalistic and journalistic input of Dr. Glen Greenwald. Omidyar’s First Look Media is “a collaboration with [Dr.] Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, and Laura Poitras with a promised $250 million in funding from Omidyar, also gave birth to The Intercept, a news organisation for “aggressive and independent adversarial journalism”.) Apparently, Poitras’ decision (perhaps with collaborator Dr. Glen Greenwald) to publish the Snowden leaks through The Guardian (and later through The Intercept) instead of WikiLeaks, when Poitras had already begun working with Julian Assange on a documentary about WikiLeaks, was also a point of contention between Poitras and Assange.
The great public advocate and political leader Ralph Nader has famously argued that one shouldn’t have to be a saint to be a political leader or a political advocate. And Ralph Nader has also admitted to avoiding being caught up in sexual allegations and scandals by being very careful about avoiding suspicious propositions from women. This is why Nader never married; he has pointed out the great strain, which intense political activity can put on a spouse. We know it’s a great sacrifice people like Ralph Nader make when they dedicate their lives to their careers in public service working to make society better because it often means such people must often live solitary lives. We now know that famous leaders, such as MLK and JFK, were documented in their extramarital sins by their political opponents as means to undermine their political efforts. So, if we’re going to charge Julian Assange harshly and call him a sexist or male chauvinist, we must be prepared to do the same for all such beloved leaders. But, as Ralph Nader can attest, if one wishes to be an effective public advocate or political leader, and if one is male, one must be nothing less than a perfect gentleman at all times or risk being brought down by allegations of moral wrongdoing or scandal. Shills and political sabotage abound. If one gets caught slipping, right or wrong, it could mean the end of one’s credibility, political influence, or career.
Whether Risk depicts Julian Assange in a heroic light or in an unflattering light, it is undeniable that his contributions as well as those of the entire WikiLeaks organisation, like the contributions of Edward Snowden, working with filmmaker Laura Poitras and lawyer and journalist Glenn Greenwald, have benefited the world greatly. [1] Risk premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. And it is currently being screened on the Showtime cable television network and various online video streaming services. Check it out at a friend’s place if, like me, you don’t have an expensive cable subscription.
Messina
Risk (2016) directed by Laura Poitras
Risk film-screening Q&A at an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, posted on YouTube on May 9, 2017. Jeremy Scahill moderated Q&A with Laura Poitras. [Video begins after about eight minutes of long blank silence, c. 8:00.]
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“Director Laura Poitras’ falling out with Julian Assange” by Associated Press (AP), posted to YouTube on May 10, 2017. This is a very brief news clip, 90 seconds long. But it seems designed to discredit Julian Assange. Poitras is first quoted saying that she disagrees with some of WikiLeaks’ publications not being “newsworthy” or not being redacted properly. Then, she is forced to admit that WikiLeaks is a legitimate publisher, which has played a very important role in public understanding of domestic surveillance and its impacts upon freedom of speech and the freedom of the press. Then, the AP editors cut to a clip from Risk, in which Poitras’ narration laments: “This is not the film I thought I was making. I thought I could ignore the contradictions. I thought they were not part of the story. I was wrong. They are becoming the story.” But Poitras is never explicit about what these “contradictions” are. But, given the sexual allegations against Assange, Poitras’ insinuations are obvious. Most of the film operates under this premise of mystery and scandal permeating Assanges’s sex life, even as she documents his legal exoneration. The AP editors, then cut to Poitras admitting that Assange wanted her to “share some of the documents” with WikiLeaks; but she refused. Presumably, this is a reference to Poitras deciding not to publish Edward Snowden’s historic disclosures through WikiLeaks. And this caused a “bit of a falling out” between the two during the filming of Risk, initially titled Asylum. AP doesn’t give us any more information than these cryptic remarks from Poitras strung together to paint Assange as some sort of villain. But a closer examination of these events reveals that Poitras actually became a competitor with WikiLeaks, as she angled to promote her own news publication, The Intercept, on which she collaborated with journalists Jeremy Scahill and Dr. Glen Greenwald.
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“Assange objects to new Wikileaks documentary” by RT UK, posted to YouTube on July 25, 2017. An attorney for Julian Assange, Melinda Taylor, explained legal objections to Laura Poitras’ film Risk.
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[1] As others have pointed out, unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last decade or so, most readers will likely have already heard about the characters featured by documentarian Laura Poitras: Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, Chelsea (née Bradley) Manning, Edward Snowden, et al. But if you haven’t, for background starting points, see here and here and here.
Instead of keeping the focus on the political issues, Poitras focused in on the personal contradictions of the embattled WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange. It turns out, as with other admired historical figures in history, such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and John F. Kennedy, Assange is likely a womanizer and a male chauvinist. But, whereas admirers of MLK and JFK preferred to keep personal failings in the closet, today’s documentarians, such as Laura Poitras, feel compelled to make the story about the messenger, rather than the message, when they feel personally slighted or offended.
There are many useful film reviews at the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. Tom Huddleston of Time Out summed up Laura Poitras’ Risk very well, calling it: “A jaw-dropping profile of one man’s battle with world governments, common decency and his own out-of-control ego.”
LUMPENPROLETARIAT Award-winning journalist and human rights activist Chris Hedges delivered a speech on the current state of the nation at the First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, California yesterday. [See transcripts below.] It is a scathing indictment of US imperialism and capitalism, itself. This is, perhaps, the most courageous, honest, and enlightened public presentation to date by Chris Hedges about the state of the nation and capitalist society. Mr. Hedges has come a long way from the disappointing rhetoric he espoused circa 2008 when he stood squarely in support of the Obama Presidential Campaign (and against the politically progressive Ralph Nader Presidential Campaign). It was obvious in 2008 to keener political observers that an Obama Presidency would surely disappoint, in terms of advancing progressive political principles, socioeconomic justice, and reining in America’s imperialist tendencies.
Chris Hedges’ logical break from the Democratic Party after witnessing eight years of failures and betrayals by the Obama administration and the Democratic Party comes a bit late. But it is better late than never. And abandoning the corporate-controlled Democratic Party is something all people of conscience, liberals, and the left, generally, must do, if they want to get behind a real people’s party. Liberals must recognise and finally admit the inability of the Democratic Party to function as a sincere opposition party on behalf of the working classes. Only, then, can liberals and the left galvanise their political will into a real people’s party, which can oppose the corporate two-party system. For his part, Chris Hedges would even go so far as to sue Obama. He was joined in his lawsuit by other activists and concerned citizens, such as Alexa O’Brien of US Day of Rage, one of the original organisers of Occupy Wall Street.
In last night’s speech, portions of which were previously published in printed form (see “Reign of Idiots“, Truthdig, 20 APR 2017), Chris Hedges provided a sincere left critique of our society. And he disabused many liberals of their fixation on President Trump as the bad guy, which conveniently and problematically takes the Democratic Party off the hook for its role in perpetuating the socioeconomic ills of neoliberalism, capitalism, and imperialism. “Trump is the symptom. He is not the disease.”
Too often (especially during Republican presidencies) liberals are quick to fixate on a Republican figurehead, such as President Trump or President Bush. But, often, this fixation on a lone bogeyman functions as obfuscation of, and apologism for, the anti-working class agenda of the Democratic Party. The focus is placed on one figure, which, if removed, changes little to nothing about the structure of our political process. It feels good for liberals to bash Trump or focus their energies on his ouster; but that doesn’t fundamentally transform the sociopolitical conditions, which give rise to a President Trump or a two-party system, which blocks all other alternative political parties from meaningfully participating in the national political discourse.
The American working classes must recognise that supporting the Democratic and Republican parties, who are driven by a pro-corporate agenda, is politically against their own economic interests. We need only check the historical record, which is something Chris Hedges helps the public do. Free speech radio KPFA (Berkeley, CA, 94.1 FM) has broadcast excerpts of this new speech and is offering copies of the speech in CD or DVD format, among other thank-you gifts, for donating to keep free speech radio alive and well. [1] Listen (and/or download) here or here. [2] [3] [4]
Messina
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[Transcript by Messina for Lumpenproletariat, UpFront, and Flashpoints.]
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and human rights activist Chris Hedges
“Good morning. It is Friday, May 26th. This is UpFront. I’m Salima Hamirani.
“On today’s show: Last night Chris Hedges spoke at the First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley. We bring you that speech today. He talks about the dying empire; Trump; the cronies that rise from the ashes to take power; and how to take back. Getting rid of Trump isn’t the answer, he says. Instead, we have to come to terms with the counterrevolution, that began at the end of the ’60s. All this, after the [KPFA] News [Headlines]. (c. 00:38)
[News Headlines (read by Max Pringle) omitted by scribe] (c. 8:14)
SALIMA HAMIRANI: “Good morning. It is 7:08 [am]. You are listening to UpFront. I’m Salima Hamirani. Thank you for joining us this morning.
“So, last night Chris Hedges spoke at the First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley to address a totally packed church. Um, so this is hot off the presses. We edited this last night to get it to you this morning. I’m particularly tired this morning.
“Uh, Chris Hedges is a KPFA luminary. He’s a writer, a journalist, a minister. He’s a social justice thinker and activist. And he often talks about war, which he covered, and the government—big government, or what he calls the deep state, sometimes.
“But, this time, his talk was a little bit different. I think, coming on the heels of [the] Trump [Presidency], he felt more powered up and a little bit more angry. And, so, he talks a lot about something called the dying empire. And he compares what’s happening with [President] Trump and the rise of the fascists in the U.S. to what comes out of the ashes of the empire as it collapses. But he also some news for how to take the country back and how to fight back.
“And he thinks that the—well, I don’t wanna give too much away. But he thinks that getting rid of [President] Trump isn’t the right answer. Let’s go right to Chris Hedges, from last night.” (c. 9:27)
[First audio excerpt from the Chris Hedges speech in Berkeley, CA on 25 MAY 2017]
AUDIENCE: [applause, cheers]
CHRIS HEDGES: “Thank you. [applause continues, then subsides]
“I was at a talk a few weeks ago, given by the great Noam Chomsky. He came in with a sheet of papers about this thick and said: A lot of people say I’m boring. And I’m proud to be boring.”
AUDIENCE: [laughter]
CHRIS HEDGES: “[chuckles] So, this is thick. But we live in a dangerous moment. [pregnant pause]
“The decision by the deep state in ancient Rome, like the United States in 2017, dominated by a bloated military and a corrupt oligarchy, to strangle the emperor Commodus in his bath in the year 192 did not halt the growing chaos and precipitous decline of the Roman Empire. Commodus, like a number of other late Roman emperors, and like [President] Donald Trump, was incompetent and consumed by his own vanity. He had commissioned innumerable statues of himself as Hercules and had little interest in governance. He used his position as head of state to make himself the star of his own ongoing public show. He fought victoriously as a gladiator in the arena in fixed bouts.
“Power for Commodus, like [President] Trump, was primarily about catering to his bottomless narcissism, hedonism, and lust for wealth. He sold public offices, so the ancient equivalents of Betsy DeVos and Steve Mnuchin could orchestrate [applause] a vast kleptocracy. (c. 11:42)
“Commodus was replaced by the reformer Pertinax, the Bernie Sanders of his day, who attempted to curb the unchecked power of the Praetorian Guards, the ancient version of the military-industrial complex. This effort saw the Praetorian Guards assassinate Pertinax after three months in office. The Guards, then, auctioned off the office of emperor to the highest bidder.
“The next emperor, Didius Julianus, lasted 66 days. There would be five emperors in 193, the year after the assassination of Commodus.
“[President] Trump and our decaying empire have ominous historical precedents. If the deep state replaces Trump, whose ineptitude and imbecility are embarrassing to the empire, that action will not restore our democracy any more than replacing Commodus restored the Republic in Rome. [words of agreement; applause]
“The choice will be between inept fascists, like [President] Trump, and competent fascists, like [Vice President] Pence. [applause] Our republic is dead. The idiots, seeing in the decay the chance for personal advancement and profit, take over in the final days of crumbling civilisations. Idiot generals wage endless, unwinnable wars, that bankrupt the nation. [6] [7] Idiot economists call for reducing taxes for the rich and cutting social service programmes for the poor and project economic growth on the basis of myth. [8] Idiot industrialists poison the water, the soil, and the air, slash jobs, and depress wages. Idiot bankers gamble on self-created financial bubbles and impose crippling debt peonage on the citizens. Idiot journalists and public intellectuals pretend despotism is democracy. Idiot intelligence officers orchestrate the overthrow of foreign governments to create lawless enclaves, that give rise to enraged fanatics. Idiot professors, experts, and specialists busy themselves with unintelligible jargon and arcane theory, that buttress the politics of the rulers. And idiot entertainers and producers create lurid spectacles of sex, gore, and fantasy. (c. 14:45)
“There is a familiar check list for extinction. We are ticking off every item on it. The idiots know only one word: more. They are unencumbered by common sense. They horde wealth and resources until workers cannot make a living and the infrastructure collapses. They live in privileged compounds where they eat chocolate cake and order missile strikes. [sparse laughter, then applause] They see the state as a projection of their own vanity. The Roman, Mayan, French, Habsburg, Ottoman, Romanov, Wilhelmein, Palavi, and Soviet dynasties crumbled because the whims and obsessions of ruling idiots were law.
“And [President] Donald Trump is the face of our collective idiocy. [hesitant applause] He is what lies [applause] behind the mask of our professed civility and rationality, a sputtering, narcissistic, blood-thirsty megalomaniac. This face, in the past, was hidden—at least to white Americans [9]. But with the destruction of democratic institutions and the disempowerment of the citizen, the oligarchs and the kleptocrats have become brazen. They no longer need to hide the pillage. They can steal and lie in the open. They can wield armies and fleets against the wretched of the Earth, blithely ignore the looming catastrophe caused by global warming and canibalise the nation on behalf of global oligarchs, while at night, like some monster from the grande gueule, the Idiot-in-Chief, overseeing our self immolation, sits slack-jawed in front of a television set before opening his beautiful Twitter account. [audience laughter](c. 17:02) [Hedges’ breath trembles]
“Forget the firing of James Comey. Forget the paralysis in Congress. Forget the inanity of a press, that covers the tyranny as if it were a sports contest between corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats, or a reality show starring our maniacal president and the freaks, that surround him. Forget the noise. The crisis we face is not embodied in the public images of the politicians, that run our dysfunctional state.
“The crisis we face is the result of a four decade-long, slow-motion, corporate coup d’état, that has rendered the citizen impotent [wide audience applause], left us without any authentic democratic institutions and allowed corporate and military power to become omnipotent.
“The crisis has spawned a corrupt electoral system of legalised bribery and elevated public figures, that master the arts of entertainment and artifice.
“[President] Trump is the symptom. He is not the disease. [cheers; applause]
“Our descent into despotism began with the pardoning of [President] Richard Nixon, all of whose impeachable crimes are now legal, and the extrajudicial assault, including targeted assassinations and imprisonment, carried out on dissidents and radicals, especially black radicals.
“It began with the creation of corporate-funded foundations and organisations, that took control of the press, the courts, the universities, scientific research, and the two major political parties. It began with empowering militarised police to kill unarmed citizens [with impunity] and the spread of our horrendous prison system, mass incarceration, and the death penalty. [applause] (c. 19:16)
“It began with the stripping away of our most basic constitutional rights: privacy, due process, habeas corpus, fair elections, and dissent.
“It began when big money was employed by political operatives, such as Roger Stone, a close Trump advisor, to create negative political advertisements and spread malicious gossip and false narratives, all eagerly amplified by a media devoted to profits and ratings, not truth, to deceive the public until political debate became burlesque. [10]
“It began in the 1960s and ’70s with a war on dissidents and radicals, especially black radicals, which included FBI assassinations of leaders, such as Fred Hampton.” (c. 20:07)
AUDIENCE MEMBER: “Yeah!”
CHRIS HEDGES: “This war against radicals, President Nixon’s so-called battle for law and order put the police, the FBI, and other organs of internal security beyond the reach of the law. And this power has steadily expanded.
“We are all under state surveillance. And we can all become victims, if the state deems us to be a threat. The ruling elites, terrified by the mobilisation of the left in the 1960s, or by what the political scientist Samuel Huntington called ‘America’s excess of democracy‘, built counter-institutions to deligitimise and marginalise critics of corporate capitalism and imperialism. They bought the allegiances of the two main political parties. They imposed obedience to the neoliberal ideology within academia and the press. This campaign laid out by Lewis Powell in his 1971 memorandum entitled ‘Attack on American Free Enterprise System‘, was the blueprint for the creeping coup, that 45 years later is complete. [11] (c. 21:16)
“And our failure to defend the rights of those, who were demonised and persecuted, leaves us all demonised and persecuted. Our failure to demand justice for everyone leaves us all without justice. Our failure to halt the crushing of popular movements, that stand unequivocally with the oppressed, leaves us all oppressed. Our failure to protect our democracy leaves us without a democracy. The persecution of the radicals of four decades ago is not ancient history. It is the genesis of the present. It spawned the corporate coup and the machinery of state terror. We will pay for our complacency. We are trapped, like rats in a cage. (c. 22:05)
“A narcissist, an imbecile, may be turning the electric shocks on and off. But the problem is the corporate state. [pounding the podium] And, unless we dismantle the corporate state, we are doomed.” [applause] (c. 22:21)
[End of first audio excerpt from the Chris Hedges speech in Berkeley, California.]
SALIMA HAMIRANI: “Good morning. It is 7:22. You are listening to UpFront. That was Chris Hedges. I’m Salima Hamirani.
“And I want to remind you I’m cutting into this amazing talk to remind you that it’s actually the last day of fund drive. Today is the last day. And, folks, we’re really behind.
[Salima Hamirani continued appealing for listener support and donations for listener-sponsored free speech radio KPFA on the final day of the 2017 KPFA Spring Fund Drive](c. 28:21)
[Second audio excerpt from the Chris Hedges speech in Berkeley, CA on 25 MAY 2017]
CHRIS HEDGES: “Racist, violent, and despotic forces have always been part of the American landscape and have often been tolerated and empowered by the state to persecute poor people of colour and dissidents. These forces are denied absolute power as long as a majority of citizens—white citizens—have a say in their own governance. But, once citizens are locked out of government and denied a voice, power shifts into the hands of the enemies of the open society.
“When democratic institutions cease to function, when the consent of the governed becomes a joke, despots fill the political void. They give vent to popular anger and frustration. While arming the state to do to the majority what it has long done to the minority. This tale is as old as civilisation. It was played out in ancient Greece and Rome, the Soviet Union, fascist Germany, fascist Italy, and the former Yugoslavia.
“Once a tiny cabal seizes power, monarchist, communist, fascist, or corporate, it creates a mafia economy and a mafia state.
“Trump and his coterie of billionaires, generals, Christian fascists, criminals, racists, and deviants, play the role of the Snopes clan in some of William Faulkner‘s novels.
“The Snopeses filled the power vacuum of the decayed South and ruthlessly seized control from the degenerated former slave-holding aristocratic elites. Flem Snopes and his extended family are fictional representations of the moral rot unleashed by unfettered capitalism. The usual reference to amorality, while accurate, is not sufficiently distinctive, and by itself does not allow us to place them, as they should be placed, in a historical moment, the critic Irving Howe wrote of the Snopeses. (c. 30:39)
“Perhaps, the most important thing to be said is that they are what comes afterwards, the creatures that emerge from the devastation with the slime still upon their lips. Let a world collapse, in the [American] South or Russia, and there appear figures of coarse ambition driving their way up from beneath the social bottom, men to whom moral claims are not so much absurd as incomprehensible, sons of bushwhackers and musics drifting in from nowhere and taking over through the sheer outrageousness of their monolithic force, Howe wrote. They become presidents of local banks and chairmen of party regional committees and, later, a trifle slicked up, they muscle their way into Congress or the Politburo. Scavengers without inhibition, they need not believe in the crumbling official code of their society, they need only learn to mimic its sounds. Societies, that once were open and had democratic traditions are easy prey for the enemies of democracy. Demagogues pay deference to the political ideals, rituals, practices, and forms of the old democratic political system, while dismantling it.
“When the Roman Emperor Augustus—he referred to himself as the first citizen—neutered the [Roman] Republic, he was careful to maintain the form of the old republic. Lenin and the Bolsheviks did the same when they seized and crashed the autonomous soviets. Even the Nazis and Stalinists insisted they rule democratic states.
“Despotic government, as Thomas Paine wrote, is a fungus, that grows out of a corrupt civil society.
“This is what happened to older democracies. It is what happened to us. (c. 32:48)
“Corporations cannibalising the federal budget are legally empowered to exploit and loot. It is impossible to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or Exxon Mobile. [sparse, hesitant applause] The pharmaceutical industries are legally empowered to hold sick children hostage, while their parents frantically bankrupt themselves trying to save their sons or daughters. Banks are legally empowered to burden people with student loans, that cannot be forgiven, even by declaring bankruptcy.
“The reality is that our telephone calls, emails, text, financial, judicial, and medical records, along with every website we visit and our physical travels are tracked, recorded, and stored in perpetuity in government computer banks.
“The state tortures, not only in black sites, such as the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or Guantánamo Bay, but in supermax ADX facilities, such as the one in Florence, Colorado, where prisoners suffer psychological breakdowns from prolonged solitary confinement. When prisoners are released, they have lost their right to vote and receive public assistance. They are burdened with fines, that, if unpaid, will put them back behind bars. They are subject to arbitrary searches and arrests. They spend the rest of their lives marginalised as members of a vast criminal caste system. And that is why 76 percent of those released from state penitentiaries return to prison within five years. (c. 34:43)
“But our system of mass incarceration is not broken. It works exactly the way it is designed to work. [audience applause]
[End of second audio excerpt from the Chris Hedges speech in Berkeley, California.]
SALIMA HAMIRANI: “Good morning. It is 7:34 [AM]. You’re listening to UpFront. I’m Salima Hamirani. I’m actually here with Quincy [McCoy] our [KPFA] station manager.”
QUINCY MCCOY: “How are you?”
SALIMA HAMIRANI: “I thought I was gonna be here by myself. (c. 35:06)[snip]
[Salima Hamirani and Quincy McCoy continued appealing for listener support and donations for listener-sponsored free speech radio KPFA on the final day of the 2017 KPFA Spring Fund Drive] (c. 41:36)
[Third audio excerpt from the Chris Hedges speech in Berkeley, CA on 25 MAY 2017]
CHRIS HEDGES: “We are entering the twilight phase of capitalism, which, as Karl Marx understood, would see capitalists unable to generate past profits by expanding markets; and they would, he predicted, begin to cannibalise the state like ravenous parasites. Wealth is no longer created by producing or manufacturing. It is created by manipulating the prices of stocks and commodities and imposing a crippling debt peonage on the public. (c. 42:14)
“Our casino capitalism has merged with the gambling industry. And it is designed to prey on the desperate young men and women, burdened by student loans, underpaid workers burdened by credit card debt and mortgages, towns and cities forced to borrow to maintain municipal services.
“This moment in human history marks the end of a long, sad tale of greed and murder by the white race[i.e., ethnic grouping].”
FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: “Yeah!”
CHRIS HEDGES: “It is inevitable that, for the final show, we vomited up someone as grotesque as [President Donald] Trump. [mixed audience reactions; applause] Europeans and Americans have spent five centuries conquering, plundering, exploiting, and polluting the Earth in the name of human progress. They used their technological superiority to create the most efficient killing machine on the planet; and they directed it against anyone or anything, especially indigenous cultures, which stood in their way. They stole and horded the planet’s wealth and resources. They believed that this orgy of blood and gold would never end. And they still believe it. (c. 43:50)
“They do not understand that the dark ethic of ceaseless, capitalist, and imperialist expansion is ultimately dooming the exploiters as well as the exploited. But, even as we stand on the cusp of extinction, we lack the intelligence and imagination to break free from the myth of human progress.
Amid the rise of European fascism and looming World War, a [Paul] Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring. His mouth is open. His wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise. It has got caught in its wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistably propels him into the future, to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. The storm is what we call progress.
“The more the warning signs are palpable—rising temperatures, global financial meltdowns, mass human migrations, endless wars, poisoned ecosystems, rampant corruption among the ruling class—the more we turn to those who chant, either through idiocy or cynicism, the mantra that what worked in the past will work in the future, that progress is inevitable. Factual evidence, since it is an impediment to what we desire, is banished. The taxes of corporations and the rich, who have turned much of our cities into wastelands, are cut, and regulations are slashed to bring back the supposed golden era of the 1950s, at least for white Americans. Public lands are opened up to the oil and gas industry as rising carbon emissions doom our species. Declining crop yields stemming from heat waves and droughts are ignored. War and the huge profits that war generates for corporations becomes the principal business of the kleptocratic state. (c. 47:04)
“Magical thinking is not limited to the beliefs and practices of pre-modern cultures. It defines the ideology of capitalism: Quotas and projected sales can always be met. Profits can always be raised. Growth is inevitable. The impossible is always possible. Human societies, if they bow before the dictates of the marketplace, will be ushered into a capitalist paradise. It is only a question of having the right attitude and the right technique. When capitalism thrives, we are assured, we thrive.
“The merging of the self with the capitalist collective has robbed us of our agency, creativity, capacity for self-reflection and moral autonomy. We define our worth not by our independence or our character but by the material standards set by capitalism—personal wealth, brands, status, career advancement. We are molded into a compliant and repressed collective. This mass conformity is characteristic of totalitarian and authoritarian states. It is characterised by the Disneyfication of America, the land of eternally happy thoughts and positive attitudes. [scant audience laughter; applause] And when magical thinking does not work, we are told, and often accept, that we are the problem. We must have more faith. We must envision what we want. We must try harder. The system is never to blame. We failed it. It does not fail us.
“And all of our systems of information, from self-help gurus in Hollywood to political monstrosities, such as [President] Trump, sell us this snake oil. What, now, does this resistance look like? It will not come by investing hope in the Democratic Party[slightly delayed cheers and applause], which has steadily lost power, not because of Comey or the Russians, but because it betrayed working men and women on behalf of corporate power [applause], because it used its machinery to deny the one candidate—Bernie Sanders—who could have defeated Trump, from getting the nomination. [applause] (c. 49:50)
[End of third audio excerpt from the Chris Hedges speech in Berkeley, California.]
[The following two paragraphs are patched into this transcript from the previously published article by Chris Hedges entitled “Reign of Idiots“, as they followed from the last audio excerpt in the previously published printed form.]
“We blind ourselves to impending collapse. Our retreat into self-delusion is a career opportunity for charlatans who tell us what we want to hear. The magical thinking they espouse is a form of infantilism. It discredits facts and realities that defy the glowing cant of slogans, such as “Make America great again.” Reality is banished for relentless and baseless optimism.
“Half the country may live in poverty, our civil liberties may be taken from us, militarized police may murder unarmed citizens in the streets and we may run the world’s largest prison system and murderous war machine, but all these truths are studiously ignored. Trump embodies the essence of this decayed, intellectually bankrupt and immoral world. He is its natural expression. He is the king of the idiots. We are his victims.”
SALIMA HAMIRANI: “Good morning. You’re listening to UpFront. I’m Salima Hamirani. And we’re just listening to Chris Hedges from last night, a talk he gave at the First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley [California].
[Salima Hamirani and Quincy McCoy continued appealing for listener support and donations for listener-sponsored free speech radio KPFA on the final day of the 2017 KPFA Spring Fund Drive] (c. 59:59)
FLASHPOINTS—[26 MAY 2017] [KPFA station identification by Mike Biggs] “Today on Flashpoints, a powerful new speech by radical activist and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges. In fact, he was in Berkeley [California] last night and he blew the roof off of the house. I’m only speaking metaphorically. This is Dennis Bernstein. All that straight ahead on Flashpoints. Stay tuned.
[Flashpoints theme continues]
DENNIS BERNSTEIN: “And you’re listening to Flashpoints on Pacifica Radio, this is Dennis Bernstein. And I’m gonna go home and practice saying my own name. I’ve only been doing this for 27-and-a-half years. And the half, the last half year, may have been the hardest. But it is a pleasure and a privilege to be here with you today. This is the last day, the last hour or two of the [KPFA] fund drive. We’re about $60,000 dollars down. It would take a miracle to raise that money. But we can raise that money. And you can start calling now. We’re gonna give you the [Chris] Hedges [speech as a thank-you gift for your monetary support to free speech radio]. But, right now, we’re gonna give you some sound from Chris Hedges, speaking on fire last night in Berkeley. Mike, let’s hit ’em hard.”
[First audio excerpt from the Chris Hedges speech in Berkeley, CA on 25 MAY 2017]
CHRIS HEDGES: “[applause] Thank you. I was at a talk a few weeks ago, given by the great Noam Chomsky. He came in with a sheet of papers about this thick and said: A lot of people say I’m boring. And I’m proud to be boring.”
AUDIENCE: [laughter]
CHRIS HEDGES: “[chuckles] So, this is thick. But we live in a dangerous moment. [pregnant pause]
“The decision by the deep state in ancient Rome, like the United States in 2017, dominated by a bloated military and a corrupt oligarchy, to strangle the emperor Commodus in his bath in the year 192 did not halt the growing chaos and precipitous decline of the Roman Empire. Commodus, like a number of other late Roman emperors, and like [President] Donald Trump, was incompetent and consumed by his own vanity. He had commissioned innumerable statues of himself as Hercules and had little interest in governance. He used his position as head of state to make himself the star of his own ongoing public show. He fought victoriously as a gladiator in the arena in fixed bouts.
“Power for Commodus, like [President] Trump, was primarily about catering to his bottomless narcissism, hedonism, and lust for wealth. He sold public offices, so the ancient equivalents of Betsy DeVos and Steve Mnuchin could orchestrate [applause] a vast kleptocracy.
“Commodus was replaced by the reformer Pertinax, the Bernie Sanders of his day, who attempted to curb the unchecked power of the Praetorian Guards, the ancient version of the military-industrial complex. This effort saw the Praetorian Guards assassinate Pertinax after three months in office. The Guards, then, auctioned off the office of emperor to the highest bidder.
“The next emperor, Didius Julianus, lasted 66 days. There would be five emperors in 193, the year after the assassination of Commodus.
“[President] Trump and our decaying empire have ominous historical precedents. If the deep state replaces Trump, whose ineptitude and imbecility are embarrassing to the empire, that action will not restore our democracy any more than replacing Commodus restored the Republic in Rome. [words of agreement; applause]
“The choice will be between inept fascists, like [President] Trump, and competent fascists, like [Vice President Mike] Pence. [applause] Our republic is dead. The idiots, seeing in the decay the chance for personal advancement and profit, take over in the final days of crumbling civilisations. Idiot generals wage endless, unwinnable wars, that bankrupt the nation. [6] [7] Idiot economists call for reducing taxes for the rich and cutting social service programmes for the poor and project economic growth on the basis of myth. [8] Idiot industrialists poison the water, the soil, and the air, slash jobs, and depress wages. Idiot bankers gamble on self-created financial bubbles and impose crippling debt peonage on the citizens. Idiot journalists and public intellectuals pretend despotism is democracy. Idiot intelligence officers orchestrate the overthrow of foreign governments to create lawless enclaves, that give rise to enraged fanatics. Idiot professors, experts, and specialists busy themselves with unintelligible jargon and arcane theory, that buttress the politics of the rulers. And idiot entertainers and producers create lurid spectacles of sex, gore, and fantasy.
“There is a familiar check list for extinction. We are ticking off every item on it. The idiots know only one word: more. They are unencumbered by common sense. They horde wealth and resources until workers cannot make a living and the infrastructure collapses. They live in privileged compounds where they eat chocolate cake and order missile strikes. [sparse laughter, then applause] They see the state as a projection of their own vanity. The Roman, Mayan, French, Habsburg, Ottoman, Romanov, Wilhelmein, Palavi, and Soviet dynasties crumbled because the whims and obsessions of ruling idiots were law.
“And [President] Donald Trump is the face of our collective idiocy. [hesitant applause] He is what lies [applause] behind the mask of our professed civility and rationality, a sputtering, narcissistic, blood-thirsty megalomaniac. This face, in the past, was hidden—at least to white Americans [9]. But with the destruction of democratic institutions and the disempowerment of the citizen, the oligarchs and the kleptocrats have become brazen. They no longer need to hide the pillage. They can steal and lie in the open. They can wield armies and fleets against the wretched of the Earth, blithely ignore the looming catastrophe caused by global warming and cannibalise the nation on behalf of global oligarchs, while at night, like some monster from the grande gueule, the Idiot-in-Chief, overseeing our self immolation, sits slack-jawed in front of a television set before opening his beautiful Twitter account. [audience laughter] [Hedges’ breath trembles]
“Forget the firing of James Comey. Forget the paralysis in Congress. Forget the inanity of a press, that covers the tyranny as if it were a sports contest between corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats, or a reality show starring our maniacal president and the freaks, that surround him. Forget the noise. The crisis we face is not embodied in the public images of the politicians, that run our dysfunctional state.
“The crisis we face is the result of a four decade-long, slow-motion, corporate coup d’état, that has rendered the citizen impotent [wide audience applause], left us without any authentic democratic institutions and allowed corporate and military power to become omnipotent.
“The crisis has spawned a corrupt electoral system of legalised bribery and elevated public figures, that master the arts of entertainment and artifice.
“[President] Trump is the symptom. He is not the disease. [cheers; applause]
“Our descent into despotism began with the pardoning of [President] Richard Nixon, all of whose impeachable crimes are now legal, and the extrajudicial assault, including targeted assassinations and imprisonment, carried out on dissidents and radicals, especially black radicals.
“It began with the creation of corporate-funded foundations and organisations, that took control of the press, the courts, the universities, scientific research, and the two major [American] political parties. It began with empowering militarised police to kill unarmed citizens [with impunity] and the spread of our horrendous prison system, mass incarceration, and the death penalty. [applause]
“It began with the stripping away of our most basic constitutional rights: privacy, due process, habeas corpus, fair elections, and dissent.
“It began when big money was employed by political operatives, such as Roger Stone, a close Trump advisor, to create negative political advertisements and spread malicious gossip and false narratives, all eagerly amplified by a media devoted to profits and ratings, not truth, to deceive the public until political debate became burlesque. [10]
“It began in the 1960s and ’70s with a war on dissidents and radicals, especially black radicals, which included FBI assassinations of leaders, such as Fred Hampton.” (c. 20:07)
AUDIENCE MEMBER: “Yeah!”
CHRIS HEDGES: “This war against radicals, President Nixon’s so-called battle for law and order put the police, the FBI, and other organs of internal security beyond the reach of the law. And this power has steadily expanded.
“We are all under state surveillance. And we can all become victims, if the state deems us to be a threat. The ruling elites, terrified by the mobilisation of the left in the 1960s, or by what the political scientist Samuel Huntington called ‘America’s excess of democracy‘, built counter-institutions to deligitimise and marginalise critics of corporate capitalism and imperialism. They bought the allegiances of the two main political parties. They imposed obedience to the neoliberal ideology within academia and the press. This campaign laid out by Lewis Powell in his 1971 memorandum entitled ‘Attack on American Free Enterprise System‘, was the blueprint for the creeping coup, that 45 years later is complete. [11]
“And our failure to defend the rights of those, who were demonised and persecuted, leaves us all demonised and persecuted. Our failure to demand justice for everyone leaves us all without justice. Our failure to halt the crushing of popular movements, that stand unequivocally with the oppressed, leaves us all oppressed. Our failure to protect our democracy leaves us without a democracy. The persecution of the radicals of four decades ago is not ancient history. It is the genesis of the present. It spawned the corporate coup and the machinery of state terror. We will pay for our complacency. We are trapped, like rats in a cage.
“A narcissist, an imbecile, may be turning the electric shocks on and off. But the problem is the corporate state. [pounding the podium] And, unless we dismantle the corporate state, we are doomed. [applause]
“Racist, violent, and despotic forces have always been part of the American landscape and have often been tolerated and empowered by the state to persecute poor people of colour and dissidents. These forces are denied absolute power as long as a majority of citizens—white citizens—have a say in their own governance. But, once citizens are locked out of government and denied a voice, power shifts into the hands of the enemies of the open society.
“When democratic institutions cease to function, when the consent of the governed becomes a joke, despots fill the political void. They give vent to popular anger and frustration. While arming the state to do to the majority what it has long done to the minority. This tale is as old as civilisation. It was played out in ancient Greece and Rome, the Soviet Union, fascist Germany, fascist Italy, and the former Yugoslavia.
“Once a tiny cabal seizes power, monarchist, communist, fascist, or corporate, it creates a mafia economy and a mafia state.
“Trump and his coterie of billionaires, generals, Christian fascists, criminals, racists, and deviants, play the role of the Snopes clan in some of William Faulkner‘s novels.
“The Snopeses filled the power vacuum of the decayed South and ruthlessly seized control from the degenerated former slave-holding aristocratic elites. Flem Snopes and his extended family are fictional representations of the moral rot unleashed by unfettered capitalism. The usual reference to amorality, while accurate, is not sufficiently distinctive, and by itself does not allow us to place them, as they should be placed, in a historical moment, the critic Irving Howe wrote of the Snopeses.
“Perhaps, the most important thing to be said is that they are what comes afterwards, the creatures that emerge from the devastation with the slime still upon their lips. Let a world collapse, in the [American] South or Russia, and there appear figures of coarse ambition driving their way up from beneath the social bottom, men to whom moral claims are not so much absurd as incomprehensible, sons of bushwhackers and musics drifting in from nowhere and taking over through the sheer outrageousness of their monolithic force, Howe wrote. They become presidents of local banks and chairmen of party regional committees and, later, a trifle slicked up, they muscle their way into Congress or the Politburo. Scavengers without inhibition, they need not believe in the crumbling official code of their society, they need only learn to mimic its sounds. Societies, that once were open and had democratic traditions are easy prey for the enemies of democracy. Demagogues pay deference to the political ideals, rituals, practices, and forms of the old democratic political system, while dismantling it.
“When the Roman Emperor Augustus—he referred to himself as the first citizen—neutered the [Roman] Republic, he was careful to maintain the form of the old republic. Lenin and the Bolsheviks did the same when they seized and crashed the autonomous soviets. Even the Nazis and Stalinists insisted they rule democratic states.
“Despotic government, as Thomas Paine wrote, is a fungus, that grows out of a corrupt civil society.
“This is what happened to these older democracies. It is what happened to us.
“Corporationss cannibalising the federal budget are legally empowered to exploit and loot. It is impossible to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs or Exxon Mobile. [sparse, hesitant applause] The pharmaceutical and insurance industries are legally empowered to hold sick children hostage, while their parents frantically bankrupt themselves trying to save their sons or daughters. Banks are legally empowered to burden people with student loans, that cannot be forgiven, even by declaring bankruptcy.
“The reality is that our telephone calls, emails, texts, financial, judicial, and medical records, along with every website we visit, and our physical travels are tracked, recorded, and stored in perpetuity in government computer banks.
“The state tortures, not only in black sites, such as the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or Guantánamo Bay, but in supermax ADX facilities, such as the one in Florence, Colorado, where prisoners suffer psychological breakdowns from prolonged solitary confinement. When prisoners are released, they have lost their right to vote and receive public assistance. They are burdened with fines, that, if unpaid, will put them back behind bars. They are subject to arbitrary searches and arrests. They spend the rest of their lives marginalised as members of a vast criminal caste system. And that is why 76 percent of those released from state penitentiaries return to prison within five years.
“But our system of mass incarceration is not broken. It works exactly the way it is designed to work. [audience applause]
“We are entering the twilight phase of capitalism, which, as Karl Marx understood, would see capitalists unable to generate past profits by expanding markets; and they would, he predicted, begin to cannibalise the state like ravenous parasites. Wealth is no longer created by producing or manufacturing. It is created by manipulating the prices of stocks and commodities and imposing a crippling debt peonage on the public.
“Our casino capitalism has merged with the gambling industry. And it is designed to prey on the desperate young men and women, burdened by student loans, underpaid workers burdened by credit card debt and mortgages, towns and cities forced to borrow to maintain municipal services. (c. 22:10)
“This moment in human history marks the end of a long, sad tale of greed and murder by the white race [i.e., ethnic grouping].”
FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: “Yeah!”
CHRIS HEDGES: “It is inevitable that, for the final show, we vomited up someone as grotesque as [President Donald] Trump. [mixed audience reactions; applause] Europeans and Americans have spent five centuries conquering, plundering, exploiting, and polluting the Earth in the name of human progress. They used their technological superiority to create the most efficient killing machine on the planet; and they directed it against anyone or anything, especially indigenous cultures, which stood in their way. They stole and horded the planet’s wealth and resources. They believed that this orgy of blood and gold would never end. And they still believe it.
“They do not understand that the dark ethic of ceaseless, capitalist, and imperialist expansion is ultimately dooming the exploiters as well as the exploited. But, even as we stand on the cusp of extinction, we lack the intelligence and imagination to break free from the myth of human progress. (c. 23:45)
Amid the rise of European fascism and looming World War, a [Paul] Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring. His mouth is open. His wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise. It has got caught in its wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistably propels him into the future, to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. The storm is what we call progress.
“The more the warning signs are palpable—rising temperatures, global financial meltdowns, mass human migrations, endless wars, poisoned ecosystems, rampant corruption among the ruling class—the more we turn to those who chant, either through idiocy or cynicism, the mantra that ‘what worked in the past will work in the future’, that ‘progress is inevitable’. Factual evidence, since it is an impediment to what we desire, is banished. The taxes of corporations and the rich, who have turned much of our cities into wastelands, are cut, and regulations [i.e., public protections] are slashed to bring back the supposed golden era of the 1950s, at least for white Americans. Public lands are opened up to the oil and gas industry as rising carbon emissions doom our species. Declining crop yields stemming from heat waves and droughts are ignored. War and the huge profits war generates for corporations becomes the principal business of the kleptocratic state. (c. 26:35)
“Magical thinking is not limited to the beliefs and practices of pre-modern cultures. It defines the ideology of capitalism: Quotas and projected sales can always be met. Profits can always be raised. Growth is inevitable. The impossible is always possible. Human societies, if they bow before the dictates of the marketplace, will be ushered into a capitalist paradise. It is only a question of having the right attitude and the right technique. When capitalism thrives, we are assured, we thrive. (c. 27:12)
“The merging of the self with the capitalist collective has robbed us of our agency, creativity, capacity for self-reflection and moral autonomy. We define our worth not by our independence or our character but by the material standards set by capitalism—personal wealth, brands, status, career advancement. We are molded into a compliant and repressed collective. This mass conformity is characteristic of totalitarian and authoritarian states. It is characterised by the Disneyfication of America, the land of eternally happy thoughts and positive attitudes. [scant audience laughter; applause] And when magical thinking does not work, we are told, and often accept, that we are the problem. We must have more faith. We must envision what we want. We must try harder. The system is never to blame. We failed it. It does not fail us. (c. 28:21)
“And all of our systems of information, from self-help gurus in Hollywood to political monstrosities, such as [President] Trump, sell us this snake oil. What, now, does resistance look like? It will not come by investing hope in the Democratic Party[slightly delayed cheers and applause], which has steadily lost power, not because of Comey or the Russians, but because it betrayed working men and women on behalf of corporate power [applause], because it used its machinery to deny the one candidate—Bernie Sanders—who could have defeated Trump, from getting the nomination. [applause]
“And, in war, especially when the heavy shells landed on crowds in Sarajevo, sites so gruesome that, to this day, I cannot eat a piece of meat, you could feel, as frantic family members desperately sought out loved ones among the wounded and dead, the concentric circles of death and love, death and love, like rings from the blast of a cosmic furnace. A life of faith—and we are all called to faith—is a life of confrontation. [applause] (c. 30:17)
The dragon sits by the side of the road watching those who pass. Beware, lest he devour you. We go to the father of souls. But it is necessary to pass by the dragon. No matter what form the dragon may take, it is this mysterious passage, past him or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will always be concerned to tell.
“And this being the case, it requires considerable courage, at any time in any country, not to turn away.”
[End of first audio excerpt featured by Flashpoints from the Chris Hedges speech in Berkeley, California.]
DENNIS BERNSTEIN: “Wow. Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, investigative reporter, human rights activist, a canary-in-the-global coalmine of disinformation and resistance to fascism. That was Chris Hedges on fire last night, in Berkeley, at the First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley last night, tearing down the place. A powerful event hosted by Hard Knock [Radio]‘s Greg Bridges. [12]
“Um, and um—well, this is it, folks. Here’s the cold, hard truth: We have about $50,000 to go to make it. We have not a lot of time. Now, I’m not sure we can make the 50. But I’m hoping, with some really powerful support, and standing with Chris Hedges on this final day, we can get, we can really take a chunk out of that final bit. We’d love to make it. We could, we could—you have the power, you listening now, you all have the power to make it, to help us make this goal. We can really make a dent. That, I’m sure of. (c. 32:36)
“So, if you want to get a copy of that mighty powerful speech just made last night by Chris Hedges celebrating free speech radio, you can get a CD copy for a $75 contribution. You can do it by dialing, by hitting the buttons 1.800.439-5732. 1.800.439-5732. You can go online, kpfa.org, hit the pledge button and you are with us. You can use your smartphone. (c. 33:12)
“Again, $75 dollars gets you the CD version. $100 dollars, you can get the same speech last night, tearing down the house, really powerful stuff, uh, $100 dollars for the DVD.
“We have a Chris Hedges collection you can get for $150. And, then, we have a Chris Hedges Magna-Pack. They all have this speech given last night. So, the Chris Hedges Magna-Pack is all Chris Hedges CDs, $375. And the Chris Hedges speech—well, let’s just say: Chris Hedges Magna-Pack, that’s everything, $375. You want last night’s speech? As simple as can be: $75 as a CD, $100 dollars as a DVD.
“It is a most extraordinary speech. It would be—if I could get a hundred of you to stand up right now [for free speech radio], it would make a real big difference in a hurry. It would make a big dent. Can I do that? I’m gonna count them. (c. 34:31) [snip] (c. 34:44)
“If you wanna subscribe for $100 dollars, you can get the [KPFA] hoodie. You can get the pullover, the zipper, in all the sizes. You tell [the phone volunteers] the size. [snip] Somebody gave us a $1200 contribution and gave me 12 hoodies to do with as I please. Can you imagine? All my friends are gonna be walking advertisements—um, not exactly advertisements—right?—’cos we’re non-corporate. They will be our walking representatives. You will be. Get this beautiful hoodie and use it as a talking point. There goes my Brooklyn accent. When I get tired, it comes charging back. And let your hoodie be a talking point for free speech radio. (c. 35:36)
“Frankly, for my money—and I don’t have much of it—this Chris Hedges speech is off the edge. It’s incredibly powerful. And we need somebody speaking with this emotion behind the information. It’s a combination of information and emotion. As I’ve said before, the people, who were founded this radio station, KPFA [in 1949], they were not interested in newscasts, in which you did not feel the broadcaster and the story. They did not like the soap suds advertisement right after the news of war, sounding the same way with the same melodic voice. They wanted the people’s emotion in the work—emotion and information. Information is power. (c. 36:25)
“Chris Hedges puts it together, a Pulitzer Prize-winner reporter saw it all as a New York Times reporter and couldn’t take it, couldn’t be silent. He couldn’t get it in the news page. And he began to speak out. And he has become one of the most powerful social critics of our time. He gave a speech for KPFA/Pacifica [Radio Network] last night in Berkeley, blew the roof off. And we are in the last hour of our [KPFA fund] drive here, the last hour or so of our drive here. It’s 5:37 [pm]; and I’m hoping we can pull out all the stops. 1.800.439-5732.
[Dennis Bernstein continued appealing for listener donations to free speech radio.] (c. 37:24)
“Please stand up. We only have a few minutes left. This is our last chance to really drive this, uh, fundraiser home, to make sure we remain powerful here at KPFA, that we can have these microphones for the people, who need them, that we can build the infrastructure, rebuild the infrastructure here at KPFA and across the [national radio] network. We need your help to do it now. This radio station—you know it. You cannot argue with me on the fact that this radio station is more important now than it has ever been, since its invention, in the age of [President] Trump, in the age of corporate television and radio. We are there to hold them accountable. We are there to give voice to the voiceless. We are there to monitor the centers of power and reveal what the people need to know to make decisions about their own lives, what we all need to know. And we use this marvelous, scrappy, fight-back media as our university. (c. 38:30)
“Make us stronger now. Stand up now for free speech radio! Please! Stand up now. We’re trying to catch up. We’re trying to get close to that goal. And you can make a difference. There are hundreds of you out there, who have not done this yet. Won’t you do this now? I mean let’s make some history. 1.800.439-5732. 1.800.439-5732. 1.800.HEY-KPFA. Or online at kpfa.org. Hit the pledge button and join us. (c. 39:12)
[Dennis Bernstein continued appealing for listener donations to free speech radio.] (c. 39:42)
“But, either way, we love sharing Chris Hedges. We live—this radio station lives to give a platform to the likes of—there’s nobody quite like Chris Hedges. But we are here to give a platform to Chris Hedges, Ralph Nader, Alice Walker, you name it, all the extraordinary people you have heard over these airwaves. Name them. Think about it. Think about how you’ve heard Noam Chomsky, Noam Chomsky, who can not get [on the corporate media], who is censored, who is one of the smartest people in the world, the most important linguist in the world [next to Dr. George Lakoff], the most powerful critic of U.S. social policy in the world. (c. 40:07)
[1] Do yourself, and your community, a favour and support free speech radio as a counter to profit-over-people radio, which doesn’t keep us informed or connected with our communities. For profit radio prioritises its profit motive over the well-being of our communities. Listener-sponsored free speech radio prioritises community, regional, and national well-being over profit motive. In fact, the nation’s largest (and oldest) listener-sponsored free speech radio network, Pacifica Radio does not operate for profit and is even democratically governed, with listener-members having a democratic vote in the governance of the radio network.
We, the people, need at least 50% of the radio spectrum to be public radio for public purpose, to keep our communities informed, so that they are empowered to make informed decisions in terms of civic engagement and political participation in developing truly participatory and emancipatory democracy. There is no reason why virtually all of our radio stations should be dominated by corporate, for-profit agendas. We need unfettered news and information, which is free from corporate censorship and obfuscation. The radio airwaves belong to the people. The radio airwaves do not belong to for-profit corporations, who don’t speak for the people.
Broadcast summary from the archive page at kfpa.org:
On today’s episode, host Salima Hamirani plays clips from a speech Chris Hedges gave on May 25 at the First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley. Chris Hedges, a journalist, Princeton professor, and minister, discusses the “dying empire” and Trump. He says that to resist Trump, we much look to a counterrevolution that began in the 60s.
[3] Special Programming [filled in for Letters and Politics]. [This broadcast archive has lamentably been removed from public access.]
Forget the firing of James Comey, forget the paralysis in Congress, forget the innanity of our dissent into tyranny as if it were a sports contest between corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats or a reality show starring our maniacal President and the freaks that surround him. Forget the noise, the crisis we face is not embodied in the public images of the politicians that run our dysfunctional state. The crisis we face is the result of a four decade long slow-motion corporate coup d’etat that has rendered the citizen impotent. Left us without any authentic democratic institutions and allowed corporate and military power to become omnipotent. The crisis has spawned a corrupt electorial system of legalized bribery and elevated public figures that master the arts of entertainment and artifice.
Trump is the symptom he is not the disease
[4] We have included two transcripts below. The first transcript below is of UpFront. The second transcript is of Flashpoints, whose broadcast featured more of the Chris Hedges speech. The other two special broadcasts listed below also featured excerpts of the Chris Hedges speech, but were removed from public access before we were able to transcribe them or patch together as much of the speech as possible from the various excerpts. Thus, we have transcribed both broadcasts (UpFront and Flahspoints) separately, despite the repetition of text. This gives readers a better sense of the actual broadcasts, as well as some of the context provided by the two broadcasters, Salima Hamirani and Dennis Bernstein.
[5] Time-stamps in transcript correspond to the running play-time of the audio stream file.
[6] For an example of contemporary satirisation of idiot generals, see the recently released Netflix Original film entitled War Machine (2017) starring Brad Pitt based on the nonfiction book The Operators by Michael Hastings. It is a fictionalised version of the events in the book, based on the firing of United States Army General Stanley McChrystal.
[7] With regard to the United States facing fiscal insolvency, or going “bankrupt” as Chris Hedges said, we must recall modern monetary theory (MMT, or modern money theory), which shows that a sovereign currency issuer, such as the United States can never go bankrupt. In other words, the USA will never face fiscal insolvency, as it can always afford to spend in its own currency.
Our modern monetary system, unlike our monetary system prior to 1971, makes it possible for the US federal government to spend without fiscal constraints. In fact, it was the American desire to perpetuate the occupation of, and escalate the military aggression against, Vietnam, which did bankrupt the United States. But, back then, the U.S. dollar was backed by gold. In other words, the U.S. had agreed to international convertibility of the U.S. dollar to gold prior to 1971 under the Bretton Woods system of monetary management. After 1971, the U.S. dollar became a purely fiat currency, which means that the U.S. government can spend without fiscal constraints. This is why the U.S. government’s unprecedented military spending, not to mention the roughly $29 trillion dollars in Global Financial Crisis of 2008 bail out spending, does not create inflation problems nor destabilise the economy in any way. However, it bears noting that the American public has engaged in significant political demonstrations to oppose war, oppose war spending, and to advocate for social spending, such as for jobs, education, and health care.
[8] As with footnote [7] above, for an accurate understanding on the purpose and function of taxes and taxation, see MMT. MMT debunks many economic myths perpetuated by corporate media and misinformed or mendacious legislators and politicians. Many economic myths are also exposed, given a close examination of the contentious academic struggle between neoclassical economics and heterodox economics.
It’s safe to assume, by idiot economists, Chris Hedges means neoclassical economists.
[9] For example, we recall the historical record on Donald Trump’s history of racial residential segregation associated with his rental properties. Or, for another example of Donald Trump’s history of racism, we recall his racist campaign against the Central Park Five.
[10] For an introduction to the right-wing political operative Roger Stone, also (critically) see the Netflix Original documentary, Get Me Roger Stone (2017). This documentary, however, tends to romanticise the dirty politics of Roger Stone, a man who dropped out of college to work in Richard Nixon‘s storied Committee to Re-elect the President. As The Wall Street Journal‘s John Anderson has written:
Get Me Roger Stone… ought to come with a bottle of Purell—not just because it immerses the viewer in squalid politics, but because the filmmakers seem so shamelessly infatuated with their subject.
Manohla Dargis, of The New York Times, has called the film a “sometimes illuminating, often slapdash and frustrating affair …”
[11] For more on this history of the right-wing, anti-working class, political backlash against the progressive, pro-working class, gains made between the time of the Great Depression and the 1960s Civil Rights and social justice movements, see the excellent documentary film entitled Heist: Who Stole the American Dream? (2017).
[12] Radio host Greg Bridges is a contributor to free speech radio’s Hard Knock Radio. But Davey D and Anita Johnson are the primary hosts for Hard Knock Radio. Greg Bridges is the host of free speech radio’s Transitions On Traditions, “a soulsonic rhapsody of sound”, which emphasises the intersections between jazz, fusion, soul, and R&B.
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[Trump image by source, used via Creative Commons.]
LUMPENPROLETARIAT—Audiences of corporate (for-profit) media, even NPR or PBS, will likely not have heard of national bestselling author and attorney Dr. William Pepper, nor of his 40-year long effort to discover and expose the hitherto occulted facts surrounding the assassination of his personal friend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Conversely, audiences of free speech media will likely have heard about the indefatigable work of Dr. William Pepper, who published in 2016 a capstone volume on the 1968 assassination of Dr. King, entitled The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Some of us may have heard about the fact that the FBI and other U.S. government intelligence agencies were surveilling Dr. King, especially towards the end of his life. Dr. King was targeted by COINTELPROand was also under surveillance by military intelligence agencies during the period leading up to his assassination under the code name Operation Lantern Spike. In 2002, Congress member Dr. Cynthia McKinney first introduced the Martin Luther King Jr. Records Collection Act in the House of Representatives in order to establish some transparency. But our popular American culture has been loath to confront the sinister implications of these facts. In the years after Dr. King was assassinated, reports emerged that the U.S. government was destroying sensitive documents related to the murder case. The FBI was even criticised for appearing unusually reluctant to release records pertaining to Dr. King. Yet, in 1977, Judge John Lewis Smith ruled against Bernard Lee and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in a lawsuit, and ordered that the King files be sealed for 50 years.
Others may be aware that Dr. King‘s philosophical expansion in his later years—which came to reflect not only civil rights advocacy for blacks, but also broader pro-working class, pro-labour, and anti-imperialist, anti-war sentiments—caused most of his political allies to turn their backs on him in the late 1960s. But, again, the actual history, revealing the darker side of our American society, is obfuscated in favour of an annual celebration of a caricatured, one-dimensional version of Dr. King, the dreamer, which is symbolised by his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, rather than Dr. King, the organiser, which is powerfully symbolised by his 1968 “Mountaintop” address.
James Earl Ray (1928-1998)
Some of us may have heard of Dr. Pepper’s efforts, as attorney for the King Family, to defend James Earl Ray (the man wrongly imprisoned for the assassination of Dr. King) as part of an effort to bring the actual killers to justice. It’s quite amazing that every year we have a national holiday celebrating and honoring the memory of Dr. King, as a great moral voice of America. Yet, as Americans, we rarely bother to uphold a sense of justice for his assassination because we fail to question the official lone gunman narrative. If we ever hope that others will follow in the footsteps of Dr. King, in terms of working selflessly as a great moral voice of courageous leadership, it is vitally important to show the world that we, as a society, will work to bring killers to justice when our civic and moral leaders are assassinated.
In 1999, a civil trial jury found that James Earl Ray could not have been the killer. But the corporate media essentially buried that fact. Even Court TV, which dedicated itself to broadcasting court trials was, essentially, discouraged and preempted from covering that historic 1999 trial. It is to our national disgrace that these truths have been obfuscated for so long. In fact, Dr. King did not die from the gunshot wound, which struck him in the face. Court deposition transcripts from Dr. Pepper’s legal proceedings reveal that Dr. King was suffocated with a pillow at a hospital. Dr. King, it was reported, was still alive at the hospital emergency room; but a doctor, flanked by men in suits, commandeered the emergency room, removed Dr. King’s breathing catheter, and murdered Dr. King with a pillow. Somehow, this shocking revelation has gained no traction in the corporate media nor inspired much followup investigation; and, consequently, it hasn’t prompted any sort of public outcry. Annual Dr. King holidays continue to roll by with a degree of banality, perpetuating problematic myths, and missing opportunities for informing the public, whilst concealing the truth of this pivotal American history as well as its meaning and significance. Hopefully, Dr. William Pepper’s book, The Plot to Kill King will inspire and motivate interest and principled action in this case, which is so important to our American heritage and character.
Audiences of free speech radio’s Guns and Butter will recall past interviews over the years with Dr. William Pepper, for example, discussing his earlier books, such as An Act of State. In Dr. Pepper’s latest book, The Plot to Kill King, he builds the most detailed and powerful case and even names names, such as that of one Mr. Frank Strausser, who was the actual sharp shooter, who shot Dr. King in the face. Dr. Pepper even interviewed Mr. Strausser, who is still living today. Continuing this line of inquiry, on this week’s edition of free speech radio’s Project Censored, educators and co-hosts Mickey Huff (Diablo Valley College) and Ken Burrows (San Francisco State University) enlightened us with an eye-opening interview with Dr. William Pepper discussing The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.Listen (and/or download) here. [1]
Messina
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[Working draft transcript by Messina for Project Censored and Lumpenproletariat.]
PROJECT CENSORED—[7 APR 2017] [KPFA community announcement: Copwatch event at the Grassroots House in Berkeley, CA] [KPFA station identification by Erica Bridgeman(sp?)]
[Project Censored theme music: “We Want” by Junkyard Empire]
“Welcome to the Project Censored show on Pacifica Radio. I’m Mickey Huff. Today, I’m with guest host Ken Burrows from San Francisco State University.
“On today’s programme, we look at The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., which is also the title of the latest book from national bestselling author Dr. William Pepper. William Pepper joins us for the programme today to talk about his most recent book on the plot to kill King just after the 49th anniversary of that historic event. Please stay with us.”
[theme music continues](c. 1:43)
“Welcome to the Project Censored show on Pacifica Radio. I’m Mickey Huff with special guest co-host Kenn Burrows from San Francisco State University. On today’s programme, we have the distinct pleasure of joining in conversation with the national best-selling author Dr. William F. Pepper.
“William Pepper is a human rights lawyer most known for his defense of James Earl Ray in the trial for the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. and of Sirhan Sirhan in the trial for the murder of Senator Robert Kennedy. Pepper is the author of An Act of State and Orders To Kill. He’s been active in government cases, including the 9/11 Truth Movement, and in attempts to charge George W. Bush with war crimes. He was appointed a barrister of the United Kingdom, but now primarily resides in New York. His latest book on Skyhorse is called The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
“And William Pepper, you join here today by phone. Welcome back to the Project Censored show.” (c. 2:49)
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “Thank you. It’s good to be with you, Mickey and Kenn.”
“So, Kenn Burrows, get the conversation going for us.”
KENN BURROWS: “Hello, Bill. Welcome.”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “Thank you, Kenn.”
KENN BURROWS: “You bet. So, just to get us rolling here, let’s start with your connection with Dr. King. How and when did you first come to meet Dr. King? And, really, what sort of man did you find him to be?”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “Well, I only knew Martin King that last year of his life. And I met him in early 1967, as a result of him having read—and, apparently, he was deeply moved by—my piece in Ramparts magazine in January of ’67 called ‘The Children of Vietnam‘.
“So, he had asked me to meet with him and discuss the horrors and the war crimes, that I encountered in Vietnam when I was there as a journalist. And I did that. Then, he asked me to stay with him as long as possible, work with him as much as possible on the formation of what we came to call the National Conference for New Politics. It was an umbrella organisation designed to bring together peace and freedom entities from all over the country under one roof for the purpose of opposing the [Vietnam] War, but also for beginning to deal with the issues of economic injustice.
“He was increasingly concerned about the impoverishment of large numbers of Americans and wanted to go into that area as well. Neither of these topics—the war or the economy—endeared him to the ruling forces of American society. And, indeed, not only did it not endear him, but they came to have contempt and disdain for him.
“When he delivered his [‘Beyond Vietnam’] antiwar speech at Riverside Church on the Fourth of April, 1967—one year to the day of his death—the next day, he was condemned by virtually every newspaper and even members of his own Civil Rights Movement. [2] And various groups, there, criticised him, condemned him. In some instances, he was called a traitor.
“So, I came in to meet him at that period of time, as a result of his evolutionary development with respect to seeing the links between war and poverty, as it affected, not only Native Americans, Mexican Americans, Appalachians, whites, and southern blacks, but as it affected all of the poor people of the world. So, he was growing. And I came upon him at that point in time.
“Now, what kind of man was he? A man of enormous courage. No matter how much money it cost him, his organisation, no matter how much his life became increasingly in danger, he stood firm on behalf of values, that he thought were essential human values. And he thought: to be silent in the face of this type of criminality, war criminality in particular, was in fact unconscionable. So, he was a man of enormous courage, depth, and integrity, and determined to have an impact on the structure of American democracy.” (c. 6:12)
KEN BURROWS: “And, so, part of what you may have been talking about is organising the Poor People’s Campaign. Is that right? And, also, how did you influence his antiwar position? And what was your relationship with King during that time?”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “Well, the Poor People’s Campaign was very much developed during that point in time. But it had been an idea, that was generated somewhat before during 1966. But it related to the economic issues, that I just mentioned. With respect to the [Vietnam] War, I was traumatised, personally, by the amount of devastation and brutality and slaughter, that I saw over there, and tried to convey that in the Ramparts piece.
“And, when I showed him, opened to him, the rest of my files I had developed, he openly wept. We were on the way to open Vietnam Summer in Cambridge, Massachusetts, following a sermon of his at the Brown University Chapel. And that’s where I met him for the first time. I waited until he came out. And, then, we rode together. And he wept when he saw what his government was doing to this ancient, beautiful people.
“So, he was deeply moved and determined, at great risk, not just monetary risk, but great physical risk to stand against that war.” (c. 7:40)
KEN BURROWS: “Could you summarise his conclusions that he reached—or your conclusions, that you reached regarding his assassination? What led up to that?”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “Well, they had determined that they were going to kill him because of the two issues we’ve just been discussing. The [Vietnam] War was a very important monetary issue for major American corporations. You know; at one point, John Downey(sp?), who was head of the military intelligence group, the 902nd Military Intelligence Group, used to brief [Lyndon] Johnson, President Johnson, on a very regular basis. And every time he would come back from Vietnam, he would brief him. And he would ask him: Why are we there? Why are we losing blood and treasure? What’s behind all of this? What is the reason for it? It doesn’t make any sense. And Johnson would ignore him for the most part. And, then, finally, one day—I guess he’d had too much or whatever—he pounded the table; and he said: John, I can’t get out of Vietnam. My friends are making too much money.
“So, that, to me, says it all, in terms of the reason for waging war was corporate interests. Okay? That was very important. So, the [Vietnam] War was a very important reason for wanting to get rid of him. But the Poor People’s Campaign was probably the major reason because he was going to bring half a million people to the capitol. And they were going to camp there. They were gonna go visit their elected representatives. And they were gonna try to get an agreement to turn the funds back again to programmes of social welfare and social justice. And the military and the powers that be believed that was not going to work, of course. They were not gonna effect that type of budgetary change. And, because of that, they believed that half a million people, that Martin was going to bring, would get more angry, and that their resistance would lead to open rebellion. And they didn’t believe that they had the forces to put down the rebellion on the streets of Washington. (c. 9:48)
“So, he was never going to be, ultimately, allowed to bring that mass of Americans to Washington, D.C. And that was why they were going to have to get rid of him. And Memphis, of course, was the place, that was selected. The sanitation workers’ strike was used for the purpose of getting him into Memphis. And he was, there, assassinated.”
MICKEY HUFF: “I’d like to remind listeners this is the Project Censored show on Pacifica Radio. I’m Mickey Huff. And I’m in studio with Ken Burrows, who is co-hosting today.
“We’re in conversation with Dr. William F. Pepper. And his most recent book is The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. And here we are, just past the 49th anniversary of the assassination of King.
“And, William Pepper, you were just talking specifically about, not only the issues of foreign policy and imperialism—and certainly the reason that a lot of people seem to generically go back to King in terms of race and racial injustice—but also his tying in of class and sort of the intersectionality of what he began to seriously represent through 1967 and, then, 1968. This is what you’re saying is, ultimately, what’s luring him to Memphis for the sanitation strike.
“And you keep saying ‘they’ are luring him and this was a decision, that was made to kill him. So, I know you’ve talked about this, certainly, in your other book, An Act of State and in your new book, The Plot to Kill King, which contains many, many of the primary documents and historical documents. And I urge people to see your recent book, The Plot to Kill King, on Skyhorse Publishing.
“Can you talk a little bit more about who are they? And what are these forces, that are luring him there? Can you be a little bit more specific about that? And I, certainly, know your book does that.” (c. 11:33)
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “Yes. Sure. In a broad, overall sense, when refer to they, I’m talking about, really, basically, the ruling forces of the corporate structure in America. And I’m speaking specifically about the finance houses and banks, major energy and oil corporations, all of whom have enormous power and try to exercise that in terms of public policy.
“Now, in terms of specifics as to who was involved, they are foot soldiers. When I identify these forces as ruling forces, their foot soldiers are agencies of government of the United States. And, in the case of the assassination of Martin King, the primary agency, that led the way was the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover would send Clyde Tolson, his number two, into Memphis on a very regular basis. Tolson would come in. He would meet with the local southern mafia groups, mainly headed by the Atkins(sp?) family. And they would begin to set up the detail for the actual assassination. Tolson would also bring money in from Hoover. And that money would be put in paper bags with names on it of people, who had jobs to do with respect to the assassination. So, it was paying as well as giving instructions. They were organising things on the ground with what we have come to call the the Dixie Mafia. (c. 13:06)
“Now, when it came to James Earl Ray, he had been profiled earlier as a convict of Jefferson City Prison, who would be likely to be a very good candidate for being a candidate in a case of this sort. So, they organised James’ escape. $25,000 dollars was brought in by Tolson. It was carried to the warden of the prison by old man Atkins and his son, Ron. And it was Ron, who became one of our witnesses, who revealed to us everything, that was going on. He rode to the prison with the money and his father. They paid off the warden. The warden organised James’ escape. James was allowed to escape in April of 1967. And, then, he was kept on a string. They had a handler. They kept him on a string and moved him around the country. (c. 14:07)
“Initially, Martin King was to have been killed in Los Angeles. They had two army snipers and their spotters in Los Angeles. They were there for quite a period of time. And they kept James there for quite a period of time. Eventually, quickly, a decision was made to move them out and into the South. And that was when they designated Memphis as the scene of the assassination.
“And I wondered for a long time why they didn’t go through with it in Los Angeles. And, then, I came to realise that there was another assassination, that was being planned for Los Angeles, following the California [presidential] primary [elections]. And that, of course, took place a couple of months later. Bob Kennedy was hit in Los Angeles. It would not do to have two major assassinations in the same city. So, Martin’s death was to be taken in Memphis.”
“So, that’s the organising up to the point of when he was actually shot. He [Dr. King] was there to help the striking sanitation workers. And that was the part about his concern about economic injustice. And, so, he was there to help them be vicotorious, in terms of their strike. And, then, he was going to leave Memphis and begin the trek for the Poor People’s March and encampment in Washington.” (c. 15:30)
MICKEY HUFF: “William Pepper—and I know this is an aside; and I don’t wanna get too off the trail, here, though I do think this is entirely relevant. When you brought up the Robert Kennedy assassination, of course, you have been very active and involved in the Sirhan Sirhan case. And we talked about that the last time you were on the Project Censored show.
“But can you talk about: What is the nexus here, if any, between RFK and MLK and there assassinations in this historic year of 1968?”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “Well, the nexus is they were really on the same page in terms of opposing the war in Vietnam. And Bob Kennedy had become aware of the economic plight of millions and millions of Americans and was determined to do something about that.
“He also, of course, was determined to reopen the investigation into the assassination of his brother. So, that was another issue, that was aside to the nexus between him and Martin King.
“Martin and Bobby were very close in terms of concern for the impoverished Americans and also in terms of the [Vietnam] War. And they were building a joint following across the country, that was bound to have an impact. And they, really, were not going to be allowed to do that.
“There even was some discussion that Bobby, when running for President of the United States, might have reached out—and there were some discussions about this—reached out and tried to take Martin King on as a running mate. So, they could even have broadened the relationship that much closer together. But that, of course, never got to fruition.”
MICKEY HUFF: “We’re speaking with Dr. William Pepper, author most recently of The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. We’ll continue our conversation with William Pepper after this musical break. Please stay with us.” (c. 17:30)
[Music break: “An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King” by Vic Sadot]
“An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King” by Vic Sadot[3]
MICKEY HUFF: “And that was the music of Vic Sadot, the truth troubadour, who is here in Berkeley, California, where we broadcast the Project Censored show every week. Vic Sadot, and that was his song called ‘An Act of State’ based on the same title of William Pepper’s book about Martin Luther King’s assassination.
“And, of course, this is the Project Censored show. I’m Mickey Huff with special guest co-host Kenn Burrows from San Francisco State University. And we’re talking with the author William Pepper about his most recent book on the King assassination, The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. We continue our conversation with William Pepper now.
“Kenn, you have the next question for William Pepper.” (c. 22:47)
KENN BURROWS: “Bill, I’m wondering: How was it that the King family came to work with you in a decade-long effort to find the real killers of Dr. King? And what led up to the trial, that happened in 1999? Could you give us a bit of a storied background?”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “Sure. The King family was familiar with my work, going back before the first book, Orders To Kill. Orders To Kill was published in 1995. They knew I was quietly gathering evidence and working on the case. I did not involve them, did not brief them, did not try to bring them in.
“Martin’s nephew, Isaac Farris read Orders To Kill. And he reached out to me and asked me to meet with the family. And I did that, I guess, in 1996.
“They were moved by what we learned at that point in time, which, remember, is many years ago. But what we learned at that point in time moved them. And, so, they wanted to pursue it. And they supported a trial for James Earl Ray, which, of course, was not going to happen. And they tried to get [President] Bill Clinton to agree to conduct an investigation. He appointed Janet Reno, his Attorney General, to be in charge of that investigation. And it really just, of course, turned out to be a complete whitewash.
“With this kind of frustration, I suggested that maybe what we should do is, actually, file a civil action against one of the people, whom we knew, and who had admitted being involved, Loyd Jowers. They agreed. We filed a civil action in Memphis. And the trial went on for 30 days.” (c. 24:35)
MICKEY HUFF: “And this is the civil trial. This is the King v. Jowers in 1999.”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “Yes. That’s right, the King v. Jowers civil trial. It went on for 30 days with some 70 witnesses. It was not covered by the media. the media just stayed away. Court TV, at first, was: Oh, yes. This is something we have to cover. Well, they were told [chuckles] not to think about it. So, because of the degree of media control in matters of this sort, very few people know that trial took place. But it did. And it took a jury 59 minutes to find that James Earl Ray had no involvement, knowing involvement, in the killing. And agents of the government of the United States, the state of Tennessee, the City of Memphis did. And, so, that was the result of the civil trial.
“And the King family believed, when that happened, that we had closure; and they had closure. And I was very pleased about that.
“But, of course, between 1999 and 2016, when the final book, The Plot to Kill King was released, we acquired an enormous amount of additional evidence and information about the assassination, how it took place, how King was actually killed, which is very important. And that, as far as I’m concerned, is closure. Coretta [King] has died. But three of the children are alive. Yolanda [King] also died. But three of the children are alive.
“So—” (c. 26:08)
KENN BURROWS: “Bill, can you speak to more of how King actually died? His actual death versus how we’ve been told he died in the media.”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “He was shot from the bushes in the back of the rooming house by a Memphis police department sharp shooter. He was hit in the face and went down and lost consciousness. He was, however, alive.
“He was taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital. He was in the emergency room. They were working on him in the emergency room. The chief of neurosurgery, a head neurosurgeon, a doctor named Breen Bland, who was also the family doctor for the Dixie Mafia family, the Adkins family, came in with two men in suits and told the people: ‘Stop working on that nigger. Get out and just let him die.’” (c. 27:06)
MICKEY HUFF: “And that’s a quote, that you got during deposition?”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “That’s an actual quote, yeah.”
MICKEY HUFF: “And that’s in the book. That’s, actually, in one of the appendices in The Plot to Kill King. You have a transcript of that.”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “Yeah. What I have insisted on doing is I insisted on putting in a complete text of all the relevant transcripts, the depositions, all of them, so that I can’t be accused of taking things out of context or making them up. The actual deposition statements, sworn under oath, are there.
“So, Bland said to this emergency room group, that we’re working on King, to get out of there; stop working on him. With quotes, ‘Stop working on that nigger. Just let him die. And get out.’ And he threw them all out of the room.
“The last one to leave the room was a surgical nurse. Her name was Shelby. And, as she was leaving, she heard them gathering spit up in their mouths like this. [imitates sucking sound] And that caught her attention. So, she turned around, looked over; and then she saw them spit on the body of Dr. King, saw Dr. Bland pull out the catheter, and take a pillow, put the pillow over his face and suffocate him. (c. 28:22)
“Now, he might have died anyway from his wounds. It was a severe wound. But, nevertheless, he was still alive. And they were not gonna take any chances that he might survive.
“Now—”
MICKEY HUFF: “And, William Pepper, just to be clear, this was information presented in the trial to the jury.”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “No, no.”
MICKEY HUFF: “Right.”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “No, no.”
MICKEY HUFF: “So, that’s what I’m trying to get at here.”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “God, no.”
MICKEY HUFF: “This is what I’m getting at because a lot of people, like you mentioned earlier—I just wanted to clarify that, that was not the case.”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “Sure.”
MICKEY HUFF: “Because, (a) most people are not aware of this 1999 trial. [chuckles]”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “I know [woefully].”
MICKEY HUFF: “And the media did a splendid job of ignoring it and covering it up.”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “[chuckles softly] Yeah. They did.”
KENN BURROWS: “And why is that the case, Bill? Why do you think the progressive media, including progressive media, just failed to cover this? Can you speak to that issue?”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “Well, of course, the corporate media refuses because the corporate media is controlled, basically, by the ruling moneyed forces of the society, who wanna keep the people calm, who don’t want them to be anxious, who don’t want them to lose confidence in their government, don’t want them to in any way question the credibility of the agencies of government, who are paid so much money in their budgets every year. (c. 30:11)
“So, that’s true with respect to the corporate media in one way or another. They’ve really pretty much now buttoned down control of corporate media on cases of this sort.
“When it comes to progressive media, they also have had ways of compromising progressive media. And, so, it’s a great disappointment that a lot of our progressive media people simply will not deal with this kind of case and this kind of issue.
“Now, why is that? Well, progressive media entities often are recipients of grants and awards from entities like the Ford Foundation. And that’s CIA money, for the most part.
“So, they’re not gonna risk losing that. They don’t wanna cover this. And they don’t cover it. Let’s face it. It’s only chaps like you at KPFA.”
MICKEY HUFF: “Certainly, at Project Censored, we have a deep interest in this. My co-host and associate, Dr. Peter Phillips actually teaches a course, that uses your Act of State book in a Sociology of Conspiracy class, that looks at historical conspiracy fact and looks at how it challenges dominant narratives. So, you’re certainly on the right programme as far as that issue goes. (c. 30:45)
“But, William Pepper, given that this didn’t come out in the trial, could you explain to the listeners how you got this deposition and why you even included it in the book?”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “After the trial, there became, just as after an HBO-Thames mock trial back in ’92, people started to become more aware of what was going on. And some people, who had vital information were approaching their graves and wanted to share it. So, people came forward.
“One of the people, who came forward was the son of the surgical nurse. His name was Johnton Shelby. And Johnton went into deposition with us and laid out everything the mother told them the next morning when she came home. She gathered them in the parlour and she said: I still don’t understand why they had to kill him. And, then, she explained what she saw and what she heard in the emergency room. So, Johnton talked about that in detail.
“Then, the son of the Dixie Mafia leader, Adkins, who had sat in on so many meetings with his father, and who knew Tolson very well, and talked about Tolson’s coming in continually, he came forward and agreed to go under oath. And over many hours—I think upwards of eleven hours—I deposed Ron Tyler(sp?) Adkins and gave him all the opportunity, that he needed to tell everything that he knew.
“So, we started to get this information. We started to get it well after 1999. We got it into 2010, ’11, ’12, ’13.” (c. 32:37)
MICKEY HUFF: “And, so, this is the reason for this other book, then. This is—”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “Yeah.”
MICKEY HUFF: “—after Act of State ‘cos you uncovered some of this. You had revealed some of these things in the Act of State book. Then, you discovered so much more since.”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “Yes. That’s right. This is the final book. And, for me, it’s the end of the story. There’s really nothing more, that I can do or say or expect to learn. You know; I’ve been on this for about 40 years. And that’s what it’s taken to slowly get to the bottom of what happened to Dr. King.”
MICKEY HUFF: “And, in your mind, what’s the difference between the ’99 jury verdict and your conclusions in The Plot to Kill King?”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “They’re the same, in the sense that the jury found that agents of the government—three governments: federal, state, and local—were responsible for the killing of Martin King. And, as we worked on this, we got more definitive information, more specific information. So, we were able to name the people. We were able to name the people, who were involved in the actual killing.” (c. 33:43)
MICKEY HUFF: “Can you name them here?”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “Sure. I had lunch with the shooter. His name is Frank Strausser. He’s still alive. He was the one, who pulled the trigger that hit Martin and knocked him down. So, Strausser was the shooter. His spotter was another Memphis police officer called Earl Clark.
“Frank Holloman(sp?), who was the head of police and fire in Memphis, and who had worked for a number of years in Hoover’s office in Washington, basically, it emerged that he was the real on-the-ground coordinator. After Russel Adkins died, it was Holloman(sp?), who organised things on the ground. Frank Liberto, a mafioso, who worked with the Memphis Police Department organised the shooting. (c. 34:37)
“I couldn’t name Strausser for a number of years because the man, who gave me his information was a janitor at the police firing range in Memphis. And he observed Strausser preparing the entire day, firing a specially-delivered rifle, and, then, leaving at three o’clock in the afternoon.
“He gave us a lot of detailed information. But I couldn’t reveal it because I was afraid they would kill him. So, I had to hold on to that segment of information for a number of years. Lenny Curtis was his name, a brave man. We just waited. And, finally, Lenny died and we were able to use his deposition. We had a filmed and a transcribed deposition.
“So, that was very important in terms of nailing the shooter, although the shooter didn’t kill him. And the killing was by this Dr. Bland. And Ron Tyler, the Adkins boy, was present when Bland said to his father: If he’s not killed with the shot, be sure he gets to my hospital so we can make sure that he doesn’t leave there alive.” (c. 35:49)
“That’s how we built up this information in later years.”
KENN BURROWS: “Thank you. It’s very clear, Bill. And thank you for your good work all these years—just to acknowledge that.”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “[inaudible]”
KENN BURROWS: “We thought of closing our interview—we’re getting close to this now—just a thought about Dr. King being a moral voice of our time. And, if he were alive today, what advice do you think he would give us?”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “I think he would say: Keep your powder dry and your values steadfast and your heart always going in the right direction. He’d say; I think he would say: Patience is required. This system is headed toward or an enormous change. And the light will soon become brighter and brighter. But you must, as a part of your resistance, you must stay firm in terms of values and also in terms of determination. I believe that’s what he would say.”
MICKEY HUFF: “William Pepper, you write in the preface of your book. You say that your work, which began nine years after the assassination and continued to the present, has resulted in two books—1995 and 2004 and, of course, this one, The Plot to Kill King in 2016. This is what you call your culminating work, the final work on this topic for you. The book folds all of the previous work together, leading up to a revelation of the most devastatingly depressive final act in the life of this much-loved man. And you go on to say: Due to the absence of any courage by the mainstream corporate media, the disinformers have largely been successful in keeping the truth buried. Even today, they persist.
“And, yet, you have the courage to lay all of this out in The Plot to Kill King for all to see.”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “Well, we try to do the best we can. But whatever I can do, in terms of manifestation of courage is just a mere shadow of Martin King’s presence and life work. And the debt, that I feel we all owe it to him.”
KENN BURROWS: “Thank you, Bill.”
DR. WILLIAM F. PEPPER, ESQ.: “You’re welcome, guys. Thanks so much for your continued interest and your help wherever you can give it.”
MICKEY HUFF: “Dr. William Pepper, thank you so much for coming back on the Project Censored show. Your latest book: The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., out on Skyhorse Publishing.
“Thank you so much, Bill Pepper, for all of your work and for coming on the programme today.” (c. 38:28)
MICKEY HUFF: “After this brief musical break, we’ll return to the Project Censored show, where I’ll be talking to our guest co-host Kenn Burrows, who has for many years run a programme at San Francisco State University, Gandhi-King: Seasons of Nonviolence. So, please stay with us.”
William Pepper was James Earl Ray’s lawyer in the trial for the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., and even after Ray’s conviction and death, Pepper continues to adamantly argue Ray’s innocence. This myth-shattering exposé is a revised, updated, and heavily expanded volume of Pepper’s original bestselling and critically acclaimed book Orders to Kill (1995), with twenty-six years of additional research included. The result reveals dramatic new details of the night of the murder, the trial, and why Ray was chosen to take the fall for an evil conspiracy—a government-sanctioned assassination of our nation’s greatest leader. The plan, according to Pepper, was for a team of United States Army Special Forces snipers to kill King, but just as they were taking aim, a backup civilian assassin pulled the trigger. In The Plot to Kill King, Pepper shares the evidence and testimonies that prove that Ray was a fall guy chosen by those who viewed King as a dangerous revolutionary. His findings make the book one of the most important of our time—the uncensored story of the murder of an American hero that contains disturbing revelations about the obscure inner-workings of our government and how it continues, even today, to obscure the truth. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history—books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
Orders To Kill (1995)
Here is the myth-shattering expose which reveals the truth behind the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Dramatic new evidence confirming the innocence of James Earl Ray and identifying the actual killers of Martin Luther King, Jr”. —Executive Intelligence Review Shocking and controversial revelations from James Earl Ray’s attorney On April 4th, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stepped out onto the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, and into his killer’s line of fire. One shot ended Dr. King’s life and forever changed the course of American history—setting into motion a massive cover-up that has withstood a quarter-century of scrutiny. Now, after 18 years of intensive investigation, William F. Pepper tears away the veil of subterfuge that has hidden the truth of King’s death—proving the innocence of convicted assassin James Earl Ray and revealing the evil conspiracy behind the murder of our nation’s greatest civil rights leader.
An Act of State (2003)
In 1978, Pepper began investigating the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. In this absorbing and detailed book, Pepper maintains that James Earl Ray was not the assassin. Instead, Pepper’s investigation points to a conspiracy by the U.S. government and its military and intelligence organizations to silence King’s growing criticism of the Vietnam War and his anti-poverty campaign. In part one, Pepper focuses on his early investigative efforts, []interviews with several witnesses to King’s murder. Pepper also details his efforts to get a new trial for convicted assassin James Ray, and the cooperation by the King family in that effort. Part two details the 1999 trial, several years after Ray’s death, and new testimony and forensic evidence pointing to government involvement in the assassination and cover-up. Pepper roundly criticizes the U.S. media for its lack of coverage of the trial; he also takes to task the 1998 report by the U.S. Attorney General, an investigation undertaken by the Clinton administration in lieu of the independent investigation requested by Pepper and the King family. Pepper also explores the promise for social change represented by King’s aborted anti-war and anti-poverty campaigns. Readers—particularly conspiracy buffs—interested in the details surrounding the King assassination will enjoy this passionate, disturbing, and well-researched book. Vanessa Bush
GLOBAL RESEARCH—[16 JAN 2017] Our thoughts are with MLK Jr. Martin Luther King Day, January 15, 2016. This article was first published by GR on September 5, 2016
For one bright moment back in the late 1960s, we actually believed that we could change our country. We had identified the enemy. We saw it up close, we had its measure, and we were very hopeful that we would prevail. The enemy was hollow where we had substance. All of that substance was destroyed by an assassin’s bullet. – William Pepper (page 15, The Plot to Kill King)
The revelations are stunning. The media indifference is predictable.
Thanks to the nearly four-decade investigation by human rights lawyer William Pepper, it is now clear once and for all that Martin Luther King was murdered in a conspiracy that was instigated by then FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and that also involved the U.S. military, the Memphis Police Department, and “Dixie Mafia” crime figures in Memphis, Tennessee. These and many more incredible details of the King assassination are contained in a trilogy of volumes by Pepper culminating with his latest and final book on the subject, The Plot to Kill King. He previously wrote Orders to Kill (1995) and An Act of State (2003).
With virtually no help from the mainstream media and very little from the justice system, Pepper was able to piece together what really happened on April 4, 1968 in Memphis right down to who gave the order and supplied the money, how the patsy was chosen, and who actually pulled the trigger.
Without this information, the truth about King’s assassination would have been buried and lost to history. Witnesses would have died off, taking their secrets with them, and the official lie that King was the victim of a racist lone gunman named James Earl Ray would have remained “fact.”
Instead, we know that Ray took the fall for a murder he did not commit. We know that a member of the Memphis Police Department fired the fatal shot and that two military sniper teams that were part of the 902ndMilitary Intelligence Group were sent to Memphis as back-ups should the primary shooter fail. We have access to the fascinating account of how Pepper came to meet Colonel John Downie, the man in charge of the military part of the plot and Lyndon Johnson’s former Vietnam briefer. We also learn that as part of the operation, photographs were actually taken of the shooting and that Pepper came very close to getting his hands on those photographs.
Unfortunately, the mainstream media has ignored all of these revelations and continues to label Ray as King’s lone assassin. In fact, Pepper chronicles in detail how a disinformation campaign has featured the collaboration of many mainstream journalists over almost half a century. He says he suspects that those orchestrating the cover-up, which continues to this day, are no longer concerned with what he writes about the subject.
“I’m really basically harmless, I think, to the power structure,” Pepper said in an interview.
“I don’t think I threaten them, really. The control of the media is so consolidated now they can keep someone like me under wraps, under cover, forever. This book will probably never be reviewed seriously by mainstream, the story will not be aired in mainstream – they control the media. It was bad in the ’60s but nowhere near as bad as now.”
And the most stunning revelation in The Plot to Kill King – which some may question because the account is second hand – is that King was still alive when he arrived at St. Joseph’s Hospital and that he was killed by a doctor who was supposed to be trying to save his life.
“That is probably the most shocking aspect of the book, that final revelation of how this great man was taken from us,” Pepper says. (By the way, when I quote Pepper as having “said” something I mean in our interview. If I’m quoting from the book, I’ll indicate that.)
The hospital story was told to Pepper by a man named Johnton Shelby, whose mother, Lula Mae Shelby, had been a surgical aide at St. Joseph’s that night. Shelby told Pepper the story of how his mother came home the morning after the shooting (she hadn’t been allowed to go home the night before) and gathered the family together. He remembers her saying to them, “I can’t believe they took his life.”
She described chief of surgery Dr. Breen Bland entering the emergency room with two men in suits. Seeing doctors working on King, Bland commanded, “Stop working on the nigger and let him die! Now, all of you get out of here, right now. Everybody get out.”
Johnton Shelby says his mother described hearing the sound of the three men sucking up saliva into their mouths and then spitting. Lula Mae described to her family that she looked over her shoulder as she was leaving the room and saw that the breathing tube had been removed from King and that Bland was holding a pillow over his head. (The book contains the entire deposition given by Johnton Shelby to Pepper, so readers can judge for themselves whether they think Shelby is credible – as Pepper believes he is.)
William Pepper with his friend Martin Luther King.
In fact, a second invaluable source was Ron Adkins, whose father, Russell Adkins Sr., was a local Dixie Mafia gangster and conspirator in the planning of the assassination even though he died a year before it took place. Ron told Pepper he had overheard Bland, who was his family’s doctor, tell his father that if King did survive the shooting he had to be taken to St. Joseph’s and nowhere else. As Pepper describes it:
He remembers Breen Bland saying to his father, ‘If he’s not killed by the shot, just make sure he gets to St. Joseph Hospital, and we’ll make sure that he doesn’t leave.’
Ron, who was just 16 when the shooting took place, was apparently taken everywhere by his father in those days, and he was able to recount many details of what happened as the assassination was planned and carried out.
“I definitely found him credible,” Pepper says. “I found him troubled, I found him disturbed in a lot of ways by things that went on earlier in his life.”
His deposition is also contained in the book, which Pepper explains was important so that readers could judge the statements for themselves.
“What I wanted to do was to make sure that the entire deposition of these critical moments and this critical information was there, so that one could go and read the depositions and see that I was being accurate,” Pepper says.
Besides describing what he heard Bland tell his father, Ron Adkins described the many visits made to Russell Sr. by Clyde Tolson, J. Edgar Hoover’s right hand man. Known to Ron as “Uncle Clyde,” the high-level FBI official often delivered cash to the elder Adkins for jobs he and his associates would carry out on behalf of Hoover. Among those the younger Adkins said were paid to supply information about the activities of Martin Luther King were the reverends Samuel “Billy” Kyles and Jesse Jackson.
The basics of the official story
If you seek out any information from a mainstream source about James Earl Ray, you’ll find him described as the killer of Martin Luther King, just as Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan are labelled “assassins” in the murders of John and Robert Kennedy.
But once you read any or all of Pepper’s three books on the King slaying, you see very clearly that Ray is not a killer at all. Instead, he was a petty criminal who was a perfect “follower.” Like Oswald and Sirhan, Ray was set up to take the fall for an assassination that originated within the American deep state. In fact, Pepper says he’s convinced that knowledge of the plot went all the way to the top.
“The whole thing would have been part of Lyndon Johnson’s playbook,” Pepper says. “I think Johnson knew about this.”
As the official story of the shooting goes, at 5:50 p.m. on April 4, Kyles knocked on the door of room 306 of the Lorraine Motel to let King and the rest of his party know that they were running late for a planned dinner at Kyles’s home. Kyles then walked about 60 feet down the balcony where he remained even after King came out of the room at about 6 p.m. (Although Kyles has maintained ever since that he spent the last half hour in the room, Pepper has proven otherwise.)
Andrew Young (left) and others on balcony of the Lorraine pointing to where the shot originated while King lies at their feet. (Joseph Louw photo)
Members of a militant black organizing group the Invaders, who were also staying in the motel because of King’s visit, were told shortly before the shooting by a member of the motel staff that their rooms would no longer being paid for by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and that they had to leave immediately. When they asked who had given this order, they were told it was Jesse Jackson. At the time of the shooting, Jackson was waiting down by the swimming pool. Ron Adkins also identified Jackson as the person who called the owners of the Lorraine Motel and demanded that King be moved from a more secure inner courtyard room to an exposed room on the second floor facing the street.
The Memphis Police Department usually formed a detail of black officers to protect King when he was in town, but did not this time. Emergency TACT support units were pulled back from the Lorraine to the fire station, which overlooked the motel. Pepper also learned that the only two black members of the Memphis Fire Department had been told the day before the shooting not to report for work the next day at the fire station. And black detective Ed Redditt was told an hour before the shooting to stay home because a threat had been made on his life.
Just about a minute after King exited his room, a single shot was fired and the bullet ripped through King’s jaw and spinal cord, dropping him immediately. The shot appeared to come from across Mulberry Street. King was rushed to hospital, where he was pronounced dead just after 7 p.m.
According to the official story, the shot was fired by Ray from the bathroom of a rooming house above a bar called Jim’s Grill, which backed on to Mulberry and faced onto South Main Street. But, as Pepper’s investigation proves, the shot actually came from the bushes located in between the rooming house and the street. In fact, the only “witness” who placed Ray at the scene was a falling-down-drunk named Charles Stephens, who later did not recognize Ray in a photograph and who cab driver James McCraw had refused to transport a short time before because he was too intoxicated.
The bushes that concealed the shooter were conveniently trimmed the day after the shooting, giving a false impression that a shooter could not have been concealed there. Several witnesses, including journalist Earl Caldwell and King’s Memphis driver, Solomon Jones, described seeing the shot come from the bushes and not from the bathroom of the rooming house as the official story states.
Another casualty of the King murder was cab driver Buddy Butler who reported that he saw a man running from the scene right after the shot, going south on Mulberry St., and jumping into a police car (this would turn out to be MPD Lieutenant Earl Clark). Butler reported this to his dispatcher and later to fellow cab driver Louie Ward. Butler was interviewed at the Yellow Cab Company later that evening by police. Ward was told the next day that Butler had either fallen, or was pushed, to his death from a speeding car on the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge.
The owner of Jim’ Grill, Loyd Jowers, would later admit to being part of the conspiracy to kill King, and he would be found responsible – along with various government agencies – for the killing in a 1999 civil lawsuit by the King family, which was represented by Pepper.
“The King family got enormous comfort out of the results of that trial and the evidence that came forward from that,” Pepper says.
Betty Spates, a waitress at Jim’s Grill and girlfriend of Jowers, says she saw him rush into the back of the Grill through the back door seconds after the shot, white as a ghost and holding a rifle, which he then wrapped in a tablecloth and hid on a shelf under the counter. He turned to her and said, “Betty, you wouldn’t do anything to hurt me, would you?” She responded, “Of course not, Loyd.” Spates, who didn’t come forward until the 1990s, also recounted that Jowers had been delivered a large sum of money right before the assassination.
James McCraw stated that Jowers had shown him a rifle the day after the shooting and told him it was the one used to kill King.
“We confronted Loyd,” Peppers explains. “We told him he was likely to be indicted if he didn’t help us, if he didn’t give more information. Jowers didn’t know there was no way the grand jury was going to indict him. All he knew was what he did, what he participated in, how much money he got for it – he got quite a large sum of money, built a taxi cab company with it, had his gambling debt with [local Mafia figure Frank] Liberto forgiven.”
Liberto, an associate of Louisiana crime boss Carlos Marcello, turned out to be involved in the assassination also. He owned a produce warehouse and one of his regular customers, John McFerren, was making his weekly shopping trip there when he overheard Liberto shout into the phone an hour before the shooting: “Shoot the son of a bitch on the balcony.” Nathan Whitlock and his mother, LaVada Addison Whitlock, who owned a restaurant frequented by Liberto, stated that Liberto had told them he was responsible for the King murder.
Setting up the patsy
One thing that many don’t know is that Ray was in prison in 1967, the year before the assassination, serving a 20-year sentence for a grocery store robbery in 1959. After a couple of unsuccessful escape attempts, Ray succeeded in breaking out of prison on April 23, 1967. Unknown to Ray was the fact that the escape had been orchestrated, because he had already been chosen as the patsy in the planned assassination of King, which was still a year away.
The warden of Missouri State Penitentiary was paid $25,000 by Russell Adkins Sr. to allow the escape (as confirmed by Ron Adkins). The money was delivered to Adkins by Tolson, and it was this same connection that would later be used to finance the assassination of King.
After his escape from prison, Ray went to Chicago for a few weeks where he got a job. But, worried about getting caught, he went to Canada, specifically Montreal, and took the name Eric S. Galt. His intention was to get a passport under a false name and to travel to a country from which he could not be extradited.
James Earl Ray spent the last 30 years of his life in prison for a murder he did not commit.
At the Neptune Bar in the Montreal dock area in August 1967, Ray met a mysterious figure who identified himself as “Raul.” Raul asked Ray to help him with a smuggling scheme, and Ray agreed. In the months ahead, Ray would do a number of jobs, including gun running, for Raul for which he was paid and given a car. Always, Ray had to wait to be contacted by Raul, who Ray said co-ordinated his activities right up until the day of the assassination.
At one point Ray was instructed to purchase a deer rifle with a scope (although Raul was not satisfied with the one he bought and made him exchange it for another). Ray was instructed to go to Memphis (he arrived April 3, 1968) and upon meeting with Raul in his motel was given the name of Jim’s Grill, where the two were to meet at 3 p.m. the next day. He also handed the rifle over to Raul and always maintained that he never saw it again.
Ray rented a room at the rooming house above Jim’s Grill (the two met the day of the assassination as planned). About an hour before the shooting, he was given money to go to the movies, but first he tried to have a tire repaired because Raul had said he wanted to use the car. But when Ray heard the sirens that followed the shooting, he got scared and left the area.
Fearing he had been set up, Ray left the country and ended up in England where he was captured on June 8, 1968 at London’s Heathrow Airport as he was trying to leave the UK. Once charged with the crime, Ray was pressured by his second lawyer, Percy Foreman, to plead guilty on the grounds that the evidence was too strong against him and Foreman was not in good health and couldn’t offer a strong defence.
“Foreman was sent in with the purpose of replacing the original lawyers,” Pepper says.
Foreman offered Ray $500 to get another lawyer if he pleaded guilty and even put this in writing. Ray would regret accepting this offer for the rest of his life. He tried unsuccessfully to rescind the guilty plea and get a trial for the next 30 years, finally dying in prison of cancer in 1998.
Pepper becomes convinced of Ray’s innocence
It was 10 years after the assassination before Pepper would even consider meeting with Ray. He had taken for granted at first that Ray was the assassin, but he was encouraged to meet him by Rev. Ralph Abernathy, who had succeeded King as President of the SCLC. Abernathy had remained unsatisfied with the official account of the shooting.
In the book, Pepper describes his first meeting with Ray in 1978 and how he quickly came to believe that Ray had not been the shooter and that the case was essentially still unsolved. It wasn’t until 1988 before Pepper became certain that Ray had not played any knowing part in the conspiracy, and at that point he agreed to represent him, which he did until his death.
Purveyors of the official story of the assassination have always claimed that Raul was an invention of Ray’s, and mainstream media accounts refer to this question as still unanswered even though Pepper not only found witnesses who described their connections to Raul, he actually found Raul himself with the help of witness Glenda Grabow (Pepper learned that his last name was Coelho). She identified Raul as someone she had known in Houston in 1963 and who around 1974, in a fit of rage, had implicated himself in the King assassination right before raping her. Grabow also identified Jack Ruby as someone who she had seen with Raul in 1963. This fascinating story is recounted both in An Act of State and The Plot to Kill King.
One of the most intriguing things to come out of both of these books is the account of a young FBI agent named Don Wilson who after the assassination was sent to check out a white Mustang with Alabama plates (Ray drove a white Mustang) that had been abandoned and that was thought to be connected to the assassination. Wilson opened the car door and some papers fell out. He examined them later and found a torn-out piece of a 1963 Dallas, Texas telephone directory. Written on the page was the name “Raul” and the initial “J” and a phone number, which turned out to be that of a Las Vegas night club run by Jack Ruby, the man who had shot Lee Harvey Oswald in the basement of the Dallas police station. A second piece of paper had a list of names with amounts of money beside each. Wilson decided to hold on to this evidence, fearing it would disappear forever if he turned it in. He held on to it for 29 years before making it available to Pepper and the King family.
The shooter revealed
Another incredible revelation in The Plot to Kill King is the identity of the man who appears to have fired the fatal shot. Pepper learned his identity from Lenny B. Curtis, who was a custodian at the Memphis Police Department rifle range. Curtis told Pepper this in 2003, and Pepper recorded a deposition with him but kept it confidential out of fear for Curtis’s life. Only after his death in 2013 did Pepper reveal what Curtis had said – that the shooter was Memphis police officer Frank Strausser.
“We had to be very careful about [Curtis’s safety],” Pepper says.
Curtis said to Pepper in his deposition that he heard Strausser say about King four or five months before the assassination that somebody was going to “. . . blow his motherfucking brains out.” He also described that Strausser had practised in the rifle range with a particular rifle that had been brought in four or five days earlier by a member of the fire department. That fireman had shown the rifle to Curtis and asked, “How would you like that scoundrel, that baby there?” When Curtis said it look like any other rifle, he replied, “No, this is a special one; that baby is special.” Lenny remembered that on the day of the assassination, Strausser spent the whole day practicing with it. (Strausser has given several conflicting accounts of where he was and what he was doing that day.)
After the assassination, Curtis says he was followed and intimidated by Strausser. Pepper writes:
Lenny said that he subsequently became aware that strange things were happening around him. His gas was strangely turned on once when he was about to enter his house. He had lit a cigarette, but as he opened the door he smelled gas and quickly put out the cigarette. A strange Lincoln was occasionally parked across the street from his apartment house. He was frightened. One morning when the car was there, he got into his own car and quickly drove off, and the strange car pulled out and followed him. He managed to see the driver. It was Strausser.
In the book, Pepper describes how he came to meet with Strausser, who he describes as a committed and devoted racist.
“He had no respect for black people at all,” Pepper says. “He wasn’t explicit about his racism. But he was not at all sympathetic to what Martin King was all about.”
In the hope of prompting an admission, Pepper lied and told him that he had been implicated in the killing by Loyd Jowers – but Strausser didn’t take the bait. Pepper also told Strausser that the footprints found in the bushes after the shooting were from size 13 shoes (which they were). Then he asked him about the size of his feet:
“He had a bit of a grin on his face, and he said ‘13 large,’” Pepper says.
Pepper also arranged to have cab driver Nathan Whitlock, who Strausser knew, tell him that there was a good possibility that he (Strausser) would be indicted for the shooting. He responded: “What are they going to indict me for, something I did 30 years ago?” Then he caught himself and added, “Or something I knew about 30 years ago?”
A threat to the powers that be
As Pepper explains, King was not only hated by the establishment as he rose to prominence in the 1960s, he was feared. Not only did he have the ability to move large numbers of people with his message of peace and tolerance, but he had designs on a political career. According to Pepper, King was planning to run for president on a third-party ticket with fellow anti-war activist Dr. Benjamin Spock. He was also causing panic in powerful circles because he intended to bring hundreds of thousands of poor people to an encampment in Washington, D.C. in the spring of 1968 to bring attention to the plight of the poor.
“They were terrified that the anger level when [the demonstrators] were not going to get what they wanted was going to rise to such a point where Martin was going to lose control of that group and the more radical among them would take it over and they’d have a revolution,” Pepper explains. “And they didn’t have the troops to put it down. That was a real fear that the Army had. And I think it was a justifiable fear.”
King would also have posed an increasing threat to the political establishment because he intended to become much more vocal in his opposition to the Vietnam War. He had been influenced by an article and photos by Pepper called, “The Children of Vietnam,” which was published in Ramparts Magazine in January 1967 and later reprinted in Look magazine. (The man who published the piece in Look, Bill Atwood, actually told Pepper he received a visit from former New York governor and ambassador to the Soviet Union Averill Harriman who passed on a message from President Johnson that he would appreciate it if Atwood never published anything by Pepper.)
Beyond King’s importance as a powerful force for justice, peace, and equality, he was also Pepper’s friend. And the lawyer/journalist had to deal with that loss as he sought the truth about who really killed King and fought for justice for the man falsely accused of his murder. He writes:
For me, this is a story rife with sadness, replete with massive accounts of personal and public deception and betrayal. Its revelations and experiences have produced in the writer a depression stemming from an unavoidable confrontation with the depths to which human beings, even those subject to professional codes of ethics, have fallen. In addition, there is an element of personal despair that has resulted from this long effort, which has made me even question the wisdom of undertaking this task. (page xiv, The Plot to Kill King)
But he did undertake it, and we should all be grateful that he did.
PBS NEWSHOUR—[20 FEB 1997] Martin Luther King Jr. Case Revisited
[Video has been removed from public access, but a transcript is still online.]
JIM LEHRER: We do go first tonight to the James Earl Ray story. In a Memphis court today the family of Martin Luther King called for the trial that did not happen 29 years ago. Tom Bearden reports.
TOM BEARDEN: On April 4, 1968, a gunman shot and killed the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis Tennessee.
ANNOUNCER: Dr. King was standing here on this motel balcony yesterday afternoon when he was struck down by an assassin’s bullet.
TOM BEARDEN: Within two months an out-of-work drifter with a criminal record, James Earl Ray, was captured in England and arrested for the murder. Facing a possible death sentence Ray pleaded “guilty” in exchange for life imprisonment. But just days later he recanted his confession, saying it had been coerced. The court, however, refused to grant him a trial. Since then in interviews and parole hearings Ray has repeatedly asked for the trial he never got.
JAMES EARL RAY: Well, first, I didn’t kill Dr. King.
TOM BEARDEN: Now dying of liver disease James Earl Ray is asking for a liver transplant and for one last chance to tell his story before a judge. In 1979 a House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that Ray was the triggerman but indicated there may have been co-conspirators. In the 29 years since King’s death his followers have speculated that those co-conspirators could be anyone from government agents to organized crime figures, to white supremacists. But the King family remained silent on the issues until last week. Dexter King, who was just seven years old when his father was killed, said a trial could shed light on some lingering questions the family has.
DEXTER KING: (February 13) The lack of a satisfactory resolution to questions surrounding the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., has been a source of continuing pain and hardship to our family. Every effort must be made to determine truth. We feel strongly that this can only be accomplished in a court of law.
TOM BEARDEN: At today’s court hearing in Memphis, Ray’s attorney asked for permission to conduct ballistic tests on the rifle Ray allegedly used. His attorney believes those tests will prove it was not the murder weapon.
WILLIAM PEPPER, Attorney for James Earl Ray: As to this petition, Your Honor, and this effort, Your Honor will recall that as long ago as June 6, 1994, Your Honor ordered that the petition be allowed to inspect and test fire the rifle in evidence. In this case petitioner has always alleged that the rifle in evidence is not the murder weapon but a throw-down gun. And in the 28-year history of this case the petitioner forced the defendant and now the petitioner has never had the right to test this right. The defense has never had the right to have access to FBI test fire worksheet reports, nor House Select Committee test fire worksheet reports. So what we are seeking here for the first time once again, Your Honor, is an opportunity to test this rifle in an effort to exclude it for all time as the murder weapon.
TOM BEARDEN: Coretta Scott King, Rev. Martin Luther King’s widow, took the stand to testify in favor of a trial.
[1] Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving: Project Censored, this one-hour broadcast hosted by Mickey Huff and Kenn Burrows, Friday, 7 APR 2017, 13:00 PST.
[2] Dr. William Pepper‘s photo essay, “The Children of Vietnam” (January 1967), for Ramparts magazine had a tremendous impact on Dr. King, with its graphic exposure of the suffering of Vietnamese women and children during the American military aggression against Vietnam during the 1960s. Dr. King came to befriend Dr. William Pepper in January of 1967. Also, Dr. King came to befriend the influential Buddhist monk Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh. All of these factors, as well as a sense of responsibility as a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, doubtless influenced Dr. King’s famous “Beyond Vietnam” speech from April of 1967, which reflected a heightened awareness of U.S. imperialism and the horrors it inflicted upon the people of Vietnam. As Dr. William Pepper noted on Project Censored, the next day after he gave his “Beyond Vietnam” speech, Dr. King “was condemned by virtually every newspaper and even members of his own Civil Rights Movement.” (Exactly one year later, Dr. King would be assassinated.) During the “Beyond Vietnam” speech, Dr. King cited at least one letter from a “Buddhist leader” of Vietnam. Later in 1967, Dr. King nominated Thích Nhất Hạnh for the 1967 Nobel Peace Prize. In his nomination Dr. King said,
I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of [this prize] than this gentle monk from Vietnam. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.
In an institutional rebuke to Dr. King’s sentiments and views, the Nobel Committee, in turn, decided not to award anybody a Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. This was, yet, another sign that Dr. King’s political and socioeconomic idealism and morality exceeded that of the establishment institutions of the world.
“Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” address delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on 4 APR 1967 at the Riverside Church, New York City
[3] The song “An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King” by Vic Sadot was posted to YouTube by Vic Sadot on 6 MAR 2010. The song is taken from Sadot’s album entitled Truth Troubador, published on the independent Truth Troubador record label. As of 8 APR 2017, the video had 3,047 views. Singer-songwriter Vic Sadot, who has been featured previously on Project Censored, included the following text on the YouTube video page:
The song is based upon the book of the same title by King family lawyer, William Pepper. The book tells the story of the trial that Pepper won on behalf of the King family in 1999 in a Memphis court where a jury of 6 black and 6 white jurors unanimously found Loyd Jowers and unnamed government conspirators guilty of murdering Martin Luther King. The King family had long determined that James Earl Ray was not the lone gunman in an act of hate, but rather a patsy in a conspiracy to decapitate the unifying justice movement that Dr King represented. Loyd Jowers was the owner of the restaurant across the street from the Lorraine Motel where MLK was gunned down in broad daylight while in support of the union struggle of the sanitation workers for decent wages. Rather than an act of hate, Kings murder was an act of state. The soundtrack was recorded in Berkeley, California by Blair Reese with songwriter Vic Sadot on vocals and acoustic guitar, Maria Claus-Rangel on back-up vocals and Evie McKnight on harmonica.
***
[Image of The Plot to Kill King book cover by source, used via fair use, creative commons.]
LUMPENPROLETARIAT—In order to make informed decisions about what positions to take, it is our civic duty as citizens to be informed about what’s going on in our world and its centers of power. A new documentary film, Risk, directed and produced by award-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras is somewhat helpful in that regard. Poitras is most well-known for directing the 2014 film, Citizenfour, which won the 2015 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
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