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—One of the biggest schisms on the left of the political spectrum has manifested itself over the last century or more between two broad groupings—namely, anarchists and socialists. The anarchists see no validity (moral or otherwise) in the authority of the state form. Conversely, the socialists have proven to be more optimistic about the possibilities for progressive or radical reforms within the state form. Dr. Mark Leier, a Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, has just published a new pamphlet about this long-running division on the left, taking Dr. Karl Marx and Mr. Mikhail Bakunin as figureheads for these two political tendencies on the left. Indeed, in their time (late 19th century), Marx and Bakunin were (as today) two of the most well-known figures on the left. And this schism eventually shattered the First International (or the International Workingmen’s Association), the first international attempt to unite the left against capitalist exploitation of the world’s working classes.
On today’s edition of free speech radio’s Against the Grain, host C.S. Soong spoke with Dr. Leier about the new pamphlet entitled “Divide and Conquer or Divide and Subdivide? How Not to Refight the First International”. This is a fascinating interview, which provides us with useful background on Marx, Bakunin, the First International, and one of the deepest and most enduring divisions on the left. Dr. Leier compared and contrasted the two hugely influential leftists. And, in so doing, Dr. Leier’s research seemed to suggest(reading pending) that the limitations of their respective temperaments definitely hindered their ability (and, by extension, the ability of their respective followings) to unite an effective and sustainable broad-based anti-capitalist left movement resistance.
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[Transcript draft by Messina for Against the Grain and Lumpenproletariat.]
AGAINST THE GRAIN—[5 JUL 2017] “Today on Against the Grain, the battle waged between Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin within the First International was, according to historian Mark Leier, some of the nastiest sectarian fighting we have seen on the left. I’m C.S.
“Mark Leier discusses the lives and ideas of Marx and Bakunin, and argues that the two men had more similarities than is commonly believed—coming right up.”
[Against the Grain theme music continues]
“And this is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio. I’m C.S. Soong.
“Two leading radicals—Karl Marx and anarchist Mikhail Bakunin—famously clashed in the 1860s. They bickered and fought and heaped invective on each other. And, as a consequence, the International Workingmen’s Association, known as the First International, split in two in 1872. Hostility and tension between socialists and anarchists continue to this day. And Mark Leier, for one, wonders whether it could have been different. (c. 1:36)
“Leier a Professor of History at Simon Fraser University has compared the background and ideas of Marx and Bakunin and has found many similarities, similarities ignored by or unknown to many who’ve written about or analysed the momentous breakup of the First International. Leier has also analysed the temperaments of these two men for clues into why they disliked and distrusted each other so much. Leier, who wrote a biography called Bakunin: The Creative Passion, has come out with a new pamphlet about Marx and Bakunin. The pamphlet’s title is ‘Divide and Conquer or Divide and Subdivide? How Not to Refight the First International’.
“When Mark Leier joined me from British Columbia, I asked him what the First International was.” (c. 2:23)
DR. MARK LEIER: “The First International was an attempt of a number of left-wing and communist and working class and anarchist political groups to come together to create the organisation, that would help workers across the world build a new kind of solidarity. It was started in 1864. And its first meeting was in London. And its first congress, although they had delegates mostly in Europe, it was helped a year later in Geneva.”
C.S. SOONG: “And what were the roles of Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin within the First International?”
DR. MARK LEIER: “The two organisers and radicals represented different wings and different ideas about how the socialist revolution was going to come about. I think the differences have really been overstated.
“But what we see in the First International is a deep feud between Bakunin and his followers ,and the Proudhon followers that were allied with him with a small group of Marxists in there. (3:37)
“And they used—as anyone, who’s been at a co-op meeting or a left-wing meeting or a [] council meeting or a departmental meeting of some kind knows how these things can develop. And they can become very nasty long after everyone has forgotten what the original battles were all about.
“So, one of the things, that happened was the two different sides used some small differences on small matters to become trigger points to engage in a kind of schismatic in-fighting.” (c. 4:04)
C.S. SOONG: “And this in-fighting climaxed with a final split between the two men, between their two factions at the Hague Congress of the First International in 1872. Tell us what happened there.”
DR. MARK LEIER: “Yeah. You know; again, it was very typical of the kinds of things. But, basically, two sides lined up and held various votes on matters. And voting goes back and forth. And, finally, however, Marx and his allies win a couple of crucial votes. And they use that as a way to kick out Bakunin and the Bakuninists.
“And they, then, moved the International’s headquarters to New York City, so virtually nobody could get to the next congress. And the whole thing pretty much wraps up by 1876.
“So, the bitter irony for the left is this attempt to forge a new solidarity, greater unity dissolves into factional fights, into fueding. One side takes its marbles and goes home.
“The anarchists do create another International shortly after that, which continues for some years. And, of course, in the 1880s there was a revival of something called the Second International, which was very much an International of the social democratic party. It does not have the same broad range of left-wing members and ideas in it.” (c. 5:37)
C.S. SOONG: “So, in this pamphlet you have written for PM Press—it’s called ‘Divide and Conquer or Divide and Subdivide? How Not to Refight the International’—you actually go back in time. You look at the upbringings and the years of youth and young adulthood of, both, Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin, Michael Bakunin. And it’s very revealing. And it tells me, at least, as one reader of the pamphlet, a lot about who these men were, where they came from, and how, in some ways, similar they were. And that’s part of your point—isn’t it?—that these two men were more similar than one might think based on everything we’ve heard about the antagonism between them. (c. 6:27)
“So, let’s start with Bakunin. You write that Bakunin’s family was part of the Russian nobility. Does that mean, Mark, that his family was rich, was part of the idle rich?”
DR. MARK LEIER: “No, it doesn’t. One of the things, that’s happened in this long feud between anarchists and Marxists between 1864 and the present is that both sides are quick to point out the other as being absolutely unrepresentative of any kind of working class or real left wing movement by saying, in this case, that Bakunin was not a worker, but was an aristocrat. And it is true. But his family was not in the circles of the czar. His estate was pretty far from Moscow and from St. Petersburg. And it did not mean what we tend to think of when we think of aristocrats. You know; we think of Queen Victoria, when we think of the czar. That’s not what life was like.
“The family did control the lives of about two thousand serfs. But that did not confer huge wealth. This was a family, that had more many than peasants—absolutely—but had to pay strict attention to housekeeping, had to pay strict attention to the books in order to keep going. When you look at the letters from Bakunin’s father, it’s filled with—you know; we’re not sure if we’re gonna make it this month. We’re really having a difficult time making ends meet. It did mean that they had the luxury of educating the children. And, so, Michael and his sisters and his brothers got a very good education by tutors, that were brought into the home. They were given the training appropriate for gentlemen and ladies. But it was a training, that was very much instrumental in the sense that you prepare the men to step into careers in the army or as professionals or, perhaps, as people able to manage the estate and to provide the sisters of Michael Bakunin with the graces and skills and personal characteristics, that would allow them to make good marriages. (c. 8:38)
“This is not a family rolling in wealth, although it was certainly enough to send Bakunin off to school where he went to a military academy and took up service in the czar’s army. But he was not one of the idle rich in that sense.” (c. 8:54)
C.S. SOONG: “So, what about Karl Marx’s parents? Obviously, he grew up in Germany, not in Russia. Where did his parents fall within the ranks of German society? And how important was education in Marx’s family, you know, when he was a kid?”
DR. MARK LEIER: “Marx’s family was very similar to Bakunin’s. They were not aristocrats. But his father was a lawyer. He had vineyards, that he ran. So, he had enough wealth to educate the children, enough social status, that Marx’s father would meet with local politicians and had some interest and some political sway, as did Bakunin’s father, but not enough to guarantee careers, not enough to allow them to stop working and simply live off the income produced by workers. That was not their situation at all. (c. 9:49)
“What is interesting to me is that both sides have looked at the parents of Bakunin and of Marx to say: We can dismiss either of them, depending on your side, as being petit bourgeois elements. That cuts both ways. And it is easy for both sides to overestimate the class position of Bakunin and Marx. So, I wanted to pay attention to that to say that they were not unlike rebels, that we see all over the place. If you look at the make up, for example, of the Students for a Democratic Society [SDS], in their very title, they were students. They had some access to education. The Weather Underground, very similar. It’s not true of all organisations, of course. But it’s not a surprise that many people of the left had, at least, some exposure to education. It’s pretty difficult to work all day and, then, go home and become an expert in all the arcane matters of the political economy, that we need to think about on the left.” (c. 10:51)
C.S. SOONG: “Mark Leier is his name. He is a Professor in this History Department at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. And he’s author of ‘Divide and Conquer or Divide and Subdivide? How Not to Refight the First International’. And he’s also the author of a biography of Bakunin, Michael Bakunin. I’m C.S. [Soong]. And this is Against the Grain on Pacifica Radio.
“So, Bakunin, like Marx, was the oldest of the male children in his family. And you said that he was sent to a—or he went to a military academy. So, I understand that demands were placed on young Michael. But he would develop into some type of military officer. How did he do in school at that academy?”
DR. MARK LEIER: “Well, he was not a great student. His passion for rebellion surfaced early, though not in episodes of organising resistance among his fellow cadets, but in that kind of passive-aggressive behaviour, that is often how people, who don’t have much power, respond. He was, like many students, slow at turning in his assignments. He didn’t do very well on many of his exams. He was considered to be very bright. And, if only he would apply himself, the theory went, he would do very well at that.
“The point of going to military academy was not just to become a soldier, but enlist in the army, with any luck, to have a good war, if such a thing is possible. And it certainly was for officers; it meant escaping and acquitting yourself with some honour, so that you would be rewarded by the system for playing that important role in it. (c. 12:40)
“So, the idea was not to become a career officer, but to be exposed to the circles of power through your service and in that way, actually, add to the family income. But it didn’t work out.
“He did some military service, but finally just went AWOL. He just left. And his family, later, then, had to scramble and say: Well, he was sick. He wasn’t well. That’s why he’s here. He had something of a breakdown. That wasn’t the case. He was sick to death of the military life, sick to death of the discipline, the pettiness of it. In that sense, we can look to some of his personality, leading to his ideas about anarchism, about freedom, and the lack of discipline imposed imposed from above.”
C.S. SOONG: “And Marx, as I understand, he was expected, or at least his parents hoped that he would engage in the study of law. He went to the University of Bonn in Germany, where he studied law. How did that go?” (c. 13:42)
DR. MARK LEIER: “Not so well. He was more interested in writing poetry and in drinking an in dueling. You know? It’s the 19th century equivalent of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. And so was Bakunin, of course.
“Both of them—lots of their early correspondence, letters back home saying: Trying really hard. Working really hard. I could just do better if you send me more money.”
C.S. SOONG: “[chuckles]”
DR. MARK LEIER: “It didn’t fool anybody. Both fathers respond: We sent you a pile of money. Most people could live for a year or two. You seem to have burned through it all for months. Maybe you should apply yourself more carefully.
“So, these are some of the parallels, at an early age, between the two men. And I stress the parallels because our sense of them, based only on the feuds of the First International, is that they must have been so very different. They must have been very different approaches to political and economic questions. And they really don’t. I think they have much more in common, which is not surprising, given they had similar backgrounds.
“And the similarities in their upbringings, in their educations, and in their early moves, first, into Hegelian philosophy, as a way to make sense of the world, and, then, into working class politics and left-wing politics—so very similar, that I had to stop and say: What exactly was the huge difference between them? Why couldn’t they get along? Why couldn’t they become—you know—the hottest duo in the pamphleteering world, ’til, say, Gilbert and Sullivan?”
C.S. SOONG: “[chuckles]”
DR. MARK LEIER: “Or some other famous team. You know? [chuckles]”
C.S. SOONG: “G.W.F. Hegel, an immensely influential philosopher, who, as you began to suggest, influenced Bakunin and Marx and so many other people of their generation and subsequent generations. Which ideas of Hegel’s most appealed to Marx and to Bakunin?” (c. 15:49)
DR. MARK LEIER: “Or some other famous team. You know? [chuckles]”
C.S. SOONG: “I think, to both of them, what was so appealing about Hegel is he presented for the first time the idea that change, not stasis and stability, was the human condition.
“If you think about the time, in which Hegel is writing, a time when Europe is changing so drastically, when the economies are in the middle of that shift from hundreds of years of feudalism to this new industrial capitalism that changes everywhere.
“That doesn’t sit very well, if you are a king and want to hold [power] with the divine right of kings, that says: You’re family has been on the throne forever and should be on the throne forever. So, Hegel, by suggesting it was change, that marked human history opened up a whole new world.
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]
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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.
AGAINST THE GRAIN
GLOBAL RESEARCH
