("Quid coniuratio est?")
Special thanks to Charles Lewton (clewton@eskimo.com) for transcribing the following lecture by Dave Emory.
THE ASSASSINATIONS OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. & MALCOLM X (Part 1 of 4)
Tape One--Side One.
"Fascism is something that might appear to be a long way away for people, even now. It is worth understanding how fascism came into being in both Japan and Germany, to a lesser extent Italy, where the terror was more random. But in Japan and Germany, fascism came about in considerable measure by the systematic assassination of the legitimate political leadership of those countries. In Germany, underground units of the German army that were originally put together above ground to combat the abortive socialist revolution in Germany, they remained intact below ground and they became known as the so-called Black Reichswer (sp). They were composed of the Freicorps (sp) or Free Corps, the Eine Vonevaren (sp) and Zeitfreivillegenverbonde (sp). All three organizations put together of German army world war one veterans, they were put together by the defense minister of the Weimar Republic, a fellow named Gustav Nosgae (sp) and they were put together to combat communism, to put down a socialist revolution in Germany, which they did. As I said, they then remained intact and proceeded to systematically assassinate not only socialists and communists but the legitimate political leadership of Weimar Germany. That was one of the reasons that Adolph Hitler's rise to power was as relatively smooth as it was.
Likewise, in Japan, the so-called patriotic or ultranationalist societies, which were like crosses between organized crime syndicates, religious groups, and nationalist societies. They systematically dispatched the legitimate democratic leadership of Japan and paved the way for the rise of fascism in Japan. The main organization involved there was the Black Dragon Society, named after the Ahmoor (sp) river, or Black Dragon River, which at the time constituted the border between Russia and China, and the main name behind the Black Dragon Society was a fellow named Mitsouru Toyama (sp).
The patriotic societies were directed by the Japanese general staff as were the Freicorp, Eine Vonevaren, and Zeitfreivillegenverbonde (sp)., even when they remained underground illegally, and in this country, we are now faced with the results of an analogous program, just as the German and Japanese military organizations felt it necessary to begin using deadly force and covert action in their own countries in order to eliminate individuals and institutions that they considered to represent enemies at home. So in the 1960s and '70s, in the United States, our national security establishment or significant elements of it began to use the same kind of deadly force and covert action at home that they had been using abroad for decades in order to maintain the strategic situation of not only our national security establishment, but more importantly the preeminent position of American based multinational corporations in many parts of the world.
In the 1940s and 1950s, deadly force was used in a covert way in places like Iran and places like Guatemala, and in other parts of the third world in particular. By the 1960s, what I like to sum up in the old street expression "what goes around comes around", well what had been going around in fact came around for the United States. The most significant element of this assassination program was the assassination of president Kennedy in which the national security establishment of this country removed the legitimate constitutional authority, the legitimately elected constitutional representative of the people, and they then installed their own selectee, so to speak, Lyndon Johnson. Kennedy had placed the weight of the Oval Office against many of the policies which were permitting the ongoing coups in places like Guatemala when Jacobo Arbenz (sp) was overthrown, under the auspices incidentally of fighting communism, Jacobo Arbenz had made it very clear when he took office in Guatemala that what he sought to do was to bring Guatemala up as a modern capitalist democracy. He sought simply to eliminate Guatemala as a feudal society, which was what it was, and to bring it into the 20th century as an upbeat, upper-middle-class capitalist country and he was explicitly capitalist but because that would have threatened the profit margins of United Fruit and other corporations who benefited from the feudal conditions in Guatemala, he was deemed a communist and overthrown under that rationalization. Because John Kennedy refused to follow U.S. national security policy in a number of areas such as Vietnam, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Guatemala, all of which had coups or attempted coups, Kennedy refused to go along with those coups, it was deemed necessary in the eyes of the powers that be in this country to eliminate, to use the same kind of deadly force at home that they had long been using abroad.
If you sit back and take a look at what happened to the progressive political leadership in the United States over the 1960s and '70s, thinking about progressive leaders ranging from political liberals like John and Robert Kennedy, all the way on over to people who would be classified on the political left, such as members of the Black Panthers or perhaps Malcolm X. What happened, for example to Medgar Evers (sp), field secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People--shot to death in 1963. What happened to president John F. Kennedy--shot to death in 1963. What happened to Malcolm X--shot to death in 1965. What happened to Martin Luther King--shot to death in 1968. What happened to Robert Kennedy--shot to death in 1968. What happened to Fred Hampton, a very prominent member of the Black Panthers who had been very successful in organizing a free breakfast and lunch program for ghetto school children in Chicago--shot to death in 1969. What happened to Jonathan and George Jackson, the two members of the socalled Soledad Brothers--shot to death in 1970, I believe, and 1971 respectively. I may be wrong about the dates. What happened to Faye Stender (sp) who was George Jackson's attorney--shot and critically wounded and permanently disabled in 1979. What happened to George Mosconi, the liberal mayor of San Francisco--shot to death in 1978. What happened to Harvey Milk, the first gay city councilman in San Francisco--shot to death in 1978.
Well, at a certain point, you would begin to think that people would catch on to what was going on in this country. Apparently, though, Americans have chosen to ignore the obvious and because we have chosen as a people to ignore the obvious, we are now faced with exactly what the German and Japanese people and ultimately the whole world were faced with after far too many of them ignored the assassination programs in Japan and Germany. And those assassination programs led directly to the rise of fascism in those countries and the rise of fascism led directly to the second World War with all its attendant horrors.
We here in this country have ignored a similar process and this evening, by way of helping to raise support for KFJC, and by way of helping to document a critical element of American history, we are going to be observing Black History Month by discussing the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, arguably the greatest black leaders in American history. We should remember as we listen to the accounting of events this evening that these are not things which took place in the past. The same forces which destroyed Martin Luther King and Malcolm X are with us today and they are still operating in the same fashion. Leaving aside for the moment the bombing in New York City on Friday and during the question and answer session, I would be more than willing to entertain whatever questions you have. It should be noted that in 1991 we had a chilling reminder that a political assassination in America is not a past activity when journalist Daniel Casalero (sp) was found, supposedly a suicide, in Martinsburg, West Virginia, in his hotel room.
Danny Casalero had been investigating many of the same elements that I talk about on One Step Beyond, that I talk about in my lectures and he had come very close to unearthing some critical information about the intersecting activities of a number of different national security institutions. He had been warned that his activities could get him killed. He had been getting death threats for quite some time. After, after Danny Casalero was clinically determined to have been dead, many hours afterward, his housekeeper got a phone call in which an unidentified male caller said "You're dead, you son of a bitch" and hung up. When the truth eventually came out, it was learned that not only did Danny Casalero have a number of bruises that had not been reported initially, but that three of his fingernails had been pulled out and that yet, most of the institutions in this society, including a lot of so-called progressive media organizations and individuals labeled Danny Casalero a suicide. Well, that is one hell of a suicide. Three fingernails pulled out suggests much more like Danny Casalero prior to being murdered had been tortured.
So, as I indicated at the beginning of the talk tonight, sooner or later what goes around comes around and as we observe the closing of February which is Black History Month, remember that what eventually came around for Martin Luther King and Malcolm X is going to be coming around for many of us sooner or later.
Now, to begin, I am going to discuss the assassination of Martin Luther King and eventually we will move on to Malcolm X. With the Spike Lee film about Malcolm X still somewhat in the public eye, Malcolm's assassination has received more attention than it has received in the past, there's a very good book out called The Judas Factor by a fellow named Carl Evanzz, which in my opinion is the best work done to date on the assassination of Malcolm X. Much of the information that I am going to be presenting about the Malcolm X killing this evening comes from that book. It is currently available. It is put out by Thunder's Mouth Press and I strongly recommend it to any and all interested parties.
Now the best hard information about what actually did happen vis-avis the assassination of Martin Luther King and what I am going to be talking about this evening is also what didn't happen, namely Martin Luther King was not killed by James Earl Ray, who was a poor dumb cracker who couldn't knock off a liquor store in Missouri without getting caught and yet he supposedly assassinated one of the most famous people in the world and conducted a very sophisticated and largely successful international flight using techniques that would be available in all likelihood only to an experienced intelligence agent with considerably more resources at his disposal than James Earl Ray had. I am going to be talking about how history has come to accept what I guess we could call the 32-blows-to-the-head version, the suicide version, of Martin Luther King's assassination. Namely that some poor dumb cracker, again another lone nut named James Earl Ray, shot Martin Luther King. James Earl Ray not only didn't act alone to kill Martin Luther King, James Earl Ray did not act at all and I am going to be talking about how he came to be framed for the killing.
The best account, though, of what did happen in the assassination of Martin Luther King, comes from a fellow named Robert Byron Watson. Watson was an employee at the Magellan Art Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia and while at that art gallery, he learned information about a drug and gold smuggling ring that was being operated by a faction of U.S. intelligence using the Magellan Art Gallery as its operational base. This particular ring, again, operated on behalf of a faction of U.S. intelligence and they were smuggling drugs out of Southeast Asia in hollowed-out teak logs. They were also doing a great deal of gold smuggling as well. Watson overheard these individuals discussing the upcoming assassination of Martin Luther King. He also heard them discussing what happened vis-a-vis the King assassination afterward and he presented his information to law enforcement authorities despite considerable pressure that was brought to bear both on him and his mother. Both Watson and his mother were threatened by death, both before and after the actual assassination of Martin Luther King. Robert Byron Watson then went ahead and submitted his affidavit. Law enforcement, to the extent that it was pursued, found it to be accurate, yet they never were able to act on it past a point. The main names associated with this particular gold and drug smuggling ring, and again bear in mind this was operated on behalf of U.S. intelligence, one of the main names was that of former Georgia congressman Larry McDonald, a national head of the John Birch Society, also a head of a private right-wing intelligence organization called Western Goals. Larry McDonald is perhaps best known for having gone down on the Korean Airlines flight 007 which went down under mysterious circumstances over the Soviet Union in September of 1983. That incident one of the more dramatic incidents of the cold war in the early 1980s. In addition to that of Larry McDonald, another important name associated with this drug and gold smuggling ring was that of Faud Habash (sp). Faud Habash is the brother of George Habash, one of the best known Palestinian leaders and the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Not, by the way, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command, elements of which have been implicated in the bombing of PanAm 103. They are distinct organizations. Habash, himself, has very strong connections, George Habash that is, to the fascist Third Position. He also has very strong operational links to U.S. intelligence and while there was a Soviet intelligence, he also had operational links to the Soviets, as well. An interesting fellow. His brother was one of the main functionaries in this drug and gold smuggling ring that was involved at the operational level in the assassination of Martin Luther King.
Now the other name that we want to know vis-a-vis this drug and gold smuggling ring, and again these were the actual gunsuls, these were the um-de-nam (sp), these were the hands-on individuals, the hurt-ya kind of guys who were involved in killing Dr. King according to Robert Byron Watson and other independent investigations. Among the people involved with this organization was a fellow who used the name Herman Jackson. That was the name he used when working on behalf of this drug smuggling ring. His actual name, or at least as far as we have able to tell, was a fellow named Jack Youngblood. Jack Youngblood was a longtime U.S intelligencer. He had worked with, among others, Frank Fiorini, who later changed his name to Frank Sturgis and became known as one of the Watergate burglars. He worked directly with Frank Fiorini in the 1954 coup that overthrew Otto Benz in Guatemala. He then, like Frank Fiorini, aka Frank Sturgis, went to work for other U.S. intelligence operations and apparently one of those operations was the assassination of Martin Luther King.
Now, James Earl Ray, the patsy for the assassination, who by the way was never actually convicted in a trial per se, he confessed to the assassination of Martin Luther King and then later reversed his confession. But James Earl Ray was offered a lot of money, now bear in mind this was a poor individual, an individual who had no money, a lengthy criminal record, and basically stood more to gain from pleading guilty than he did from remaining innocent, but he agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a large portion of the rights to a book offered by a fellow named William Bradford Huie.
Huie wrote a book called He Slew the Dreamer. He coughed up a large section of the proceeds for that book and that was basically James Earl Ray's incentive for pleading guilty. Later when Ray reversed his guilty plea and began to spill the beans about what really happened, Ray said that he had been trafficked around by a mysterious individual that he met called Raoul. And Raoul, he identified, interestingly enough as being part of a smuggling ring. He never knew who they were connected with, but one of his main jobs had been to help smuggle arms across the Canadian/American and Mexican/American borders in conjunction with Raoul who was his contact. It would appear in this regard that Ray was being manipulated and set up to be a patsy by Raoul, who was in all probability was acting in behalf of some faction of U.S. intelligence, if not in fact the same gold and drug smuggling ring that Robert Byron Watson had identified. Raoul was the individual who told James Earl Ray where to go and what to do and appears to have basically been his intelligence handler.
Law enforcement authorities have checked out Robert Byron Watson's claims to a considerable extent. They have found them credible, yet this has never resulted in any kind of serious investigation beyond the lick-and-a-promise that the Robert Byron Watson affidavit was given by law enforcement.
To this day, it remains the end of the trail, so to speak, of the hard investigative pathway into Martin Luther King's assassination.
Now, Jack Youngblood's name also crops up in addition to the Robert Byron Watson affidavit, Jack Youngblood's name crops up in connection with the assassination of Martin Luther King because the actual shooter, and I am going to talk about the framing of James Earl Ray, but the actual shooter in the Martin Luther King assassination, appears to have been an individual who has become known in the literature as the "Eggs and Sausages" man. Now there was a cafe near the rooming house that James Earl Ray supposedly was living, well he was living there--at least he was booked there. Near the rooming house from which James Earl Ray supposedly fired the shot that killed Martin Luther King, there was a cafe called Jowers' Cafe. It was run by a fellow named Lloyd Jowers and for some time prior to the assassination of Martin Luther King, an individual who had previously not been a regular at Jowers' Cafe, and generally the clientele there was composed of regulars, this was an individual who had not been seen there before and began showing up shortly before the assassination of Martin Luther King, and he always ordered eggs and sausages. He became known as a result as the "eggs and sausages man" and has gone down in history as such.
One day this strange individual came in and sat down and placed his usual order, namely eggs and sausages, he finished his order, paid his tab, and then went outside and shortly after he went outside, the patrons of Jowers Cafe heard an enormous explosion like the report of a high-powered rifle. Later, the "eggs and sausages man" was picked up by police because the members of the clientele of Jowers' Cafe id'd this individual as the "eggs and sausages" man. He never, however, was booked on suspicion of having killed Martin Luther King, as a Memphis journalist named Wayne Chastain (sp), who wrote for the Memphis Press Scimitar noted when he interviewed the individuals at the prison. The individual in question, the "eggs and sausages" man, made one call to a party or parties unknown and was released by the Memphis police without any questioning whatsoever. As the individual noted, he must have some powerful connections to be able to just walk out of jail free like that. Later, an individual who identified himself as Jack Youngblood, and who also identified himself as a long-time U.S. intelligence operative, and incidentally an individual operating out of Denver, Colorado, he sought out Wayne Chastain, again of the Memphis Press Scimitar, and expressed the fear that he might be mistaken for the individual who assassinated Martin Luther King and said that the actual assassin was his Denver, Colorado roommate.
When shown pictures, and by the way, that is about where the "eggs and sausages" man's trail leads off, when shown pictures of Jack Youngblood, James Earl Ray identified him as an individual that he had seen trailing him for several days prior to the assassination of Martin Luther King. There are a number of other indications that James Earl Ray and Martin Luther King were maneuvered into place and that the assassination was set up in advance by the authorities. The place where Martin Luther King was staying was supposed to have been a secret. Eventually it came out courtesy of the FBI. Now the FBI had at this time been not only monitoring Martin Luther King very closely, but it had been for some time engaged in a counterintelligence program against black activist groups ranging from militant black-power activists, all the way through mainstream civil rights activists, this intelligence program became known as the COINTELPRO program, short for counterintelligence. It was also utilized against elements of the anti-Vietnam War movement as well.
When FBI people learned that Martin Luther King was going to be staying at a white-owned business in Memphis, Tennessee where he had gone to help negotiate a strike between largely-black sanitation workers and the city of Memphis, the FBI leaked the information to the press about the fact that Martin Luther King was going to be staying at a white-owned business. This obviously was bad PR for Martin Luther King and so his reservations were then switched to the black-owned Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, and that information was published in the Memphis press so it became a matter of public record to anyone who would or wanted to read a newspaper as to where Martin Luther King was going to be staying in Memphis, Tennessee.
Prior to Martin Luther King's arrival, a mysterious individual showed up at the Lorraine Motel, identified himself a "an advance man" for Martin Luther King and when noting where Dr. King was scheduled to book into, he said, "Oh, no this won't do. Dr. King always likes to have a room on the second floor overlooking the swimming pool". It was from just such a room to which he was switched that Martin Luther King was ambushed and I will talk more about the physical circumstances in a couple of minutes.
Suffice it to say that one of the employees of the motel voiced the opinion at the time that this individual was not a black man at all, but rather a white man wearing black-face makeup. It should be noted that it later came out that among the many stratagems used by U.S. intelligence at the operational level to disrupt both the black-power movement and the antiwar movement was the utilization of white men in black-face, basically to simulate black people to perform acts either of stealth intelligence or acts of provocation which would them discredit blacks because they would be taken as being black people. Whatever the true situation vis-a-vis the advance man, it certainly was not Dr. King's advance man because Dr. King very simply did not use advance men at all.
Eye witnesses to Dr. King's assassination, both people who were on the street and people who were with Dr. King on the balcony of his second floor motel room, and it was on that balcony that Dr. King walked out onto to talk to his chauffeur, who was on the ground, and it was in that position that he was assassinated. Eye witnesses to the assassination believed that the shot was not fired from the second floor of the rooming house that James Earl Ray was staying at, but rather was fired from ground level.
This was described both by people who were sitting near a clump of bushes underneath the window on the second floor that James Earl Ray supposedly used to shoot Martin Luther King, also people standing both on the ground looking up at Dr. King, such as his chauffeur, and people on the balcony with Dr. King testified that he appeared, Dr. King that is, appears to have been lifted physically off of the ground. The shot caught him in the neck and traveled upwards back through the back of Dr. King's head. The bullet was travelling upward rather that across or downward as it would have been had it been fired from a second floor window which James Earl Ray supposedly did.
At James Earl Ray's trial, incidentally, a former FBI ballistics expert named Hubert McConnell (sp) testified that for James Earl Ray to have fired the shot from the position he supposedly fired the shot, the butt of his rifle would have to had stuck 6 inches into the wall. I'll leave it to your discretion as to whether you think James Earl Ray actually did that or whether perhaps he was set up. The prosecution then replied to the testimony of Hubert McConnell by stating that James Earl Ray twisted himself into a contorted position around the bathtub and that was how he was able to fire the shot that he supposedly fired to kill Martin Luther King.
Now the "evidence" implicating James Earl Ray is about as flimsy as anything could possibly be. A rifle was found wrapped in a blanket on the ground floor outside the rooming house where James Earl Ray was staying. It was not actually found where James Earl Ray supposedly fired the shot. The rifle has never been absolutely traced to James Earl Ray. Ray claims that he was being followed around and that this rifle was probably left by Raoul or by Jack Youngblood, the individual he identified as following him around. But, the only "evidence" that has ever been cited or ever been mobilized in order to link James Earl Ray with the crime that he supposedly committed, was the "testimony" of a fellow named Charles Q. Stevens (sp). Charles Q. Stevens was a career drunkard and a doctrinaire racist who was also a tenant at the rooming house that James Earl Ray was staying in where he supposedly killed Martin Luther King. A cab driver who had been called to the rooming house to pick up Charles Q. Stevens testified that Charles Q. Stevens was too drunk to be taken out in his cab and that he was actually passed out and had to be awakened from a couch. This was at the time that he was supposedly id'ing James Earl Ray. For two days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Charles Q. Stevens did not identify James Earl Ray as having been the assassin of Martin Luther King. On the contrary, he issued a number of statements to various people which have been cross-verified that "I'd never testify against the man who killed Martin Luther Koon, even if it were a nigger who had done it".
Basically, he was saying for 48 hours that a black man had killed Martin Luther King and that he would not id him in any case because he hated Martin Luther King too much. However, eventually the FBI began to baby-sit Charles Q. Stevens. They footed some $30,000 in bar tabs for Charles Q. Stevens. This was in 1968 and this was an individual who had a career rap sheet of some 130 some-odd arrests for public drunkenness. The FBI then paid for $30,000 in bar tabs for Charles Q. Stevens and whether it was perhaps a refreshment of memory or perhaps the pliant effects of all that liquor, miraculously, eventually Charles Q. Stevens changed his testimony and said yes, by God, he could identify James Earl Ray as the individual who was running down the hall and had shot Martin Luther King. That is the only witness ever cited to link Ray with the place from which he supposedly slew Dr. King. The only one.
And, again, $30,000 in bar tabs in 1968 was a lot of booze. A dollar was worth a lot more then than it is now and $30,000 in bar tabs is a considerable amount of booze today and this again for an individual with a career rap sheet of some 130-odd arrests for public drunkenness. His, that is to say, Charles Q. Stevens' common-law wife, a woman named Grace Walden or Grace Stevens, about whom I'll have more to say in a little bit, has contradicted the testimony of Charles Q. Stevens. She has stated that she indeed did see an individual wearing a khaki field jacket running down the hall of the rooming hall after she heard the shot but that it was not James Earl Ray that in fact it was a man considerably shorter than James Earl Ray. She saw the man, her common-law husband was passed out on a couch drunk when a cab driver was called to pick him up, went to pick him up, and it was Grace Stevens or Grace Walden who said that no indeed it was not James Earl Ray who was running down the hall of that motel room. We are going to talk about what happened to her in just a minute.
It should be noted that the summer after Martin Luther King was killed, his brother was drowned under suspicious circumstances in the swimming pool of his home. A neighbor recalls hearing someone scream and heard splashing and then silence and that eliminated Dr. King's brother. A couple of years later, his mother was shot and killed as well by some lone nut who went walking into a church and blew away his mother for reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained. Suffice it to say that two of the people closest to Martin Luther King were also dead under strange or downright hostile circumstances within a short time of Dr. King having been assassinated. And bear in mind that King was assassinated at a period in time in which it is a matter of public record that of the U.S. national security establishment or elements thereof, notably the FBI, were actively engaged in a frustrating of the civil rights and black power, and anti-Vietnam war movements as a matter of public record.
We are going to talk about the cover-up and how that was effected in just a couple of minutes, but one of the main things to understand too as we examine what is obviously fallacious history, and history has recorded it that James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King. One of the interesting things about James Earl Ray's situation is the individuals who have represented James Earl Ray over the years. Now, James Earl Ray's first attorney was a fellow named Arthur Haynes (sp), specifically Arthur Haynes, Sr., because there is also an Arthur Haynes, Jr.
Arthur Haynes had been the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama in the early 1960s. He was a former FBI agent and former CIA contract agent who not only was not sympathetic to Dr. Martin Luther King, but who had viewed the American black civil rights movement as a communist conspiracy, in that regard, his views coincided very closely with to the views of, among others, J. Edgar Hoover, America's best-known, though not necessarily best-loved closet queen at the time. Now, again, note that Arthur Haynes, a "former" FBI agent believed that the American black civil rights movement was a communist conspiracy. He also had been involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion as a CIA contract agent. Now, I should note that a contract agent is not an agent who does "contracts', i.e., assassinations in mob parlance. A contract agent is an individual who goes to work for the CIA for a particular purpose as opposed to a career operative. He literally signs a contract to do this, that, or the other thing and he does it. The concept of him eventually severing contacts with the agency is a dubious one. Arthur Haynes, Arthur Haynes, Sr., I should say, was a member of the Alabama Air National Guard, which in the early 1960s, and specifically in 1960 and 1961 was one of the only American air unit still utilizing the B-26 Marauder bomber. That was a World War Two propeller driven medium bomber which was utilized for the Bay of Pigs invasion by the CIA. A number of B-26s were outfitted with large numbers of 50 caliber machine guns so they could by used against ground targets in support of the Bay of Pigs invasion and Arthur Haynes was used by the CIA to train pilots, Cuban exiles, to fly the B-26s which provided the air support for the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Arthur Haynes pursued his avid, or he activated I should say, his deep hatred for the civil rights movement in the 1960s. He was noted for having unleashed John "Bull" Connor, the brutal sheriff of Birmingham, Alabama on civil rights demonstrators in the early 60s. "Bull" Connor unleashed fire hoses and police dogs on civil rights demonstrators and much of the footage that you will see from that time period of civil rights demonstrators being hosed down and being beaten and attacked by police dogs comes from Birmingham, Alabama and the individuals who were meting out the punishment are the deputies of John "Bull" Connor, who was sheriff of Birmingham and he in turn was acting on behalf of Arthur Haynes, Sr., the first attorney representing James Earl Ray. Arthur Haynes also, incidentally, was the defense counsel for four Ku Klux Klansmen who were eventually convicted of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was one of the most notorious incidents of violence in the civil rights struggle in the South in the early 60s. A very powerful bomb went off in a church in Birmingham, Alabama on a Sunday morning, killing four young black girls and injuring a number of other people. The crime outraged the public as a whole. Eventually, four Ku Klux Klansmen were convicted of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, their defense counsel for quite some time was Arthur Haynes, Sr. Later, they were represented by Arthur Haynes, Jr., his son, who turned out to be a chip off the old blockhead, so to speak, and basically continued to activate the sort of racist viewpoints which Arthur Haynes, Sr. had held and put into effect.
After Arthur Haynes, Sr. had represented James Earl Ray, James Earl Ray was represented by a Texas attorney named Percy Foreman, who had previously represented among others, Jack Ruby, for a short period of time. One of a number of evidenciary tributaries which connect the various American political assassinations and attempted assassinations of the early 60s and 1970s.
Now following Percy Foreman's resignation, the next attorney who represented James Earl Ray was a fellow named Jesse B. Stoner, or JB Stoner as he was usually called. JB Stoner was the head of the National States Rights party, which was a doctrinaire racist and fascist political party which had most of its strength in the south and its main plank or the main plank in its political platform was its diehard opposition to the black civil rights. Incidentally, there was, now bear in mind that this guy was representing James Earl Ray, none of these individuals, we can certainly say that Arthur Haynes and JB Stoner would be two of the last individuals who would like to see the truth brought out concerning any possibility of a conspiracy behind the assassination of America's foremost civil rights leader. By the way, we should note that Dr. King's assassination came in a time period in which he was turning much of his attention from the civil rights movement per se to active opposition to the United States' war and involvement in Vietnam. This is worth noting because as we compare some of the strategic circumstances in the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, it is to be noted that the careers of both men were taking very sharp turns and they had both undertaken some very significant and radical departures from their past political activities. In the case of Dr. King, he was moving to anti-Vietnam war activism, activism vis-a-vis American foreign and military policy as opposed to just civil rights and in the case of Malcolm X as we will get to in a short period of time, Malcolm X had dramatically changed his viewpoints as well. He had broken very sharply with the Nation of Islam, the so-called Black Muslims, over a number of things, and we will talk about that. He had notably, radically changed his opinions concerning the viability of black people and white people working together for social justice. One of the main ideological tenets of the Nation of Islam under Elijah Muhammed had been that black people should not work with white people in a political context and indeed the Nation of Islam itself was largely kept from overt political activities, fund-raising being a notable exception.
Dr. King, again, was cut down and among the people representing the guy who supposedly killed him was Arthur Haynes, a man with documented connections to the intelligence community and a well documented hatred of black people and an active self-congratulatory racism, so to speak, Jesse Stoner even more so. Jesse Stoner was the head of an explicitly racist and fascist political party, again, the National States Rights Party.
Now interestingly enough, on November 10th, 1963, twelve days before the assassination of president Kennedy, a Georgia-based representative of the National States Rights Party, a fellow named Joseph Adams Miltier (sp) was taped by an undercover Miami police informant who was basically wearing a "wire". In this conversation, and again Miltier was a representative of the NSRP headed up by James Earl Ray defense counsel JB Stoner. Miltier described a couple of things, actually he described three things of note for us under the circumstances. First of all, he described a plan to assassinate John Kennedy by ambushing him from a high-rise office building using a high-powered rifle. This on November 10th, 1963. He also described plans to do the same thing to Martin Luther King and he linked both of these incipient assassinations, both of which later came to be under circumstances remarkably similar to those described by Joseph Adams Miltier on November 10th. He also linked both crimes with the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. And it was the people convicted of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing who were represented by Arthur Haynes, Sr. and it was Arthur Haynes, Sr. again who was James Earl Ray's first defense counsel. Now obviously evidenciary tributaries running between the assassinations of John Kennedy and Martin Luther King such as those do not automatically prove that both assassinations were the results of the activities of the same forces. There are such things as coincidences and some of the evidenciary tributaries connecting our political assassinations may be just that. They may be coincidental. Yet, at the same time, I think you would have to be an idiot to assume that all of them are coincidental.
The last attorney for James Earl Ray, at least as of this time, is to my way of thinking the most interesting of all and that was an individual named Mark Lane, who has become very well known for his supposed investigations into assassinations. Now Mark Lane has written about the assassinations of John Kennedy and Martin Luther King and he has correctly linked both with the U.S. intelligence operate, however, he has also refused to go as far into either investigation as the public record itself already reveals. Why Mark Lane chooses to pull punches remains a matter of conjecture but it should be noted that Mark Lane has stopped far short in his various books, and Rush to Judgement, by the way, his first book on the John Kennedy assassination, is one of the better early Warren Commission critiques, but Mark Lane himself has stopped far short of the public record, what can be reliably placed on the public record in his writings about the assassinations of both John Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Significantly, Mark Lane became, eventually, an attorney for the Liberty Lobby. The Liberty Lobby is an explicitly anti-semitic {1} and pro-Nazi right wing organization in this country, best known for publishing a newspaper which, disturbingly at least to me, is growing in popularity. That newspaper is called "The Spotlight", and if you haven't come across it yet, you will probably will at some point in the not-too-distant future. "The Spotlight" does publish some good articles, which is disturbing because some of the good reportage in "The Spotlight" is then juxtaposed alongside "No Holocaust" theory and other original, if not terribly substantive, journalistic and historical viewpoints, and I am afraid it may give some of those viewpoints historical credibility as a result.
The founder of the Liberty Lobby is a fellow named Willis Carto, who has been quite explicit about the fact that not only did the Holocaust not happen, but that the United States was on the wrong side in World War II. And it was Mark Lane who was among the defense counsels for the Liberty Lobby. Interestingly enough, at the same time that Mark Lane was representing James Earl Ray, he also was the attorney representing "The People's Temple" of the Reverend Jim Jones.
Now the People's Temple appears to have been a U.S. intelligence operation. There are a number of indications concerning that, as ridiculous as that will seem to some people, I refer interested listeners to Radio Free America programs #6, Radio Free America #7. RFA #8 also talks about some of the connections that I am going to be detailing this evening. I also refer listeners to a miscellaneous archive show dealing with Dan White, Jonestown, and the Mosconi-Milk killings.
[...to be continued...]
---------------------------<< Notes >>--------------------------- {1} Regarding Emory's claim that The Spotlight is anti-semitic: it seems to me that people often confuse being critical of Israel with being anti-semitic. As a regular reader of The Spotlight, I do not recall ever reading anti-semitic articles. This also goes for Emory's claim that The Spotlight is pro-Nazi: I personally find this particular claim to be questionable.
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
"Justice" = "Just us" = "History is written by the assassins."