- New evidence has surfaced in the 1968 Martin Luther King
Jr. murder case, supplied by an insider who claims to have been part of
a "hit team" that had come out of the "Missouri Mafia"
headquartered in the town of Caruthersville, a small town in the boot heel
section of that state.
-
- In a yet-to-be-published book, former Missouri County
Deputy Jim Green reveals his assigned role in the conspiracy, the name
of the actual triggerman, and the long-suspected involvement of J. Edgar
Hoover and the FBI. Green also believes that he possesses the actual murder
weapon, which he personally secreted away only hours after the murder.
-
- "Jim Green is telling the truth," says Lyndon
Barsten, an astute researcher of the case over the past decade. "I
have no doubt whatsoever. The pieces he has supplied fit perfectly and
could not have come from someone who was not there." Indeed they do
fit, and it is all backed up by FBI documentation derived by Barsten through
numerous FOIA requests. ___
-
- On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned
down on the second floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn.,
by a single shot from a high-powered rifle. Several witnesses said the
shot came from the bushes on a slope from across the street. The FBI concluded
that it came from the rear bathroom window of a cheap hotel, also across
the street and higher up the hill.
-
- Two weeks later the name of James Earl Ray, a fugitive
escapee from the Missouri State Penitentiary, was announced to the world
as the man who killed King, had escaped to Canada and was currently in
hiding somewhere across the border. After Ray was identified as the killer,
and long before he was captured, the FBI spent little or no time pursuing
any other leads. Two months later the fugitive was caught changing planes
at Heathrow Airport in London after having left Canada and spending ten
days with persons unknown in Portugal. He was attempting to board a plane
to Brussels.
-
- On March 10, 1969, James Earl Ray, with his attorney
Percy Foreman, pled guilty to the murder before the court of Judge Preston
Battle. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison. He recanted almost immediately
and filed a motion for a trial only three days later. But before the month
was out, Judge Battle was found dead in his chambers, slumped over his
desk. Beneath his head were the papers of the handwritten motion from James
Earl Ray. The case was closed, and Ray began his sentence in the Tennessee
State Penitentiary.
-
- The "Official" Story
-
- The scenario released by Memphis police and the FBI and
later used by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) was that
in late March of 1968, James Earl Ray had purchased a Remington 30.06 rifle
from the Aeromarine Supply Store in Birmingham and had traveled with it
to Memphis in a white Mustang. Here he checked into Bessie Brewer's boarding
house in the 400 block of South Main Street on the afternoon of April 4th.
Directly behind it was the Lorraine Motel on Mulberry Street.
-
- At 6:00 p.m. Martin L. King stepped out of room 306 and
was joined by a group of followers with whom he had been in a meeting all
afternoon. He was gunned down only a minute later by a single shot from
the rear bathroom window across the street.
-
- Not one witness saw the actual firing of the shot or
claimed it had come from the window. Most believed it had come from the
bushes on the slope, fifty feet closer.
-
- Still according to the official story, Ray allegedly
ran out of the bathroom and down the hall to his room. Here he stuffed
the rifle back into its box and included it with a bundle containing his
clothes, binoculars, ammunition, a beer can with his fingerprints; and
perhaps the most incriminating of all, a portable radio with his inmate
number from the Missouri State Penitentiary engraved in the back side.
-
- He ran down the stairs and out onto the street where
he then dumped the bundle in the doorway of Canipe's Amusement Company
next door to the rooming house. He then zoomed away in the soon-to-be-infamous
white Mustang. He stayed a few days in Atlanta before moving on to Canada.
-
- James Earl's Version
-
- In 1987, after being imprisoned for 19 years, Ray told
his side of the story in Tennessee Waltz, a book that went out of print
and was later published under the title of Who Killed Martin Luther King?
(The biggest loss here was original publisher Tupper Saussy's brilliant
epilogue, "The Politics of Witchcraft," which exposed certain
secrets that the establishment publishers preferred not to discuss. Under
the new title the epilogue was eliminated.) However, he appeared be avoiding
"the whole truth and nothing but the truth" in certain areas,
apparently out of fear of self-incrimination - not necessarily for the
murder but for some lesser crimes. It also appears that James became aware
too late that he had indeed been unwittingly involved in the conspiracy
to assassinate Martin Luther King.
-
- Ray tells of his prison escape via a bread truck in April
of 1967. After laying low in East St. Louis for a couple of months, he
made it to Chicago where he looked up some old contacts that enabled him
to purchase an old Chrysler for $100. From there he went to Detroit and
crossed the border into Canada. In July, he met a man he knew only as "Raoul,"
who quickly began to give James money in exchange for his help with importing
some kind of contraband. James said he never knew if this was guns, drugs,
or what, as he never actually participated in anything more than trial
runs. Raoul always seemed to remain in the "planning" stages
of a smuggling operation.
-
- Ray had a contact phone number in the Area Code of "504,"
where he had phoned his contact, "Raoul," many times over the
months prior to the murder. However, when he tried to dial this New Orleans
number on the day after the assassination, it was already disconnected.
-
- Through Raoul, James was kept supplied with money to
go to Mexico to wait for instructions and to Los Angeles to see a plastic
surgeon for a "nose job," effectuating a change in his appearance.
He never worked at a job in any of this time frame prior to the assassination
and was obviously under the financial control of Raoul. James was traveling
in a 1966 pale yellow Mustang (not white as were the others), purchased
with $2,000 supplied by Raoul.
-
- James always claimed he had acquired the names of his
aliases at random from a Toronto phone book. He bought the gun in Birmingham
under the name of "Harvey Lowmeyer," checked into the Memphis
flophouse as "John Willard," acquired an Alabama driver's license
as "Eric S. Galt," and traveled to Europe on a passport as Ramon
George Sneyd. However, all four, for which he [or someone] had created
I.D., looked very much like Ray. The odds of these being a random choice
were just short of impossible. It also is likely that the Los Angeles plastic
surgery rounding out his previously pointed nose was designed to make him
look more like these men, none of whom knew they were being impersonated.
-
- In February of 1968, Raoul sent travel funds to James
in Los Angeles and ordered him back to New Orleans. From there the two
drove together to Atlanta. In late March, James says that Raoul was making
plans for them to drive to Miami but these plans abruptly changed around
March 29th. They were now going to Memphis.
-
- It was on or about this date that MLK had cancelled a
planned speaking engagement in Miami in order to fly to Memphis and tend
to the problems with the garbage strike. It now seems that Raoul had this
information before anyone else.
-
- En route they spent the first night in Birmingham. After
checking into a motel, Raoul gave James a wad of money and sent him to
the Aeromarine Supply Store to purchase a "deer rifle for your brother-in-law."
Having little knowledge of weaponry, James bought what he thought was appropriate
and returned with a .243 caliber Winchester. Raoul immediately decided
he didn't like it and sent James back to the store the next morning to
exchange it for another with a "larger bore."
-
- The salesman told James, "Tell your brother-in-law
that this gun will bring down any deer in Alabama!" But he did agree
to exchange it for the higher priced Remington 30.06.
-
- After his incarceration, James was always certain that
real purpose of this instructed return to the gun store was simply another
part of the "set-up" to make sure that the salesman would not
forget him.
-
- In Memphis on April 4th, the afternoon of the murder,
Raoul had suggested that James go to a movie, but James declined. After
several tries at getting rid of James for awhile, Raoul finally sent him
on an errand only minutes before King was shot. James said that he was
going to get the worn tires changed on the Mustang but that the man at
the tire store was too busy and could not get to it that day. When James
returned to the flophouse/Lorraine Motel location, it was surrounded by
police cars with flashing lights, and he decided it would be prudent to
leave the area, as it certainly was not a place for an escaped con to hanging
around.
-
- Ray was very vague about this time frame, and it may
be assumed, again, that he did not want to admit to having backed out of
a planned armed robbery, which appears below. To do so might have led to
too many questions about his foreknowledge of the murder about to take
place and exposed his (assumed) role - that of getaway driver. We must
remember that while in prison, Ray was extremely vulnerable.
-
- It was while he was driving south on U.S. Highway 61
into Mississippi that James heard the news on the radio that Martin Luther
King had been shot. He then turned east and headed back to Atlanta. James
was always vague about the details of his return trip to Canada and the
contacts he made there prior to his flight to Europe - often appearing
to be protecting others.
-
- In Tennessee Waltz, Ray told a chilling story of harassment
and torture, describing his treatment in the Shelby County Jail, which
sounded as if he were relating experiences from the Soviet Union rather
than America. He was kept under floodlights 24 hours a day for eight solid
months prior to his guilty plea, never knowing if it was day or night outside.
His cell was "bugged," and two deputies were monitoring and recording
every conversation - even those purported sacrosanct exchanges between
client and attorney.
-
- Tired and weakened by the strain, Ray was finally coerced
into a guilty plea by his attorney, to whom he referred for the rest of
his life as "Percy Foreflusher."
-
- New Pieces To The Puzzle
-
- Over the years Jim Green's Federal Intelligence connections
have become legendary in his hometown of Caruthersville, Missouri. "He's
untouchable," or "He can't be arrested, the feds just walk him
out of jail, everybody knows that." But now one must assume that the
Untouchable is fast becoming anathema to his former handlers. Jim has had
an attack of conscience and is talking!
-
- "I hope to change a lie in history to the truth
about that day in Memphis," says Green, 54, a reformed "bad boy"
who spent the first half of his life as a teenage runaway, moonshine runner,
and car thief. The last half was spent in law enforcement, raising children,
teaching school, and coaching football - along with occasional undercover
work. His only source of income today is a social security disability check.
Since coming forward with his story, he has refused all offers of any work
involving government covert action, for fear of being "set up"
and/or killed.
-
- On December 3, 1998, he spent six hours with MLK's son
Dexter King, Rev. James Lawson, and William Pepper (Ray's attorney and
author of Orders to Kill, a semi-accurate compilation of facts and conjecture
describing the government's involvement in the King assassination).
-
- "At this meeting, I cleared my soul telling Dexter
of my involvement on the day of his father's death," says Green. "I
knew there would be many more questions to come, and that's when I decided
to put my story in writing."
-
- He calls his book, Blood and Dishonor on a Badge of Honor,
and when he put it up on the internet two years ago, it caught the attention
of Lyndon Barsten on Minneapolis. Barsten decided to check Green's story
against the known facts as well as the suppressed information uncovered
by him and others over the years. He was astounded. Everything fit. Green
knew details that could only have been known by someone who was there,
and the FBI documentation acquired by Barsten substantiated his story.
Some of these papers show that the FBI had been constantly tracking James
Earl Ray and had knowledge of his whereabouts during most of the year he
was an escaped convict. Both Green and Barston believe that the FBI was
instrumental in Ray's "escape" from the Missouri State Penitentiary
in April of 1967 for the sole purpose of setting him up as a "patsy"
when the time came.
-
- "Why else would these reports be in the record?"
says Green, "And why would they have any files on an escaped con from
a state prison?" Indeed. And something even more suspicious, why did
the FBI not contact the Missouri authorities and have Ray picked up?
-
- He was under their thumb for some ten months. Later investigation
showed that the fingerprints sent out by JeffCity for "escaped prisoner
James Earl Ray" were not really his, ensuring his release if he happened
to be captured as an escaped felon.
-
- CIA/Peace Corps
-
- Jim Green was student at Caruthersville High when he
decided that the Peace Corps would be an exciting way to see the world.
At the tender age of 16, he had no way of knowing that this was a major
feeding ground of the Central Intelligence Agency (he assumes that his
school counselor who helped him fill out the forms did not either), but
this was where the initial contact was made.
-
- He was contacted by FBI personnel and given a thorough
background check. Then a series of interesting and mysterious events began
after he was accepted and was under the government's control. In a short
time this led to the Missouri State Pen where he knew James Earl Ray in
1966.
-
- "I have a good memory, but there are two weeks from
this time at Jeff City that I can only remember a few hours of," Jim
reflects.
-
- Lyndon Barsten says, "The contacts and methods utilized
in the murder of Dr. King bear the signature of the CIA, including the
probable use of MK-Ultra mind control techniques. Parallel psychiatric
irregularities at the Missouri prison system are described by James Earl
Ray and Jim Green, including the shocking drugging of inmates which could
render the indication of hypnosis easier or otherwise enhance its usefulness.
It seems highly likely that Jim was subjected to psychological assessment
and manipulation, the results of whichdirected back to Federal Intelligence
Agencies."
-
- A further series of events led to Jim's early release
(effectuated by "Paul," the FBI Agent who became his handler)
and a reunion back in Caruthersville with Butch Collier, his former partner
from the moonshine running days. For the next year and a half, Jim and
Butch and others ran moonshine and delivered hot cars from St. Louis to
New Orleans. Both operations were under the direction of Paul, who would
later show his credentials to Jim and identify himself as a FBI Agent.
At first Green was concerned about this ("I had never known the feds
to be crooked!"), but he was assured by others whom he trusted that
Paul had the power to isolate them from any investigation."Paul's
boss is at the top," he was told. Jim took this implication to mean
none other than J. Edgar Hoover.
-
- This complicated, sometimes hard-to-follow sequence of
activities in Green's life is made plainer (especially to those unfamiliar
with the facts of the MLK murder case) by the frequent interjection of
Lyndon Barsten's clarification of facts. But at this point, Green and his
older (by six years) friend, Butch Collier, resumed their lives of crime.
Not only would they hot wire and snatch individual autos from parking lots
and drive them to Memphis, but they were also paid $5,000 on occasion to
drive an 18-wheeler load of several cars from St.Louis to New Orleans for
delivery to the Carlos Marcello mob. Green says that this was done with
full knowledge and protection of the FBI.
-
- ("At this time of my life, the only thing that made
me nervous was Paul. His being an agent of the FBI didn't fit into my little
world at the time. Also, I didn't like it because it seemed like Paul was
running the show and he was an outsider! I guess, at that young age, I
just did what I was told. This must be why eighteen-year-olds are chosen
to fight wars. Most men with experience will ask `Why are we here,' and
most teenagers will just follow orders.")
-
- April 4, 1968
-
- Jim Green's story fills in more blanks with logical answers
to the previously unanswered questions. His assignment, for which he was
to be paid $10,000, was to kill James Earl Ray. "On the night of April
3rd," Green says, "Paul met us in our room. He had a small package
which he laid on the bed, he told us "there's $5,000 in that package
for you and five more when the job is done, once James Earl Ray is killed
on the fourth."
-
- Indicative of the compartmentalization of each participant
in this textbook CIA assassination, Green says that he was not even aware
of the total operation of which he had been a part until he was back home
in Caruthersville watching the Ten O'clock News with his father. He would
only be following orders and believes that he was chosen for this segment
because he had spent time at JeffCity with Ray and knew what he looked
like.
-
- Jim and his partner, Butch Collier, stalked Ray in the
early afternoon after they found him at Jim's Cafe - exactly where they
had been told they would find him. Later Jim climbed to his assigned rooftop
position of a dilapidated three story office building in the next block
south of Bessie Brewer's rooming house on Main Street at around 3:30 p.m.,
armed with a .357 caliber rifle. His instructions were to shoot James Earl
Ray "after five o'clock" and only in the event that John Talley,
a Memphis Police Detective, failed.
-
- The planners did not want to face another Oswald/Tippet-type
snafu as in Dallas.
-
- James Earl Ray was in the rooming house, and Green observed
him come and go three or four times during the next two hours. On one of
these occasions, Ray came outside and stood by the Mustang for several
minutes before going back upstairs.
-
- This coincides with Ray's story that Raoul kept attempting
to get James away from the area. It also telegraphs again that Ray was
purposefully not telling the whole story, apparently being careful not
to jeopardize his position of "innocent and framed" by admitting
planned criminal activity. Green's next segment shows us the real plan
already in motion to set up Ray. The man that Green knew as Paul, the FBI
Special Agent, was the same person Ray knew as Raoul, who had kept him
on a leash for eight months - from Montreal to Memphis.
-
- When Ray left the flophouse the final time, at a few
minutes before six (King would be shot at 6:01), Green knew the instructions
from Paul/Raoul had been for Ray to first rob Jim's Grill at gunpoint and
hurry south on Main Street to the Arcade Restaurant. The phony ploy was
that they were getting ready to travel and would need some quick cash.
However, James must have become suspicious. When he came out on the street,
he did not commit the armed robbery nor continue walking down the sidewalk
as instructed but climbed into the Mustang (James' car was not white, as
reported by police and the news media, but a pale yellow) and calmly drove
north away from the scene. He never returned. By this time Butch Collier
was stationed in the bushes in back of the boarding house and directly
across the street from the Lorraine Motel.
-
- It was a fortuitous intuition on the part of Ray. Lingering
in the next block was Memphis Police Detective John Talley, whose assignment
was to kill Ray. He was carrying the standard police issue .357 Magnum
revolver. Jim Green was on the roof of the building across the street and
armed with the.357 rifle in the event Talley missed or was killed by Ray.
Green was the backup in case anything went wrong. The caliber would match.
-
- Remember Dallas in 1963 Re.Oswald and Officer Tippett.
Again this is straight from the textbook of "Assassinations 101."
After the patsy is dead, anything can be leaked to the press to demonize
him, as it was in both these cases, even while each was still alive.
-
- But when Ray was "spooked" and drove away in
the pale yellow Mustang, it threw a monkey wrench into the conspirator's
plans.
-
- However, there was a second Mustang that still remained
parked on Main Street. This one was white and belonged to Joe R. Tipton
but was brought to Memphis by Jim Green and Butch Collier. They had also
brought several rifles, which were still in the trunk. Green's instructions
were to stay on the rooftop until Collier arrived in the parking area at
the rear to pick him up. At 6:01 p.m., he heard the shot, and only moments
later saw Paul and Butch emerge one behind the other from the stairway
of the flophouse onto the street. He saw Paul dump the bundle of evidence
into the doorway of Canipe's Amusement Company, while Butch was jumping
into the driver's seat of the white Mustang, and watched as they sped north
on Main Street. Paul/Raoul and the Memphis Police utilized a third Mustang,
also white, as a diversion.
-
- Suddenly the FBI's folly of the utter stupidity of the
alleged assassin (Ray) dumping his own incriminating evidence on the street
begins to take shape. Paul intended to drop it in the back seat of the
pale yellow Mustang - Ray's - thinking that James Earl had followed instructions
and was down the street getting killed. Then the FBI would have had its
open and shut case. (Ray is dead and here is the "murder" weapon
found in his car.) But when Paul/Raoul is suddenly confronted with the
current situation of no Ray car available, he frustratingly drops the bundle
in the first handy place, and he and Butch hightail it up the street in
the white Mustang. Jim Green watched all this unfold from his secluded
rooftop position.
-
- Butch Collier had just killed Martin Luther King with
one shot from the bushes on the slope across the street from the Lorraine
Motel. He then ran up the rear stairs to the second floor and back down
the front stairs to Main Street. By this time, Paul had run down the hall
from the upstairs bathroom (where he had watched the shooting) carrying
the "plant" rifle purchased in Birmingham by Ray in hand. (Paul
was seen by other tenants who later said this person was not Ray.) He then
stuffed it in the bag with the other "evidence" and was down
the front stairwell only seconds behind Collier.
-
- Jim Green watched as Butch drove two blocks up the street
before pausing to drop off Paul at a parked Memphis Police Department squad
car. A couple of minutes later, Butch was tooting the horn of the Mustang
in the parking lot behind Jim's three-story perch. Jim came down to join
his confederate, stashed his rifle in the trunk with the others, and the
two men headed for the Mississippi River Bridge toward Arkansas.
-
- Jim tells of hauling several guns to Memphis in the trunk
of the Mustang on April 2nd, following the instructions of Paul. Butch
had removed the one of his choice for the King murder earlier the next
day, but the other weapons were still in the trunk. In Collier's haste
to escape the murder scene, he had not bothered to open the trunk but had
quickly thrown the murder weapon onto the floor behind the front seat as
he and Paul jumped into the Mustang.
-
- When Collier and Green crossed the river into Arkansas,
they took an immediate turn onto the frontage road and headed back down
to the riverside. They hurriedly opened the trunk and dumped the cache
of weapons into the water. Headed up U. S. 61 and halfway home an hour
later, Jim peered into the back seat and noticed the rifle on the floor.
When he called his partner's attention to it, Butch realized that they
had failed to dump the most important evidence of all.
-
- "Well !@#$," said Collier, we can't drop it
here on the side of the highway. What do we do with it?'
-
- Jim pondered a moment and said, "Never mind. I know
a friend who will take care of it with no questions asked."
-
- Green delivered the rifle the next morning to his trusted
but unnamed friend in Caruthersville, who kept it for 29 years. When he
decided to write his book, Green retrieved it and has had it stashed in
a safe place in another state ever since. The rifle has now been tested
for ballistics and the results are pending.
-
- While James Earl Ray was running from the FBI in April,
May, and June, he had no way of knowing that he was also being pursued
by Jim Green and Butch Collier as well - although he may have suspected
it. On April 6th, the shooters were called together for a meeting at the
Climax Bar in Caruthersville with Paul some others. Jim Green describes
the situation:
-
- We were told we had "some serious problems"
to deal with. "First you have to find Ray and kill him, in order that
nothing can lead back to the government or us," Paul said. "We're
all in this together, and if one of us goes down, we all go down."
He told us that his orders came from the top. "Roachie will kill us
before he or his boss will get involved." Paul seemed more serious
than ever.
-
- Later, I figured out who Roachie was: Cartha Deloach,
the number three man [in the FBI] behind Hoover and Tolson. . . Butch and
I told them what we did with the rifles but forgot to mention the 30.06
that I have to this day. . . Everybody in that room that day is dead except
for Paul and me.
-
- (In those days Green and Collier always used as their
"life insurance policy" the bluff that they had the rifle and
various tapes and records that would go public if anything happened to
them. It wasn't true, but it worked. Collier died about ten years ago of
cancer.)
-
- For the next few weeks Green and Collier went to several
places, toting unregistered Rossi .38 pistols made in Brazil, in their
quest to kill Ray. Paul always seemed to have a line on Ray's whereabouts,
and the two hunters came closest to their prey in Toronto. Paul had sent
them to a hotel where they learned that James Earl had checked out only
two hours earlier. They searched several other places for two other aliases
under which Paul knew Ray to be traveling and hiding, but they could not
locate him. Green says that it was obvious to Butch and him at the time
that Paul had ongoing intelligence being fed to him by either the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police or the Toronto City Police.
-
- "Ramon George Sneyd" soon acquired his passport
and made his way to Europe, never knowing how close he came to being murdered
on the run - ironically by the same faction that had murdered Martin Luther
King and pinned the crime on Ray.
-
- Green subsequently served a short time in jail for some
previous infractions but had his very early release aided by Paul. Two
years later, Green met with Missouri Attorney General John Danforth and
about a half dozen others, including Paul, at a Sikeston, Missouri motel.
It was a secret investigation in an attempt to oust the county sheriff
and expose his corruption - which eventually succeeded. But Green's performance,
with the correct double-talk, exposed nothing, and for this he was later
rewarded with a deputy's job in the new administration. He later moved
on to federal undercover work in Memphis.
-
- During one seven-month period in the mid-70s, the Memphis
group got 265 convictions and failed only once when a mistrial was declared.
Green says, "I know first-hand that the police will testify in whatever
way they have to in order to get a conviction or further their careers."
-
- For now exposing the corruption of the courts and the
FBI, Jim Green is certain that he will be called a liar. "But the
same people," he is quick to point out, "who will attempt to
discredit me today will have to be the same ones who in the 1970s said
that I was the most honest, reliable, and trustworthy witness. If I am
a liar, then all the cases I testified at should be appealed and thrown
out and the records set straight."
-
- Conclusion
-
- As mentioned, Jim Green's revelations fit too many pieces
(confirmed with the FBI's own documents) to have been contrived from his
imagination. He had told it to one official long before James Earl Ray
told his story in Tennessee Waltz, which Green did not read until 1998,
after he had begun his own book.
-
- Jim Green had attempted to "clear his soul"
as far back as 1973, when he told journalist Kay Black of the Memphis Press
Scimiter the same story printed here with only slightly fewer details.
It was never published but frightened Ms. Black enough for her to report
it to law enforcement authorities. This led to Green's appearance in front
of the HSCA in 1976. There his testimony was obliterated from the record
and never made public. So much for government inquiries.
-
- One of James Earl Ray's brothers has now come forward
with information corroborating the FBI's cooperation in James' escape as
well as the Chicago mob's participation in the assassination, under the
direction of Sam Giancano. John Ray admits that it was he who picked up
his brother after his 1967 "escape" in the bread truck and drove
him to a safe house in East St. Louis.
-
- Lyndon Barston's detailed research shows powerful evidence
implicating the FBI with complicity in a CIA plot. In late 1964, the FBI
had tried to get Dr. King to commit suicide prior to his departing to Europe
to claim his Nobel Peace Prize. This was accomplished by sending an alleged
surveillance tape of Dr. King in an extra-marital sexual relation to the
SCLC with a letter warning that all would become public if Dr. King didn't
kill himself prior to his collecting his Nobel Prize.
-
- 2] Lab work relating to the murder of Dr. King at FBI
Headquarters was dreadfully inadequate. The Remington 30.06 rifle purchased
by Ray in Birmingham and deposited at the scene of the crime was not even
swabbed to see if it had been fired! Today it still remains as the "official"
murder weapon of the MURKIN case. Yet, for some reason, this test was run
on even the rifle James Earl Ray had returned to Aeromarine Supply in Birmingham
in exchange for the Remington prior to the murder!
-
- 3] Atlanta FBI informant, J. C. Hardin, is documented
in the MURKIN file as contacting James Earl Ray in Los Angeles just prior
to Ray's packing up and heading east to Atlanta and Memphis.
-
- 4] On the 29th of March, the FBI, through its "friendly"
press contacts, placed Dr. King in the open and insecure Lorraine Motel
by criticizing him in the press for patronizing "white owned Hotels."
-
- 5] Journalist Louis Lomax who later died in a mysterious
car crash, was investigating Dr. King's death when visited by two FBI men
who instructed him to abruptly end the series of fruitful articles he was
producing for the N. A. N. A. Louis Lomax, described as being "no
good" in an FBI memo (HQ 44-38861-3196); was a highly respected journalist.
It was Lomax who uncovered the deception of the false fingerprints sent
out by JeffCity for escaped prisoner James Earl Ray. This strongly suggests
the duplicity of both state and federal agencies in the ploy.
-
- The Intelligence Community's relationship with the mob
and union racketeers, as described by Jim Green, is highly documented in
the post-World War II era. Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana often described
the CIA and his organization as "two sides of the same coin."
-
- Blood and Dishonor on a Badge of Honor will be published
later this year. Limited copies of Tennessee Waltz by James Earl Ray are
still available from Pastoral Business, POB 3252, Santa Monica, Calif.
90408. ------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- THE ON-GOING COVER-UP
-
- March 24, 1998: CBS News' 48 HOURS broadcasts "Orders
To Kill," a scathing attack on Dr. William F. Pepper, for eighteen
years the attorney of James Earl Ray. In 1995, Pepper had released his
book by that name, and it is his assertion that his client, James Earl
Ray, was a patsy, manipulated to cover-up the real events surrounding Dr.
King's death. A hit team, Pepper claims, murdered Dr. King at the request
of the Intelligence Agencies of the Federal government. On camera, in his
Memphis hotel room only days before, Dr. Pepper is notified of the arrest
of his new witness.
-
- (The witness, James Cooper Green, was actually a participant
on that bloody day thirty years before. As with most domestic Intelligence
operations Jim's job, to murder James Earl Ray after 5:00 p.m. on April
4th, was to be performed on a "need to know" basis. Jim Green
was not to be privy to the day's full operations, only his part. He would
not learn that Dr. King was killed until he watched the news at ten o'
clock that night.)
-
- Jim Green never talks to the 48 HOURS team. After arriving
in Memphis in March of 1998 for the specific purpose of going on camera,
he is arrested under suspicious circumstances by the DEA and held for ten
days on flimsy charges that would later be dropped, long after the CBS
team has left town. The DEA report of Jim's arrest describes Task Force
surveillance of a room near his in the Memphis Holiday Inn Express. A "possible
methamphetamine lab" is operating out of room 165. Seemingly without
reason, the DEA runs a check on the Florida plates of the truck owned by
the guests in room 163, James and Linda Green. The investigation report
states "registration on the Florida plate came back James (redacted)
Green". As with nearly all of the Federal Government's involvement
in this case, a seemingly routine document is a lie. The Green's truck
was registered to Linda Green, Jim's wife, and was in her name only. The
only way the feds could have known Jim was in that car would be if he were
under surveillance for another reason.
-
- The same incestuous Memphis power structure that had
prevented James Earl Ray from getting a real trial also makes certain Jim
Green remains in a cell until the 48 HOURS team leaves town. A routine
$5,000 bond set by Judge Joe Brown would be increased tenfold within hours
after the arrest.
-
- Within the 48 HOURS presentation, Dan Rather reports
that on the fourth of April in 1968 Jim Green was "in Federal prison."
However, that too is a lie. His own records show that he was not sentenced
until three months later, and his official record was expunged in 1988.
Therefore, any existing records of Jim's imprisonment in April '68 are
a recent fabrication and of dubious origin.
-
- There was far more reason to believe that the real purpose
for the arrest was that the Federal Agents were looking for physical evidence
Jim had preserved since April 4, 1968. They suspected he would be bringing
some of it to Memphis for the filming of the TV show. The most important
and damning evidence Jim has protected is one of two 30:06 rifles left
in one of the duplicate Ray Mustangs, a rifle that has a high likelihood
of being linked through ballistics to the slug that took Martin Luther
King's life. However, the instigators of this surreptitious kidnapping,
while succeeding in preventing Jim's story from being aired, came up empty
in a search for evidence. He did not bring the rifle with him.
-
- For nearly a quarter of a century Jim Green has remained
silent about his participation in government assassination and abuse. His
only breaking of this code was his 1977 testimony before the House Select
Committee on Assassinations. When that testimony is made public in 2029,
it will reveal that Black Congressman Louis Stokes of Ohio badgered Jim
into silence at those hearings.
-
- Even Linda Green, Jim's wife, was protected from the
truth until the their children were grown. In 1998, to provide documentation
of what he was to reveal, Jim handed Linda a copy of James Earl Ray's autobiography.
In Tennessee Waltz (pg. 73-74) Ray weaves a vividly detailed description
of two strangers trailing him in Memphis hours before the King murder.
Jim pointed to the description of a thirty-ish man in a navy peacoat and
questioned, "Who's that, Linda?"
-
- "Butch Collier", was Linda's response. There
was no doubt from Ray's vivid recollections that she recognized one of
the men trailing James Earl Ray. For the past quarter century she had been
married to the other.
-
- Later, documents within the FBI's own investigative file
would validate what Jim was claiming: that forces within the Federal Government
directed the murder of Dr. King through racketeering union-associated-
operatives who, in turn, hired locals in Jim's home town of Caruthersville,
Missouri.
-
- Jim's amazing memory for details would prove invaluable.
Phone call conversations written up in the FBI's own MURKIN (FBI acronym
for Murder of King case) investigation files suddenly begin to make sense.
Jim's description of two fake James Earl Ray Ford Mustangs finds credibility
in the FBI's own documents. In addition, the long-held suspicion that Ray
was allowed to escape from prison in 1967 gains validity when FOIA requests
by researcher Lyndon Barsten show that the FBI was tracking Ray for eleven
months prior to the King assassination in Memphis.
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- http://www.4bypass.com/archives/may-01.htm
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