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By Michael D. Roberts |
For one thing, the allegation that there was a major conspiracy to permanently silence King still hung heavily over any of his birthday celebrations. To be sure King had many enemies and many were to be found in the hallowed halls of government. Southern white racists hated his guts and put up bounties on his head. Elements within the United States Administrations also wanted King silenced because he was "riling up them thar niggers, something bad." They wanted King to remain "in his place" and not get "too uppity."
So is there some validity in the many conspiracy theories; and what role did the FBI play, if any, in the scheme of things?
To begin with, J. Edgar Hoover, the quintessential, but quite the ugliest of racist drag queens, hated King and was obsessed with his activities. Under his direction the FBI considered King a major target for harassment, sabotage, and surveillance. In fact, very few individuals were put under so much surveillance, as was King. Most of the spying and subterfuge against King began with the FBI's COINTELPRO Counterintelligence Program. And Hoover himself was to describe King, according to congressional records, as "the most dangerous man in America, and a moral degenerate." The FBI put out enormous resources to gather information about King and to monitor his movement and activities.
Hoover and the FBI were so obsessed with King's civil rights activities that they tried to entrap King, and tape his alleged sexual activities. These tapes were later to be used to blackmail King into committing suicide. When King was finally assassinated the FBI assigned a man named Cartha Deloach to head the investigation. Deloach was the man in charge of all the surveillance against King and it was he who concluded that James Earl Ray, the alleged assassin, acted alone and was crazy.
But evidence in the way that James Earl Ray was handled and some real legal skullduggery, and in the end Ray's own insistence that he did not kill King, only adds to the controversy.
Ray's flight from the United States to Canada is still a mystery. How was a small-time hood like Ray, with not too much by way of education and organizational skills, let alone access to quality forgeries, able to acquire false passports, money and identities, and information about streets in Canada? How, with all the FBI's technology and crime fighting methods was Ray able to flee from Canada and end up in England? Where did he get so much money from?
Further, when Ray was finally extradited from England after fleeing through Canada on a number of faked passports, he was confined for eight months in a specially designed cell that was lit for 24-hours a day. Guards were present around the clock, and a closed circuit TV camera monitored his very move. The cell was also equipped with microphones and other surveillance instruments. Under these conditions, extreme and extraordinary to say the least, Ray's first attorney, Art Hanes consistently pressured him to plead guilty. But Ray insisted on trial claiming that he was the patsy in the case.
For one thing Ray was no expert marksman and the rifle he used only fired one shot at a time. Put that against the John F. Kennedy assassination where the shooter, a former marine, had a whole clip of bullets and he was a trained marksman - and something begins to smell fishy here. There were other fingerprints on the rifle besides Ray's that were never identified by the FBI. And there are many questions surrounding just how Ray knew the right time and right place to be at to shoot King. Moreover, Ray was just a small-time punk who was involved in petty theft and was not linked to any hate groups.
Ray's brother, Jerry, advised him to dump Hanes and pin his hopes on Attorney Percy Foreman of Texas. Foreman took the case but not before entering into a contract with author William Bradford Huie, who was writing a book on the King assassination, and wanted information from Ray. Initially, Foreman agreed to a trial, but after visiting Art Hanes, Ray's former attorney, Foreman pressured Ray to plead guilty. On March 10, 1969 Ray pled guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. He died in 1998 of liver disease, still begging for a retrial and proclaiming his innocence to the bitter end.
But let us go back to the FBI and its involvement in the King case. Why did the FBI pick up a bill of $30,000 for Charles Stephens who initially spoke about the King assassin being a Black man, and then changed his story to finger James Earl Ray? How come the Memphis city official who ordered the relocation of two Black firemen, and a Black police officer, Edward Redditt, on the day of the King assassination, was an ex-FBI agent, and a former close associate of J.Edgar Hoover?
And why was Frank Holloman, the Memphis Public Safety Director, a retired 25-year veteran of the FBI, who headed the FBI's Memphis Field Office from 1959 to 1964, having military guests on the afternoon of April 4, 1968? Holloman also served as Hoover's appointments secretary and was in charge of Hoover's personnel office.
All these facts are too compact for mere coincidence and have led many to suspect that the FBI had a hand in King's assassination. In fact even the House Select Committee on Assassinations said that there was a 95 % probability that King was killed by a conspiracy. The report did not say who or what was involved in the conspiracy. But the Committee's actions speak volumes: in its Final Report in 1979, Committee chairman Louis Stokes and Chief Consul Robert Blakey, ordered that all the Committee's backup records, documents, unpublished transcripts, and investigative data be locked up for 50 years. This extraordinary ruling could achieve only one thing and satisfy only one purpose make sure that all witnesses; assassins and conspirators are all dead and forgotten by the time that the records are unsealed and available to the public.
Of course by that time all would be forgotten and King would only just be a memory, to be remembered every January 15.
Was Ray the triggerman? I don't know. Was the FBI involved? The evidence and the Committee on Assassinations actions, not to mention Hoover's hate and obsession, certainly leaves one with the feeling that there was a cover up.
It would not be the first time and certainly not the last.