April 4, 1967, was a milestone in the public life
of Martin Luther King. Heretofore, he had been
known primarily as a civil rights activist, but today
he was making a departure from his previous ideological
doctrine. Today in New York’s historical
Riverside Church he was going to come out publicly
against the Vietnam War. King had made public
utterances against the conflict before, taking care not
to alienate his supporters in the white community,
but today the war and its moral ramifications would
be the main focus of his address (hence its title
“Beyond Vietnam”) before over 3,000 parishioners
in one of the foremost black churches in the United
States.
For Dr. King, it was part of a logical progression.
The conflict in a strange, little country few
even knew existed resonated mightily within the core
of his being, since increasingly larger numbers of
those designated for combat in that far off corner of
the world were young Negro boys, as they were
called by polite society back then, and many of those
close to him, especially his wife, Coretta Scott King,
were urging him to become more vocal. More
importantly, he may have reached a point where, as a
man of the cloth, he realized his allegiance to the
world at large as opposed to one specific church congregation
or ethnic group.
Finally, President Lyndon Johnson, normally an
ardent proponent of civil rights, took steps to divert
funds from the War on Poverty to Vietnam in
December of 1966, which forced the Baptist preacher
to question the rationale of taking “young black
men who have been crippled by our society and
sending them 8,000 miles away to guarantee liberties
in Southeast Asia which they had not found in
Southwest Georgia and East Harlem.”
J. Edgar Hoover enjoyed a position of power
equaled by few men in the history of U.S. politics.
Serving under eight American presidents, more than
one of his “superiors” suppressed the urge to have
him fired no doubt because of the political backlash
and retaliation that was sure to follow. During his
almost 50-year tenure at the helm of the F.B.I., he
amassed vast dossiers on potential enemies in the
government and political arena and beyond, specializing
in the sort of inflammatory information they
would go to great lengths to keep covered.
A man given to many pet peeves, the foremost
of which was subversion, he was known for his
relentless pursuit of those (in his view) who constituted
a threat to the security of the government.
During the course of his career they’d included leftist
radicals in the aftermath of World War I, bank robbers
and bootleggers during the Depression, Nazi
saboteurs in World War II, and communist sympathizers
during the 1950s.
Now, deep in the turbulence of the ‘60s, he
faced his biggest challenge. Radical elements
seemed to be sprouting up on every college campus
to openly exhibit contempt for American ideals and
institutions, and sweeping up the best and brightest
of the Baby-boomer generation in the process. Of
particular concern to Hoover was the burgeoning
Civil Rights Movement, which he saw as being ripe
for infiltration by the Communist Party. Specifically
distasteful to the F.B.I. director was the movement’s
most famous proponent, Dr. King, whose promiscuous
sexual liaisons offended Hoover’s puritanical
sensibilities.
Since his death, Hoover has been the subject of
numerous insinuations and innuendoes, including
speculation that he was a cross-dressing homosexual
with hidden African-American ancestry, one source
being literary icon and fellow Washington, D.C.
native Gore Vidal, which may explain his relentless
pursuit of individuals with similar backgrounds and
preferences.
“Hoover was becoming famous, and it was always
said of him – in my family and around the city – that he
was mulatto. People said he came from a family that
had ‘passed.’ It was the word they used for people of
black origin who, after generations of inbreeding, have
enough white blood to pass themselves off as white.
That’s what was always said about Hoover.” -Anthony
Summers, Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of
J. Edgar Hoover, 1993.
The idea that homophobes (those with an irrational
fear or hatred of gays) are themselves repressed
homosexuals goes back to Sigmund Freud’s initial
musings on the nature of human behavior.
Ethnic self-hatred is common enough to have
spawned a number of studies, possibly the bestknown
case being that of closeted U.S. Attorney Roy
Cohn (and a political ally of Hoover) who zealously
railroaded fellow Jews Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to
the electric chair for passing atomic weapons secrets
to Russia, and strongly opposed gay-rights legislation
before he himself died of AIDS.
As for Hoover, much has been made of the fact
that for such a well-known public figure, little documentation
was available on his early life, with no birth
certificate on record until he was well into his 40s,
along with his unusually close association with fellow
F.B.I. man and lifelong bachelor Clyde Tolson.
Hoover’s inclination toward the persecution of
African-American political groups went back to
Marcus Garvey and the Black Nationalist movement
in the early 1920s.
By the late ‘60s he had developed an intelligence
apparatus unsurpassed in its ability to amass information
on any conceivable person or subject, and implemented
a program called COINTELPRO specifically
to disrupt dissident political organizations. COINTELPRO
contributed to at least one murder, that of
white civil rights volunteer Viola Liuzzo, and after
her death circulated gossip about her alleged sexual
hi-jinks with her black co-workers.
Dr. King’s activism, viewed as radical and subversive,
had made him the subject of countless
vendettas, resulting in an arrest record consisting of
such various offenses as contempt of court, disorderly
conduct, disturbing the peace, driving without a
license, loitering, tax evasion, and violating probation.
The F.B.I. continued the harassment on their
end by forwarding damaging information on his personal
proclivities to colleges and universities that
conferred honorary degrees and other accolades on
him. His increased visibility in the media, nationally
and internationally, worked Hoover into a frenzy, and
his winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 proved to
be the last straw, with King, under the code name
“Zorro,” designated for termination with extreme
prejudice. This humble Baptist preacher was quickly
becoming the embodiment of the F.B.I. director’s
worst fears: a Black Messiah with the charisma and
resources to unite the Masses.
Continuing his harassment in earnest, Hoover’s
minions uncovered evidence that a preteenaged
King, despondent over his grandmother’s illness and
subsequent death, had attempted suicide. Hoping to
capitalize on this, COINTELPRO concocted a bogus
letter purportedly written by a civil rights colleague
confronting King on a number of indiscretions, and
urging him to take his life. Such tactics were common
in the Bureau’s campaign against enemies of
the state.
Caucasian movie star Jean Seberg irked the
powers that be by using her fame to support such
distasteful organizations as the American Indian
Movement, the Black Panther Party, and the
NAACP. Hoover was reputed to have personally
vowed to “take care of those two bitches,” referring
to Seberg and fellow Hollywood activist Jane Fonda.
In the twisted mentality of those manning the F.B.I.’s
Los Angeles field office, Seberg’s associations
amounted to more than just political assistance.
Former agent and whistle blower M. Wesley
Swearingen reminisced:
“Jean was giving aid and comfort to the enemy,
the BPP … The giving of her white body to a black
man was an unbearable thought for many of the
white agents. An agent [allegedly Richard W. Held]
was overheard to say, a few days after I arrived in
Los Angeles from New York, ‘I wonder how she’d
like to gobble my dick while I shove my .38 up that
black bastard’s ass’” [a reference to BPP theorist
Raymond “Masai” Hewitt, with whom Seberg was
reputedly having an affair]. (www.indymedia.org.uk
“Bonjour Tristesse – the story of Jean Seberg’s
destruction by COINTELPRO”)
Preying on her tendency toward depression and
paranoia, Hoover retaliated by concocting a rumor
that the child Seberg was pregnant with had been
conceived by a black civil rights worker and having
it placed in the gossip columns of such publications
as the Los Angeles Times and Newsweek. This
harassment so effectively traumatized her that it
caused her to miscarriage. Seberg achieved a twisted
sort of vindication when she held a press conference
the next day and openly displayed the still born
corpse of her dead white child, but COINTELPRO’s
efforts were eventually rewarded when she succumbed
to a lethal combination of alcohol and barbiturates
years later.
Similar efforts to neutralize King were not successful
(the letter reached King, but well after his
being awarded the Nobel Prize, which Hoover wanted
to prevent) but Hoover and his underlings were
nothing if not resilient. Legions of crack pot groups
committed to arrest the advance of integration were
available for deployment, along with countless sad
sacks and losers ready for enlistment as pawns in
whatever role was required, either as decoy or triggerman.
Surveillance and wiretaps were stepped up,
with special attention paid to Dr. King’s extramarital
sexual affairs. Illegal break ins of organizations
such as the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC) popularly known as “black bag
jobs” were a common occurrence.
For the most part, James Earl Ray’s life had
been an exercise in mediocrity. Drummed out of the
army for “ineptness and lack of adaptability,” he
drifted into a life of petty crime in which he distinguished
himself with the uncanny knack for quick
apprehension shortly after his pathetic attempts at
burglary, forgery, or the liquor store holdups in
which he specialized.
Despite a lackluster career as a petty criminal,
Ray possessed ingenuity and resourcefulness, displayed
when he escaped from a state prison and went
on the lam for almost a year before his apprehension
at Heathrow Airport in London (presumably headed
for white supremacist Rhodesia). Along the way, he
somehow became involved in a convoluted scenario,
the origins of which we will assuredly never know,
and was conveniently fingered as the lone assassin
(under circumstances bearing a passing resemblance
to those surrounding the assassination of John F.
Kennedy five years prior) in the murder of Martin
Luther King. To this day Ray has never been tried
before a jury of his peers, since he conveniently confessed
to the killing to avoid the death penalty
(before recanting three days later), and spent the rest
of his life unsuccessfully seeking a retrial.
Two separate schools of thought have evolved
around Ray, one viewing him as a right-wing fanatic
whose flirtation with Nazism contributed
to his early separation from the army,
while the other side contends he never exhibited any racist tendencies (as does Ray in his
1992 autobiography). Like many convicts, Ray
found time to be married while in prison.
Particularly remarkable about his wedding is that it
was presided over by the Reverend James Lawson,
associate and close personal friend of Dr. King, conducting
the ceremony not as a sign of his belief in
Ray’s guilt or innocence, but merely as part of his
obligation as a man of God. Also noteworthy was
the identity of Ray’s best man, one Mark Lane,
Kennedy-King conspiracy theorist and author of
numerous books (1966’s Rush To Judgement is considered
the catalyst in raising questions about the
JFK assassination).
Gerald Posner may be considered Mark Lane’s
polar opposite. Both are lawyers who transitioned
into authorship specializing in the lucrative genre of
investigative journalism, albeit on different sides of
the fence. In works like Code Name Zorro and others,
Lane has postured the idea that Ray could be no
more then a patsy, a role he assigned to Lee Harvey
Oswald in earlier books about the Kennedy affair.
Posner has focused his energies at poking holes in
theories linking Ray to Army Intelligence, the F.B.I.,
and other various shady individuals and groups, just
as he argued for the idea of the lone gunman in
1993’s Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the
Assassination of JFK.
On a recent week day afternoon, Rev. Lawson
graciously grantedOW a telephone interview and
reminisced about a pivotal point in our recent history
when every black public figure who didn’t “toe the
line” was assigned a “controller”, assigned to shadow
their movements (As an interesting aside, a
friend of Rev. Lawson encountered an individual at a
social function. After several minutes of polite conversation,
the man revealed that years earlier, he had
been Lawson’s controller!).
A leading theoretician of the tactics of nonviolence,
Rev. Lawson was chairman of the strike committee
that formed after black sanitation workers
went on strike for better working conditions in
Memphis, and invited Dr. King down to bring attention
to the protest and, unfortunately, an appointment
with destiny.
He confirmed preliminary research for this article
that indicated the first person to reach the fallen
civil rights advocate on that fateful day was a member
of a (militant) community organizing group.
This person was later revealed to be an undercover
police informant with possible ties to military intelligence
(and later a C.I.A. employee).
Also noteworthy are the scores of witnesses
present at the crime scene but never interviewed,
including Jesse Jackson and Andrew Young. The
catastrophic murder of an international known person
which ignited riots in most of America’s cities
from coast to coast was treated as a run of the mill
homicide and filtered through the justice system.
During the House Select Committee on
Assassinations in the mid 1970’s Rev. Lawson
declined to testify, reasoning that a closed session
(which was mandated) would merely be an opportunity
for unchecked tampering, citing the numerous
smear campaigns and other maneuverings that resulted
in a stacked deck involving those chosen to sit in
on the hearings.
Shifting through his personal recollections of the
alleged hitman, Lawson points out that Ray was a
petty criminal without a significant history of violence
(in one of the few instances where he used a
firearm, he actually shot himself in the foot!). Naive
and unsophisticated before his single brush with
notoriety, Ray used the prison complex to educate
himself, in the end achieving wisdom and an understanding
of the system that had made him an unwitting
dupe.
One contemporary train of thought has the
President being merely a figurehead for the powers
that be, the seat of government too large, too consequential
to be an instrument of self-expression.
In the movie “JFK,” conspiracy theorist extraordinaire
Oliver Stone postulates that President John
Kennedy signed his own death warrant by going
against U.S. national security, which included continued
involvement in Vietnam.
Administration of a modern military expedition
(such as our current imbroglio in the Middle East)
involves billions of dollars, involves the well-being
of huge multi-national corporations, and affects the
economies of large segments of the globe.
Following this train of thought, individual lives, no
matter how powerful or prominent, must be sacrificed
for the greater good, along with irreverent concepts
of ethics and morality.
It has been said that America’s business is business.
President Dwight Eisenhower clarified this for
a modern constituency when he warned of the emergence
of a military-industrial-complex in his
Farewell Address in 1961, built on the ideas of
Marine General Smedley Butler in his brief “War is
a Racket” from 1935.
Of paramount importance is not the existence of
a legitimately elected Head of State, rather, it is the
occupancy of personage to ensure that the system
continues to run smoothly and efficiently. Intangibles
and abstract notions like equality, human rights,
virtue, and that arcane and antiquated whim called
morality must be secondary considerations at best.
Thus King’s concerns about the loss and suffering
of those conscripted to conduct armed conflict,
as well as ideas as to the fairness in how those fighting
were selected, were, and are dangerous, part of
an ugly trend that possibly started when Muhammad
Ali offered the opinion that he “got nothing against
no Viet Cong” (and not “No Vietnamese ever called
me nigger,” as has been widely quoted).
As King made his way toward Memphis, he was
feeling pressure from all sides. The growing militant
faction, if not dismissing him as an out and out
Uncle Tom, regarded him as behind the times.
His colleagues who had struggled at his side in
the trenches at the beginning of the movement felt
like he was overstepping his boundaries by meddling
in world affairs, and perhaps he was. It was one
thing to march for equal rights and the opportunity to
fully share in the privileges of American citizenship,
quite another to question the morality of an international
maneuver involving the economic prosperity
of a huge chuck of America’s (and the world’s) private
industry, not to mention the redistribution of the
country’s wealth.
Every Black soldier ought to say, ‘I am not
going to fight. This is not my war.’” –Martin Luther
King, III (his son), January 18, 1991 (on the occasion
of the US attack on Iraq in 1991)
To say that America was in a different state back
then is an understatement. Mysterious deaths involving
people in what was quaintly known as “the counterculture”
or who otherwise might be considered a
thorn in the side of the establishment were commonplace,
including that of Reuben Salazar, a journalist
who died after being hit in the head by an erratic tear
gas canister fired during a predominately Chicano
anti-war rally in East L.A., circa 1970.
Or has it changed? Nay-sayers point to circumstances
surrounding the death of journalist Danny
Casolaro (1991), judged to have committed suicide
after being discovered with his wrists slashed (after
tearing out several of his fingernails) while in the
midst of an investigation regarding improprieties
involving multi-million dollar software contracts
with links to the U.S. Government and various foreign
entities, including the ubiquitous Osama Bin
Laden and his al Qaeda cohorts (Casolaro predicted
his pending death to his brother).
Most recently witnessed was the controversy
surrounding the demise by self-inflicted gunshot
wounds (to the back of the head, no less) of Gary
Webb, notorious for allegations of tie-ins between
the American military, the Nicaraguan Contras they
backed, and the distribution of crack cocaine in the
ghettos of the U.S.
As this is being written, at least two of those
alleged to be victims of the tyranny of COINTELPRO
(Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald in California and
Marshall “Eddie” Conway in Maryland, both
accused of police killings) remain incarcerated with
over 35 years each in the penal system.
The dynamic that King faced is, needless to
say, still in place. As you read this, multi-national
conglomerate’s revenues dwarf the gross national
products of all but the wealthiest countries, and the
unequal distribution of the world’s assets will only
get worse.
Our current Chief Executive is caught in a quagmire
involving billings by defense contractor
Halliburton (among other things) the details of which
are accessible to anyone able to read a newspaper or
turn on a television. The fact that public officials are
comparatively accountable (as opposed to forty years
ago) is a sign of progress, and may be Dr. King’s
most important legacy.
On April 4, 1968, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr was
shot to death as he stood on the balcony of the
Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Retired FBI
Special Agent Arthur L. Murtagh testified before
Congress ten years later that he watched an Atlanta
Field Office agent that afternoon “jump for joy,” stating
something to the effect of “We finally got the s.o.b.”
-www.drewhendricks.freeservers.com/drmartin.htm
Data covered in the contents of this article were
retrieved from the following sources:
1) www.theconspiracy.us/ (THE ASSASSINATIONS
OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. &
MALCOLM X: Parts 1 through 4 by Dave Emory).
2) Target: Martin Luther King-A New Look at
America’s Most Unresolved Assassination by
Richard Goldstein January 8 – 14, 2003 The Village
Voice.
3) Secrets Uncovered: J. Edgar Hoover–Passing
for White? / Millie L. McGhee Rancho Cucamonga,
Calif., Allen-Morris, 2000.
4) An Act of State: The Execution of Martin
Luther King / William F. Pepper Verso, 2003
5) The Murkin Conspiracy: An Investigation into
the Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Phillip H. Melanson, Praeger Publishers, 1989.
6) FBI Secrets: An Agent’s Expose. M. Wesley
Swearingen South End Press, 1995.
7) Killing the Dream: James Earl Ray and the
Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr./ Gerald L.
Random House 1998.