What They Never Bring Up on MLK Day

"Orders to Kill – The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” by William F Pepper, with a forward by Dexter Scott King, 1995

This book cracks the case of the assassination of Martin Luther King.  It is the powerful result of a 20 year legal search for information and facts carried out by Pepper, James Earl Ray’s defense attorney.  It names the assassin – who is now dead and was a member of the Memphis police department, sharp-shooter Earl Clark.

Pepper describes how they set up Ray as the assassin – luring Ray to Memphis for a gun deal, renting a hotel room for him across from the Lorraine Motel, dropping a bag with a decoy weapon on the street outside.  How the real murder rifle was stashed at a coffee shop, Jim’s Grill, across from the Lorraine.  How King’s room was mysteriously changed to the second floor for a better shot.  How King was also triangulated by Special Forces military sharpshooters and police on two high buildings around the motel, as described by participants.  Witnesses describe someone in the row of bushes in the empty lot across from the Lorraine – a direct shot.  How a key hedge was cut down the day after the murder to make the official story work better, as well as some branches that blocked the view from the ostensible shooter’s window.  How they tried to get Ray to escape from prison so he could be shot.

A civil jury acquitted Ray of the crime, but the award was ignored.  The King family believes that Ray never shot King.  Multiple witnesses admitted to being part of the conspiracy or knowing who shot King, or heard orders to do the shooting.  CIA/NSA people were caught in a photo coming down off the wall across from the motel.  A incognito military intelligence officer was kneeling over King on the balcony a minute after the shooting.  Shooters and conspirators were tied to the Mob of Carlos Marcello – the same pattern that was used in the Kennedy assassinations.  One contract offered to the Mob was put out by the FBI.  Essentially this was the same MO as the hits on the Kennedy brothers by the same security/military faction inside the government. 

The film “Selma” created a controversy about the ‘mixed’ relationship of LBJ with King.  It is significant that few, except Earl Ofari Hutchinson, have pointed out that LBJ allowed Hoover to continue his known campaign against King, even appointing him ‘life-time’ FBI director.  Quite an endorsement, which shows that LBJ was playing both sides of the fence. 

As the film ostensibly shows, King was not a beloved cuddly grandfather dreaming of better days - but had become a ‘dangerous radical.’  The Right accused King of being a Communist and never backed-off this position.  The minute King went beyond fighting Jim Crow and denounced the Vietnam War, backed striking workers and attempted to bring integration north, he was attacked by hundreds of newspapers and written off by Johnson.  This gave Hoover – and probably James Jesus Angleton of the CIA - all the political cover they needed to participate in the assassination. It should be noted that LBJ was president or vice president, and Hoover head of the FBI during every key assassination of the 1960s - the Kennedy brothers, King, Malcolm X and many Black Panthers like Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.  The fact that Hoover dressed in women's clothes and was a self-hating gay is the least of it.

Just as in a suburb, where the trees they cut down lend their names to 'Aspen Drive," so the man they shot gets his own holiday - after years of resistance to it.  This book is essential reading for an understanding of the 1960s and of the 'deep state' existing underneath capitalism. 

Black Lives Matter, today and yesterday!

P.S. - Two hard-cover copies of this hard-to-find book are now in stock for $10 a piece.  

Red Frog

January 20, 2015