Sunday, April 4, 2010
marks the
forty-second anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.
The recent spate of violence and
threats directed at members of Congress evoke all too well the tumult of
the
1960s. Seeing a hero of the Civil
Rights movement like Rep. John
Lewis (D-Georgia) facing an angry gauntlet of protestors--some
using the
N-word--as he left the Capitol brought back memories of similar scenes
from the
1960s, when Rep. Lewis worked with Martin Luther King.
The resurgence in violent
acts and
rhetoric was building even before the surge that accompanied passage of
healthcare reform. This not only
includes white supremacist shootings of several police officers over the
past
year, but arrests in ten different states for serious plots to
assassinate
Obama, most by white supremacists.
Some of the large corporations and
mainstream politicians stoking the anger at President Obama may not
realize how
quickly such an atmosphere of hate can get beyond their control. For
them, it's just a matter of money
and power, by making sure populist anger that should be directed at them
is
instead diverted to President Obama and others.
It's been said that those who cannot
remember the past are doomed to repeat it. But thanks to
Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), Representative
John Lewis, and others, Americans have a rare chance to finally bring
the hidden
history of Martin Luther King's assassination to light.
The
Boston Globe reported that Sen. Kerry
is getting ready to introduce a Martin Luther King Records Act, which
would
finally preserve and declassify all the records about Dr. King's
assassination. The Globe said that Rep. John Lewis
would
introduce the new King Records Act in the House.
While many FBI files about Dr.
King's murder have been released to the public--often pried out of the
Bureau
by Freedom of Information lawsuits--many of the most important files
remain
unreleased. That's why several
weeks ago, Sen. Kerry wrote a letter to the head of the National
Archives,
saying he wants to release to the public "all records related to
the...death of Dr. King, including any
investigations or inquiries into his assassination by federal, state, or
local
agencies."
Unsolved
Civil Rights crimes have been in the spotlight in recent years,
with cases reopened due to the dogged efforts of reporters like
Mississippi's
Jerry Mitchell, who helped to put the assassin of Medgar Evers behind
bars. But many people don't realize that Dr.
King's assassination is another of those unsolved civil rights crimes.
In 1979, a
Congressional investigation headed by Rep. Louis Stokes "concluded
that
there were was a likelihood of conspiracy in the assassination of Dr.
King" and that "the expectation of financial gain was [James Earl] Ray's
primary motivation." Yet the
Congressional committee wasn't able to figure out who was putting up the
money
that motivated Ray, in part because of material withheld from the
committee by
the FBI and other agencies. Some
of those files withheld from Congress are available now online, through
private
organizations like the Mary Ferrell Foundation (maryferrell.org),
though others
have never been released.
One example is the case of Joseph Milteer,
a white supremacist from the tiny south Georgia town of Quitman, who was
affiliated with an unusually wide range of racists and racist groups,
ranging
from the Ku Klux Klan to the more respectable White Citizens Councils.
Milteer also worked with violent white
supremacist J. B. Stoner, who eventually became James Earl Ray's lawyer.
Rep. Stokes's committee
investigated not only Dr. King's murder, but also that of President
Kennedy,
and they were given information tying Milteer to the assassination of
JFK. That's because Milteer was recorded on
Miami Police informant tape on November 9, 1963--thirteen days before
JFK was
killed--describing "a plan to assassinate the President with a
high-powered
rifle from a tall building" and saying that authorities 'will pick up
somebody
within hours afterwards." Milteer also talked on that tape about an
associate's
unsuccessful plot to assassinate King.
The FBI didn't give Rep. Stokes's
committee any information about any investigation they did in 1968 about
Milteer
and Dr. King's assassination. Even
though the FBI was concerned about Milteer as late as 1967, there is no
indication in released FBI files that the Bureau made even a routine
inquiry as
to where Milteer was when Dr. King was shot, something the FBI did for
racists
far less notorious than Milteer.
It's a shame the FBI (apparently) didn't try to find out, because
after
Milteer's death, a Miami reporter found in his burned out house a letter
indicating that Milteer was in Atlanta in the unusual area where James
Earl Ray
was abandoning his getaway car on the day after Dr. King was killed.
Milteer's presence in
that area of
Atlanta that day--over 200 miles from Milteer's Quitman home--helps to
explain
several things that have puzzled investigators for decades. After
Dr. King was shot in Memphis,
James Earl Ray fled to Canada. But
first, while Ray was the most wanted man in America, he took an unusual
450-mile detour south, to Atlanta, where Ray had been living in a small
rooming
house. Then, when Ray arrived in
Atlanta, he parked almost in the shadow from Georgia's heavily-guarded
State
Capital building.
More bizarre,
Ray left his much sought-after getaway car just nine short blocks from
Dr.
King's office and church, but over three miles from Ray's Atlanta
rooming
house, where he was headed.
Despite intense efforts, the FBI and Atlanta police were never
able to
find any cab or bus driver who took Ray to his rooming house.
New information that we
detail in
our recently updated book Legacy of
Secrecy shows that Ray had called one of Milteer's three Atlanta
business
partners shortly before abandoning his car. We also show
how Milteer and his racist partners had put up
most or all of the money for the hit contract on Dr. King, and likely
aided
Ray's improbable two month escape, in which Ray went from Atlanta to
Canada, to
England, then to Portugal, and finally back to England (where Ray was
arrested).
As we
noted earlier, Rep. Stokes's
Congressional committee was given information about Milteer and JFK's
1963 assassination,
but nothing about Milteer and Dr. King's 1968 murder. In
March 2010, author Stuart Wexler was told in writing that
the FBI and National Archives can't locate the FBI's Atlanta Field
Office File for
Milteer. Even worse, the FBI wrote
Wexler that they had routinely destroyed the Atlanta Field Office file
for
another racist who traveled in the same circles as Milteer--even though
other
FBI files show this racist had boasted of knowing James Earl Ray,
provided
information to an FBI informant about King's assassination, and was
himself
investigated for a 1963 plot against King.
The FBI actually has a file
destruction schedule that allows them to destroy important material
about
King's assassination. That's one
reason the King Records Act is needed so badly, to prevent the further
destruction of important files, especially those that were withheld from
Congress or that have never been released.
Other important King assassination
files withheld from Rep. Stokes's committee related to Louisiana
godfather
Carlos Marcello. In 2000, the
Justice Department released a report in which they were supposed to
investigate
claims arising out of the 1998 civil suit victory of the King family,
concerning a conspiracy that prominently involved Carlos Marcello.
However, the Justice Department report
barely mentioned Marcello, and ignored material in their own files
linking
Marcello to King's murder.
According to one 1968 Justice
Department memo--withheld from Rep. Stokes's
committee, but since released and quoted in Legacy
of Secrecy for the first time--information from a reporter's sources
that
included a "well placed protege of Carlos Marcello" said that the
Mafia had "agreed to 'broker' or arrange the assassination [of Dr. King]
for an amount somewhat in excess of three hundred thousand dollars after
they
were contacted by" a group "of wealthy segregationists." The
group was linked to "the KKK
and White Citizen's Councils.
Quitman...was said" to be a possible base of their operation.
Congressional
investigators did turn up information
indicating that in the months before Dr. King's murder, James Earl Ray
had been
a low-level heroin courier for Marcello's drug network. But
files not yet released include
those identifying Ray's two main criminal contacts in New Orleans, and
several
people connected to Marcello's organization who were interviewed by the
FBI
about Dr. King's assassination.
In addition, the 2000 Justice
Department report on King's assassination--which was supposed to look at
Marcello's possible role--failed to mention that fact that the FBI had
in its
files since 1986 Marcello's clear confession to JFK's assassination.
(One would think that a godfather's
confession to one assassination might at least rate a mention in a
report about
his role in another.) We found the
uncensored files in the National Archives in 2006, and they also reveal
that
the FBI secretly recorded "hundreds of hours" of secret audio tape of
Marcello in 1985 and 1986, when Marcello was in federal prison. The
FBI's undercover operation against
Marcello was code-named CAMTEX.
Marcello often spoke to a trusted associate from New Orleans
while he
was secretly being recorded, so those CAMTEX tapes could have
information about
Ray's New Orleans contacts. But
those tapes and transcripts have never been released.
At least some of those
"hundreds of hours" of secret Marcello tapes should be released under
the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Act, since on the tapes, Marcello
rails
against the John and Robert Kennedy, and talks about meeting Lee Oswald
and
Jack Ruby.
News
reports say that Senator Kerry is modeling the new King Records Act on
the 1992
JFK Act. The JFK Act did result in
the release of over four million pages of files, including the (very
incomplete) Marcello CAMTEX files mentioned above. But the
King Act needs to avoid several problems that
plagued the JFK Act.
First
is
that fact that according to NBC News, "millions" of pages of JFK
assassination files remain unreleased, despite the law requiring their
release. A report by OMB Watch
quoted an official who helped to implement the JFK Act as saying that
"well
over one million CIA records" pertaining to JFK's assassination were not
released.
Even
worse, the Final Report of the Review Board created by the 1992 JFK Act
said that
the Secret Service admitted destroying important JFK assassination files
in
1995, at a time when the law said they were supposed to be preserved and
released. Some of the files destroyed by the
Secret Service covered
the time in November 1963 when Milteer's taped remarks first became
known to
the Secret Service and FBI.
In
addition,
despite the Obama administration's attempts at more open government,
the CIA continues to fight a lawsuit seeking records that should have
been
released under the 1992 JFK Act, as detailed in an October 17, 2009 New
York Times article. Those files--and perhaps a
million
more--are to remain secret until 2017 or even beyond.
A
Congressional hearing in the House of Representatives could help to
ensure that
those problems are not repeated with the new King Act. We
believe that in the long run,
releasing all the files about the assassinations of Dr. King and JFK
will not
only be good for America, but also for the FBI, CIA, Justice Department,
Secret
Service, and other agencies. Until
all the files are released, many Americans will continue
to view those agencies with suspicion.
The
new King Act can insure the privacy of innocent individuals, while going
after
the files about those who killed Dr. King. The tapes
generated by J. Edgar Hoover's vendetta against
Dr. King--part of a huge domestic surveillance network against
progressives
later exposed by Senator Frank Church--are of no value in documenting
those who
killed Dr. King.
The
best way to ensure quick passage of the King Act when is for it to have
as many
co-sponsors as possible. You can
help by asking your own Senators and Representative to co-sponsor the
legislation. To find out how to
contact your members of Congress, you can go do legacyofsecrecy.com,
and click
the "Tell Congress" link.
A short, polite email or phone call--asking them to co-sponsor
the
Martin Luther King Records Act when Sen. Kerry introduces it in the
Senate and
Rep. Lewis introduces it in the House--would be most effective.
This
is a rare opportunity for Americans to actually to do something about
needless
government secrecy. The 1992 JFK
Act was passed unanimously by both houses of Congress, and while that
level of
cooperation seems unimaginable today, it' s hard to think of any
legitimate reason
why a member of Congress wouldn't want to co-sponsor the new King Act.