Larry Hancock
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Absolutely Martin, I think I promised not to pester you with MLK posts when the book came out but I have to admit that your remark to Joe B about the review being very critical and his liking it did trigger a bit of testosterone....I don't claim to be totally emotionless..
We will wait for your review and then simply post a point/counterpoint response. - that should allow anyone interested to reach their own conclusions. Beyond that, as with JFK, MLK and RFK both Stu and are very much involved in ongoing research on all three political assassinations so we need to be at that.
-- Larry
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Martin, I'm not going to jump into the middle of this other than to offer the following. First, we have no apprehension about the book an are happy to let it stand on its own - it has already been endorsed by a number of people familiar with the case including Gerald McKnight who wrote the forward and Peter Dale Scott who gave it a five star Amazon review and described it as the best book to date on the MLK assassination.
What disturbs me is that fact that over the last decade or so we have become so polarized that it seems we are approaching the point to where we can't talk with each other, much list assist each other in research. Honestly, irrespective of your review it would have been educational to have your answer about Ray, you may very well have a better insight into that than we do. But when we all start talking about each other more than the events we research, I think we lose. I work by email with a lot of folks who have different opinions - even people who have written and writing books that are very much counter to my own views - I still answer their questions.
I admit that a couple of years ago I began to avoid forums because they seem to have more heat than substance, looks like that hasn't changed since I was active before. I'll just leave it at that.
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For those who read this in the MLK area, my apologies for the redundancy but I'm not sure
how many folks actually go there.
So...I'm going to issue (for the last time I promise) an invitation not only visit one or both
of my relatively new blogs. And for anyone doing related research, I'm happy to
consider posting it there for you. The focus of the blogs is not nearly as broad as the
forum, but if you are digging into topics related to things I cover in the books, it might be
a fit - for example on the JFK blog we have some good new research going on the January
incident at Redbird and Bill Simpich is putting up some great posts on Spy games in Mexico City.
www.larry-hancock.com
The MLK blog is brand new and rather than getting stuck in all the
standard debates about individual pieces of evidence or what
sources to trust about which I'm trying to cultivate some thought
on broader questions and problems in pursuing conspiracies - such
as the FBI's tendency to clear anyone from involvement if they
were not at the actual scene of the crime (sigh). Such issues with
both the Bureau and the Justice Department are among the things we
wrestle with in the our new MLK assassination book. You will find
that blog at:
http://theawfulgrace...03/hello-world/
If you have some new/related research on either topic you think might fit, email
me at larryjoe@westok.net
-- Larry
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I'm not sure how much interest there is here in the MLK assassination, there seem to be
lots of page views but few people actually posting.
So...I'm going to issue (for the last time I promise) an invitation to take a look at
our new blog
http://theawfulgraceofgod.com/wordpress1/2012/02/03/hello-world/
Of course there is ample room on this forum to argue all the particular issues about James Earl Ray and
evidence and who to believe and who not to - I've no urge to step in between Martin and Len
on that. But one thing I have noticed in all three major political assassinations of the 60's
is that we often seem to get totally hung up in issues of the personal guilt or innocence of
Oswald, Ray or Sirhan. The discussion evolves into a version of the court room dialog that
you might have expected in a good solid trial with an aggressive defense and prosecution (which
none of them had actually). And often it leaves little time to do little more than offer personal
opinions on a broader conspiracy (or ones personal favorite suspect/s).
In the MLK blog (as in my JFK blog) I'm going to try to expand the dialog a bit and well as offer
a platform for folks still doing novel ongoing research. The topics will be broader and delve into
more period history than seems to happen here.
So, if it sounds interesting to anyone, drop on in. I try to respond in a balanced way to comments
and questions (as well as acknowledge mistakes...grin) and its even possible that we might kick off
something new - the JFK blog has triggered some very interesting new research on the January/Red Bird airport
incident. We take that sort of stuff private when it gets serious (meaning actual research is in progress)
and sometimes that can take weeks or months. I try to get up a couple of posts a week on the blogs so a
scan once or twice a week should tell you if there is anything new that might interest you.
-- Larry
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Michael, Stu has been trying to get some attention to the following but not with much luck yet. In our quest for FBI and
HSCA files, he had lots of conversations with NARA and was told that the files are simply there as the property of Congress.
If the Clerk of the House were to direct their release, it would be a done deal. No legislation required. We are not
certain of what that would take but it might be as simple as an individual Congress persons request to the clerk, or a caucus
request, etc.
The other good news is that in his digging, Stu determined that the FBI had lost track of the prints from the original
investigation but he did manage to track them down - one of our major calls for action now is for Justice to obtain
those and run them through the computerized matching system used by the FBI. There were a number of unidentified prints
and that exercise could be very informative. The process would be inexpensive and not all that time consuming.
-- Larry
From WUSA9.com
John Judge of Coalition On Political Assassinations, in Washington,D.C., believes gov't records hide details surrounding King assassination
WE PETITION THE OBAMAADMINISTRATION TO:
Release all federal, state, local and international government files onthe life and death of Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr
The JFK Assassination Records Act overcame theobstacles of government secrecy and FOIA weaknesses to effect the release ofover 6.5 million pages of classified records. In 1978, Congress sealed hundredsof thousands of pages relating to the assassinations of JFK and Dr. MartinLuther King, Jr. Federal, state and local governments spied on Dr. King and hisfamily from WWI forward, violating his civil rights and obstructing hismovements for peace and justice. Legislation has been pending in Congress since2001 to release these files, all of them over the 25 year secrecy limitproposed by President Obama, but the bill has not been passed. We need to knowabout our government's response to the life and possible role in the death ofDr. King. The president should promote this release of files
Created: Oct 13, 2011
Issues: Civil Rights and Liberties, Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement, Regulatory Reform
SIGNATURESNEEDED BY NOVEMBER 13, 2011 TO REACH GOAL OF 25,000
24,995
TOTALSIGNATURES ON THIS PETITION
To sign this petition go to the White House Petition site, register, then sign it. And please spread it around to those who you know would like to sign it as 25,000 signatures are necessary before the White House will pay attention and respond to it.
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Sorry to tease you out Martin...
I think it certainly does raise a fine point on timing but I'd say its cutting things pretty close to have
a plan in which your shooter shows up in place for something like a three minute window in time. We often
debate what would have happened in Dallas if Lee Oswald had gotten sick on November 22, but here we have
a situation where if the guys watch is off by two minutes the whole thing is blown, for that location at least
and after that you begin to run into a daylight issue.
I really did raise this as a thought exercise since I think the timing does have some serious implications.
Beyond that I would say that in the grand scheme of things it could probably be assumed that Dr. King would be
going out sometime in the evening but on the exact timing...heck, he could have gone directly downstairs the first
time he was on the balcony, just to talk to the people without leaning over the railing...and that was at 5:09.
Hopefully some other folks will chime in with thoughts....
I promised myself I wouldn't get involved in any online exchanges for at least a few days so this is just a very quick note
Loyd Jowers claimed that he was specifically told to be at the back of Jim's Grill at 6:00 pm. This could be relevant to your question.
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For a change of pace, I'd like to introduce something different for discussion (although I have no idea how many
folks are following this subject). It's a very tightly focused issue and I think its very significant - I just
wish I could reach a conclusion on what it's really telling us. The following is an excerpt from a recent post on
our MLK blog:
While staying at the Lorraine motel, Dr. King, his associates and visitors were all under observation by the Memphis police, with an officer stationed across the street in a fire station performing surveillance and taking notes on comings and goings related to King's party.
His notes of Dr. King's appearances on the balcony are quite specific and very interesting. Most people very probably assume that Dr. King came out on the balcony, on his way to dinner, and was shot at that time. That is true but the details are significant. King first came out on the balcony at 5:56 pm, spending approximately one minute talking to people below in the parking lot and re-entering his room. During that first full minute, nothing happened. If a shooter was in position, he would have no way of knowing that he was missing a perfect shot, with King standing in place. And 60 seconds in such a situation is actually a relatively long time (in Dallas a President was killed and a Governor seriously wounded in a tenth of that time).
But then Dr. King came back out on the balcony at 5:59, remained in place talking to the people below and was murdered with a single shot at 6:01. Again, if the shooter was in place, he had just seen Dr. King and should have been ready for him to reappear. Yet he waited for something like two minutes more to make his shot, with King very liable to have begun walking away any second.
Does this timing give the image of a trained shooter, in position, mentally prepared and waiting to kill Dr. King at the first opportunity? Something to ponder. Stu and I have speculated on it ourselves and have one scenario in mind but it would be good to see others thoughts....its even possible that its not significant but my gut says it is...
.....and importantly, for readers of The Awful Grace of God, the timing discussed here is currently incorrect in the first printing of the book. On page 238 the book has the Dr. King's first appearance on the balcony as 5:06 rather than 5:56....we apologize for the error and the publisher has been advised, the Kindle version will be the first fixed.
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Bill, I put a considerable amount of detail about the aircraft involved in the Ray January incident into SWHT, including
its identification numbers, the company's involved etc. However the most recent work is on trying to identify the
Cuban exile pilot who talked with January and the American officer with him. There are a couple of recent posts
and discussion on that on my blog you might want to check out.
http://larryhancock.wordpress.com/
-- Larry
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Yep, I'm sure if I had tapes of that discussion with those individuals that I would "not" make copies of them and deliver
then to a host of locations (starting with my local FBI office) but extending to a variety of media as well as
my lawyer....to make sure I lived for the next 24 hours. I would give my master tape to one Congressman so only he
and I knew about it (and I would not ask him for a receipt or letter acknowledging that he had them). And then I would
be able to breath easy. Of course if I decided to write about it in a book I'd assume I would need to legally inform
the FBI and Justice since I would be a personal witness after the fact to a conspiracy. We won't even go into the polygraph
stage but such knowledge would impose a legal and moral obligation to pursue it beyond just content in a book.
And Hoovers phone was tapped, would be interesting to know where the tap was placed and a few other little details.
No doubt Hoover never worried about the security of telephone lines at FBI HQ.
-- Sorry Robert, but I've got to go with Len, sometimes this stuff has to be sanity tested before its promoted.
So do you really think Stich is credible? Why didn’t the guy make copies of the supposed tapes. My didn’t McDonald do anything with them? Very convenient to claim to have given them to someone long since dead.
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Frankie, I'm definitely on the "rubbish" call with you.
Actually it is even possible that Cuban intelligence had picked up on some of the talk against JFK circulating in Miami among certain of the exile community. And it would certainly have been visible to Cuban agents that security (and some exile hostility) on JFK's Miami trip was excessive (you had the Secret Service going to its exile contacts for assistance in identifying potential trouble makers and threats there). And you have the apparently impulsive visit by Castro to a foreign embassy in Havana to warn that some of the people the CIA is working with against him could be dangerous even back in the US, essentially warning that they are loose cannons. (now the Castro did it folks posture that as a threat from Castro but that is pretty silly given that he is in active back channel dialog with JFK at that point in time).
Castro may have had nothing but rumor and gossip that JFK was at risk (if so clearly he would not have been the only one). And he might well have taken some small measures to look for more - think of the propaganda impact of his exposing exile plotting against the US President.
I'm not sure the radio intercept part of this makes total sense to me but it makes no sense for Castro to be looking for traces of project he himself has to take out JFK. Not that the media would not play that old record once again - since it dates back to Nov. 23, 1963.
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In my view it is more rubbish in time for the 50th anniversary. Especially the quote from Lee Oswald saying 'I'm going to kill Kennedy for this'. As he is departing the Cuban embassy.
Everyone now knows that Castro and Kennedy were in secret talks, even at the very moment of Kennedy's death. We also know that Castro was both surprised and very saddened at the news of the assassination.
I found this morning in reading V. Bugliousi's comments about this Castro story that I agreed with him! That was also a shock, but seriously, why would Castro do something so destructive that could very well have his country blown up.
And honestly, if this ex-CIA agent has documents that could change the course of history so much, wouldn't he be calling for a new investigation instead of writing a book?
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Bill, I would sure be interested if someone could try such a search again; that was one of the first things I did after reading
Vincents' book (well actually the first thing I tried to do was to catch his lawyer who literally sprinted out of the room and
down the escalator after his presentation at Lancer - eventually I did exchange telephone calls and letters with him over several
years and it was all very non-productive, and he would never let me talk directly to Vincent). Anyway, I looked up all the
fronts and proprietaries I could find and started searching for photos - was unable to find anything even similar to that logo
on any of them. But someone else could very possibly do better now.
I will comment on two things, I took careful notes during the lawyers presentation of a video tape of Vincent which he
showed at Dallas and there were inconsistencies between that and the book, nothing huge but enough to be a bit disconcerting.
Also, its pretty clear that Vincent did not understand that his recruiting trips to the CIA as well as his security checks "could"
have been a very routine part of his screening for the SR-71 assignment that he did get. All the mystery he describes was pretty
much SOP for that CIA run program. Obviously I can't confirm it was but that would be a non-conspiratorial explanation.
I'd sure be ready to revisit it if somebody would come up with a photo of that graphic on a CIA associated air transportation
company. I'd also suggest that if anyone has any FAA contacts that a quick search there might do it as well, even proprietary
and front companies have to register their companies and aircraft.
-- Larry
Also see:
JFKcountercoup: Then Came the CIA - Southern Air Transport
If I remember correctly, Vinson said that the plane had specific markings on the tail - a logo that designated it a CIA airline.
Can that logo be identified?
bk
Well, Bill, in JFK and the Unspeakable, James Douglas writes (on page 299), "Unlike all the other planes Vinson had hitched a ride on, the C-54 bore no military markings or serial numbers. Its only identification was on its tail--a rust brown graphic of an egg-shaped earth, crossed by white grid marks." (For this, Douglas cites Johnson and Roe, Flight From Dallas, page 23.)
Then, on page 302, Douglas writes,
"For the last year and a half of his Air Force enlistment, Vinson served as the administrative supervisor for base supply of the CIA's SR-71/Blackbird spy plane project at Site 51 (note: Site 51 is 40 miles north of Las Vegas, Nevada)." .... "While Vinson was working at Site 51, he saw a C-54 like the one that flew the second Oswald out of Dallas. On its tail was the same rust-brown graphic of an egg-shaped earth crossed by white grid marks, that he had seen on the C-54 he had boarded at Andrews (AFB near Washington, D.C.). An Air Force sergeant at Site 51 confirmed the source of the plane he was looking at.
'CIA,' he said." --here Douglas cites Flight From Dallas, page 68, as well as "Vinson's affidavit, page 43."
--Odd Tommy
For an interesting article about a CIA C-54 crash in Nevada on November 15, 1955, google "CIA C-54 Crash on Mt Charleston"
If you read the CIAIR article - there were five CIA propriety airlines mentioned - all belonging to a group association, and I would bet that one of those airlines used the egg earth with white grids as a logo.
BK
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Hi Martin, the good news is that we can agree on that fundamental point - we see no proof that would conclusively confirm that Ray himself took the shot that killed Dr. King, nor to absolutely confirm that the rifle purchased in Birmingham was the weapon that made the fatal shot. Beyond that, we present considerable new information suggesting that some very specific parties were prepared to set up Ray as a patsy, and that their activities may well have extended beyond Ray. For that matter, we present a good deal of context which suggests that in no way was Ray proactively planning/preparing to personally kill King in Memphis prior to the time of the shooting (while others were).
On the other hand, we see a great deal of evidence for a conspiracy going on around Ray and preceding him - the larger story of that conspiracy is the main theme of the book.
As for remarks about Hanes, Huie and others I best leave that to the book. Hopefully at some point we can join in on the authors section to discuss yours and others remarks - as for me, I've never attempted to "evangelize" any of my books or writings or to beat anyone over the head with them. They are there to summarize my (and in this case Stu's as well) research, assessments and occasionally an insight or two. I do try to follow posts about them on forums and always welcome private emails but you won't be seeing me taking up all that much bandwidth on them in any general forum. I try to avoid that even in my blog. At this point, as those following the blog know, I'm already deep into another historical research project
on covert warfare.
-- regards, Larry
We feel the larger story
himsprobably agree on
Martin, we refer ti Huie and a host of other sources, qualifying them with comments as we feel appropriate. However if you are
willing to accept everything Ray said and exclude other sources totally then admittedly we have a problem with each others' standards
of credibility.
Plus this is one of the problems of trying to discuss a 400 page plus book with a few lines exchanged online - it removes all the
context. I did want to respond to your question and give you a source as you had asked for it. There is much more to be
addressed in regard to Ray "stalking" King than this one point (starting all the way back in Los Angeles), if that were all
there was to it indeed it would be an issue. Corroboration is the name of the game, and that takes time and space.
My intention in posting here was really not to discuss the book with anyone who has not read it, other than to communicate that it is
a conspiracy book and to refute some of the statements that have been tossed around months before the book was available. I will
defer further comment and suggest that we resume it in the authors thread once you and others have read the book. Still, I don't expect
anyone who is dead set on Ray's total innocence to like the book, not a problem. Nor would I want to expect anyone dead set
on Ray's total innocence or totally wedded to previous books on his innocence to positively engage with the book, trying to change someone
fully committed to that view is not our goal.
-- just trying to be honest, Larry
Larry,
I appreciate your taking the time to respond. Obviously I have not read your book and so I'm not actually trying to discuss its content. What I have raised a question about is the comment made in pre-publicity for your book that Ray was stalking Dr. King. I don't need to have read your book to comment on this issue or to know that there is no credible evidence for this because I've been studying the record for myself since 2004. If you choose to believe Huie despite what the record reveals about his conduct and his integrity then that's up to you. And if you choose to believe that Ray began stalking King in Los Angeles despite the fact that Ray was there first and then left when King came into town then, again, that's up to you.
Let me just point something out here though: Ray's credibility is a seperate issue to Huie's. You seem to be fixated on the idea of my being willing to accept everything Ray said. But I'm not. One would have to be very foolish indeed to believe every self-serving word coming out of the mouth of a career criminal. Nonetheless, I believe his word is worth as much as anybody else's until it can be proven that he's lying. And one cannot prove he lied by using unreliable sources.
I must also point out that I am not "dead set on Ray's total innocence". I will, however, continue to treat Ray as innocent until proven guilty. The Memphis police, the FBI, the Justice Dept., and the HSCA all failed to provide convincing evidence of his guilt or his participation in a conspiracy. If you have it in your book, I'll accept it.
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Martin, we refer ti Huie and a host of other sources, qualifying them with comments as we feel appropriate. However if you are
willing to accept everything Ray said and exclude other sources totally then admittedly we have a problem with each others' standards
of credibility.
Plus this is one of the problems of trying to discuss a 400 page plus book with a few lines exchanged online - it removes all the
context. I did want to respond to your question and give you a source as you had asked for it. There is much more to be
addressed in regard to Ray "stalking" King than this one point (starting all the way back in Los Angeles), if that were all
there was to it indeed it would be an issue. Corroboration is the name of the game, and that takes time and space.
My intention in posting here was really not to discuss the book with anyone who has not read it, other than to communicate that it is
a conspiracy book and to refute some of the statements that have been tossed around months before the book was available. I will
defer further comment and suggest that we resume it in the authors thread once you and others have read the book. Still, I don't expect
anyone who is dead set on Ray's total innocence to like the book, not a problem. Nor would I want to expect anyone dead set
on Ray's total innocence or totally wedded to previous books on his innocence to positively engage with the book, trying to change someone
fully committed to that view is not our goal.
-- just trying to be honest, Larry
Martin, I've edited this because I did manage to find the citation. If you have He Slew The
Dreamer by Huie, check on pages 98 and 99 where Huie discusses Ray's route from LA to
Atlanta and his staying overnight in Selma - then on page 176 Huie discusses coming back to challenge
Ray on the Selma stop because of the distance off freeways Ray would have been using to drive
directly to Atlanta. At that point Ray admitted privately to Huie that he had gone to Selma and it
wasn't simply a matter of getting lost, King was a factor.
Depending on which edition of the book you have the page numbers might slide a page or two but Huie's reported conversation is the source.
Again, to be up front, one of point of honest disagreement is that much that has been written to portray Ray strictly as a totally unwitting patsy assumes that he himself is a reliable source on his actions. Neither Stu nor I take that view, our view is much more like Huie's original attitude, if you can corroborate something Ray says it may be useful, otherwise its safer to assume that he would not admit to anything that would incriminate him, not only in the shooting but in any sort of conspiracy since that would bear its own charges. We feel that a close look at his behavior and statements during his earlier crimes and legal proceedings validates that attitude.
-- Larry
Larry,
I've been searching through the books and papers that I have and I can't find any reference to Ray admitting to going to Selma to see King.
In his 1995 deposition he was still saying that he took the wrong road and ended up there by accident.
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Martin, I've edited this because I did manage to find the citation. If you have He Slew The
Dreamer by Huie, check on pages 98 and 99 where Huie discusses Ray's route from LA to
Atlanta and his staying overnight in Selma - then on page 176 Huie discusses coming back to challenge
Ray on the Selma stop because of the distance off freeways Ray would have been using to drive
directly to Atlanta. At that point Ray admitted privately to Huie that he had gone to Selma and it
wasn't simply a matter of getting lost, King was a factor.
Depending on which edition of the book you have the page numbers might slide a page or two but Huie's reported conversation is the source.
Again, to be up front, one of point of honest disagreement is that much that has been written to portray Ray strictly as a totally unwitting patsy assumes that he himself is a reliable source on his actions. Neither Stu nor I take that view, our view is much more like Huie's original attitude, if you can corroborate something Ray says it may be useful, otherwise its safer to assume that he would not admit to anything that would incriminate him, not only in the shooting but in any sort of conspiracy since that would bear its own charges. We feel that a close look at his behavior and statements during his earlier crimes and legal proceedings validates that attitude.
-- Larry
Larry,
I've been searching through the books and papers that I have and I can't find any reference to Ray admitting to going to Selma to see King.
In his 1995 deposition he was still saying that he took the wrong road and ended up there by accident.
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Martin, there is a specific citation for the Selma trip in the book, can't give it to you off the top of my head -
as I recall Ray's first explanation for being in Selma at the time King was supposed to speak there was that he got
lost on the way to Atlanta, that didn't fly too well since Selma is about 60 miles off the interstate going to Atlanta.
And King was definitely scheduled to speak there and changed his itinerary at the last minute, something he actually
did pretty consistently, being a spontaneous person. He would have been killed years earlier in Birmingham if he had
not decided to cancel a planned victory celebration and fly out of town early.
On a broader note, its clear that Ray did make conflicting statements at different times, we review a number of those in
the book. In the spirit of being upfront, I will state that neigher Stu nor I trust Ray on anything that cannot be
independently corroborated, we are just too skeptical for that.
In the earliest days Huie (who wrote a series of articles about Ray even before the trial) started out knowing that he would
not expect a career criminal to say anything that would put himself at risk (and Ray was a sharp guy from that standpoint).
Huie's own investigations (and he got many places before the FBI) confirmed that Ray would tell him some truth about places
and facts but as he says, the closer he got to Atlanta and Memphis, the fewer details he could get and the less the
corroboration. And of course it was Huie who dug up the receipt showing a dinner for two in Atlanta, which Ray would not
even talk about.
I don't want to mislead anyone, if you truly believe everything Ray said over many years, you likely will not be
happy with our work or our book.
-- Larry
Hi Martin, I will look at the copy again. We do take the position that Ray "stalked" King because Ray himself admitted
that he had first lied about why he showed up in Selma when King was scheduled to be there and that he had gone
there specifically because King was there.
Can you provide a source for this? As far as I'm aware, Ray always denied going to Selma to see King. He certainly denied it in his book (and his HSCA testimony as I recall).
We find no hard evidence to confirm that Ray took the shot, of course no proof of guilt is not proof of innocence
Well, from a legal standpoint, it is.
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Hi Martin, I will look at the copy again. We do take the position that Ray "stalked" King because Ray himself admitted
that he had first lied about why he showed up in Selma when King was scheduled to be there and that he had gone
there specifically because King was there.
Beyond that point, I want to be very open about the book; we have made a real effort to be balanced on many subjects
and present pros and cons - at one point one of the editors even pushed us to be more "absolute" on certain things
but we pushed back. We are also cautious about calling out when we are speculating, which will be
no surprise to anybody who knows my cautious side in regards to what I put in print (Stu's even worse...grin).
We find no hard evidence to confirm that Ray took the shot, of course no proof of guilt is not proof of innocence -
much of what was written about the evidence being solid early on is highly questionable and reminiscent of what the
FBI experts gave the WC, of course its SOP for them to testify to support the prosecution. We spend a good deal of time
going over problems with the evidence in the chapter on the murder, including evidence of conspiracy that we feel was
bypassed - some of which can still be investigated further; we actually have a separate appendix on that as well.
One of the reasons the web site reads as it does is that we are truly presenting new data, a new scenario and discussing
things far beyond just the shooting in Memphis. We felt we had to let people know this was not just a revisit to what
has been done before - we are presenting the results of something like six years of our own research, we started fresh.
People may reject that or find it of value; its also important to communicate that we are declaring the case unsolved and
calling on Justice to declare the King assassination a cold civil rights case and reopen the investigation based on what
we are presenting. We also call out a number of points that should be addressed in that investigation.
-- Larry
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Actually what the book discusses is:
There was a conspiracy to kill MLK
James Earl Ray was initially set up as a patsy, he may not have been the only potential patsy.
The forensics evidence in hand does not make a convincing case against Ray - yet the Judge allowed
to be presented in court by the prosecution - after Ray had entered his guilty plea and the civil trial
confirmed that the evidence was truly weak...as did the HSCA for that matter.
The book is not a "lone nut" book, but it is also not a book which takes Ray on his own
word about a great many things. The reader will make their own evaluation of the new information - as usual.
Many people will undoubtedly trash the book if it does not match their per-conceived notion - as usual.
People will judge it without reading it - as usual.
For those who do read it, Stu and I will be perfectly happy to discuss our thoughts in detail - as usual.
...people who know me also know I don't "publish and run" Larry
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The website for the book doesn't exactly say what you implied, Martin, but it certainly
seems to imply that Ray is still at the center of the assassination. Of course, this is
almost complete rubbish.
I hate to say this, but I think reading Truth At Last from Ray's brother is informative.
It's a terrible book from a literary perspective; it's terribly biased (John Ray is James
Ray's brother after all); and it stretches (or annihilates) the truth in more than one
place (practically rendering the title a misnomer).
All that being said, it provides perhaps the best sketch of James Earl Ray's life, which
eerily resembled Oswald's in many ways. The book makes a good case for why Ray
was not racist and, in many ways, a pawn of higher level powers for most of his life.
I agree with your summary, Martin. It's depressing to me when massively distorted stories
become "common knowledge". The MLK hit (similar to RFK) looks like low hanging fruit to
me. Sometimes I wish that half the JFK community would just move over and resolve those
cases once and for all. I give props to DiEugenio for at least trying, but his (and Lisa's)
book didn't go nearly far enough.
Of course you are right, Tom. The website does not explicitly state that the book ignores the 1999 civil trial, that is just my inference. Maybe Hancock and Wexler disagreed with the jury's verdict and explain why in their book. In fact, I sort of hope that I am wrong in rushing to judgment on that point.
Nonetheless, the site does imply that James Earl Ray was the gunman and this is absolute trash as I explained and as the evidence proves beyond any shadow of a doubt. Whilst I believe that Lee Oswald was innocent, I am ready to conceed that it is possible to make a circumstantial case for his guilt (at least as part of a conspiracy). But this is not the case with James Earl Ray. There is not a shred of credible evidence that puts him in the bathroom window with a rifle in his hand, not a shred. Nor is there a scrap of evidence that the rifle he purchased was actually used to assassinate Dr. King.
And I defy any member of this forum (or any other) to prove otherwise.
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The subject of the U2 "detectability" from its earliest development flights on is covered in great detail in
a book titled "Shadow Flights" by Curtis Peebles, a real expert on covert aircraft. I'd highly recommend it.
A lot of what we have read in the past in JFK material is pretty well off base. For example it had been hoped
that the aircraft would be hard to pick up on radar but even on its very first penetration flight radio intercepts
determined the Soviets were tracking it. On later flights NSA intercepts showed that it was tracked on virtually
every flight and that the Soviets were very much aware of its altitude and operational characteristics...they
kept vectoring interceptors to it but just could not get anything up high enough to hit it.
The engineers came up with some stealth enhancing fixes like a special material for the underbelly but that really
did little good overall. Of course a lot of this was protected information since nobody wanted to expose how
successful our radio intercept capabilities were.
In any event, the Russians were not handicapped by the ability to detect and track the U2, they simply needed a
missile that could get up to it and to have the plane fly over one of those installations, and when it did...
I wil look though the book again let me kow what you need to know
I already asked you some questions in my previous (Feb. 2012) post.
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Hi Michael, although I know the name and very general information I've never researched him nor really come across anything
on him...sorry.
As you say, there were numerous "intelligence wars" but to me they seem to pale against the dramatic confrontations
you find between between the various National Security Advisers and elements of the NSC vs. the State Department.
Heck, when Kissinger held both positions he consistently ran two track programs which drove everybody nuts...nobody
could understand what US policy really was....talk about bipolar. For almost 50 years you find individual country
CIA chiefs in direct confrontation with their US Ambassador and often the only tie breaker was who the Military Assistance
team in country decided was really in charge, or whom they wanted to actually support.
My favorite example is Hecksher's cable from Laos (when the Ambassador was asking for his recall) asking if HQ was still
in friendly hands...
.....Later, we find virtually all of the same people in both SE Asia and then again in Latin America.
For what its worth, my current and future research is a long term study of many of these covert warfare folks (some who alternated between assignments with the CIA and service in conjunction with US military assistance activities) beginning around 1950 and continuing on through the Iran/Contra period.
-- Larry
I have always believed there were internecine relationships between certain elements of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Defense (DIA) that led to great internal conflicts.
There was a huge intelligence power shift after the DIA was created and both agencies were cross-infiltrated, in my opinion.
Wise and Ross described this in a sparse and rudimentary way.
Larry, in an unrelated matter, have you ever researched Michael Colin?
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Talk about a brain twister - one one hand you have CIA covert wars "for the President" and then you have CIA
covert wars "with the President."
And behind door three we have Iran/Contra which is today's pick up tag team match featuring whoever has an
appointment with Ollie North...sub titled, whose off shore bank do we make the deposits to this afternoon Ollie...
BTW Larry, if you do this, don't forget about Watergate: Hunt, Helms, McCord, Sturgis etc.
The Secret Team takes out another president.
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Nathaniel, after rereading this I decided I should elaborate a bit more on my reply to your post - especially in regard to:
"the same names of the guys that were running around in Latin America, particularly in Cuban policy, end up in the Far East Division. Very strange coincidence. There were three -- it wasn't just one -- there were several. A neat nexus between the Southeast Asian guys and Cuban guys."
As it turns out, that is accurate on two counts. First off the senior case officers and paramilitary advisers for the new Artime, off shore autonomous group project of 1963 were old SE Asia hands. That would include both Hecksher and Jenkins, not to mention Artime's good buddy Hunt who was serving a liaison role with him in Washington (and would later go really undercover to Spain).
In 1963 Artime was receiving logistics support at JMWAVE from folks like Morales and Sfoza and Felix Rodriquez jointed Artime's project - as described in his own book Shadow Warrior.
Later, we find virtually all of the same people in both SE Asia and then again in Latin America.
For what its worth, my current and future research is a long term study of many of these covert warfare folks (some who alternated between assignments with the CIA and service in conjunction with US military assistance activities) beginning around 1950 and continuing on through the Iran/Contra period.
-- Larry
"After reading a pre-galley copy of JFK and Vietnam, Daniel Ellsberg called (author John) Newman one night very excitedly. Ellsberg had worked with Lansdale and knew him extremely well. He said, "This is the first time I've ever thought that (Gen. Edward) Lansdale might have been involved in the assassination." Ellsberg based this on Lansdale being removed from Vietnam planning and moved to Operation Mongoose.81
By February 1963 Lansdale had no position in Cuban policy and was focusing on Latin America. He was traveling to countries like Bolivia and elsewhere. The U.S. had a lot of personnel in South America under Kennedy. And a lot of them ended up going to Vietnam. According to Newman there is a blind spot as to exactly what they were doing and how many people the U.S. had in Latin America.82
"I can tell you," Newman said, "that in the collateral research that I did, names that I came across, I found a correlation between -- I don't say this is definitive but I got a lot of hits -- the same names of the guys that were running around in Latin America, particularly in Cuban policy, end up in the Far East Division. Very strange coincidence. There were three -- it wasn't just one -- there were several. A neat nexus between the Southeast Asian guys and Cuban guys."
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The fact that Lansdale "had no position" on Cuba policy in 1963 should, perhaps, be taken with salt. The positions were becoming more and more ambiguous each day, as the CIA and white house were on various pages at different times. Reassignments could be corrected in Mexico City?
" A neat nexus between the Southeast Asian guys and Cuban guys."
One person who would seem to meet this criteria is Desmond Fitzgerald. Given his other activities during 1963 I have found it interesting that he made the SE Asia Cuba Switch around the same time as Lansdale. Is he among the group being alluded to here, or did you mean more overtly triggery citizenry?
One of the things that makes it complicated is that there were a couple of generations of SE Asia guys. There were the folks like Fitzgerald
and Lansdale that had been all around SE Asia before being inserted into the Cuba project. Included in that group, and actually of more interest to me are folks like Hecksher. Then there is the second generation who went to SE Asia after the Cuba project and ended up operationally back in
Latin America afterwords - like Morales. And there were the Cuban exiles who went directly to Latin America to challenge Castro and the
ones who went there first via SE Asia. On top of all that, there is the fact that a number of the Agency logistics fronts and the financial
networks that supported them, were first set up in SE Asia and then expanded into the Caribbean to support Latin American activities - Paul
Helliwell (sp) is a major name that comes up there.
If you want to talk paramilitary operations guys, Morales, Sforza and their trusted exile assets certainly show up in Latin America.
But its also clear that many of their activities were enabled there at a much higher level by folks like Phillips and Hecksher.
And of course, just to make matters worse, it appears that a lot of the later nasty Latin American stuff began to move outside the
CIA itself and into some of the Army counter insurgency contacts - which of course corresponds to the fact that Morales moved
into a major counter insurgency role as a consultant to Joint Chiefs staff.
I'm not trying to be coy in naming names and there is certainly a larger story that extends beyond 1963, maybe we will get a handle
on it at some point but for right now Nexus and 1963 is as far as can get my own head around it. Well that and the chapter 20 in
SWHT - because I do feel that Underhill had come across the existence of this particular network/clique sometime in 1963.
-- Larry
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Robert, I'm sticking with my position on Howard and JFK but I won't write off Howard and Castro; I will say that the CIA was actively looking for just that sort of involvement and could not find anything (they really, rally wanted to undermine her). And Howard, as were most of the attractive women reporters of the time were constantly getting accused of that sort of thing, normally by jealous male competitors. What I would like to see is the source material on Talbot's interview with her daughter (including some details of the situation surrounding the conversation described - I have to say that circa 1963 a daughter hearing a mother having the sort of conversation quoted is pretty fascinating).
I don't consider myself naive about such things but I do consider myself pretty "critical" without primary source material. If Talbot has the interview or she will confirm it I'd just like to verify that and I have to admit that I'm not in touch with David myself. Of course he may have the same sort of problem several of us have - yes I had that when I was writing, wonder where it is now? But then he may be a lot better organized than I am. So if anybody does come up with more detail from him, please email me, it would be most appreciated.
-- Larry
So was John Kennedy having sex with ABC News reporter Lisa Howard? Let's use some "critical thinking skills" here. Probably. Based on what I know about John Kennedy and his rampant promiscuous behavior AND the fact that Lisa Howard was having an affair with Fidel Castro AND the fact that Howard was describing this affair in graphic detail to an amused JFK, I would say (conservatively) there is a 75% chance that JFK and ABC News reporter Lisa Howard had sexual relations.
Now let's reflect on what members of the CIA and JCS would have thought about JFK having an affair with a mistress of Fidel Castro; a lady who thought she was on a "peace mission" to normalize relations with Cuba. How do you think that would have gone over at Langley or in the U.S. national security establishment of 1963?
How do you think Gen. Ed Lansdale, who had an extremely frustrating time running Operation Mongoose for the Kennedys, would have reacted to learn JFK was having an affair with Castro's mistress and they were talking peace (i.e. keep Castro in power is what "peace" and "normalizing relations" would by definition entail). How about Allen Dulles or his protege James Angleton, the head of counter-intelligence?
Answer: in their minds, it would be just one more reason to murder JFK a man who was threatening their turf and Cold War policies and agenda.
So don't tell me that sex and who is having sex with who is not relevant, because in this case it might well have been extremely relevant and seen as a national security risk by the killers of JFK (in their minds).
At JFK Lancer 2010, I asked Larry Hancock, who I respect, was Lisa Howard having an affair with either JFK or Fidel Castro (I knew that I had read it somewhere.) Hancock said "no." Now that my memory is a little better here is what is in David Talbot's Brothers:
"After Howard returned to the United States, she went to the White House, where a curious Kennedy debriefed her. She shared the details of her Castro encounter with the gossip-hungry Kennedy, including the revelation that she had slept with the Cuban leader. "She talked with Jack about it," Howard's friend, the equally dishy Gore Vidal, later reported, "and mentioned that Castro hadn't taken his boots off. Jack liked details like that." In her diary, Howard wrote that Castro "made love to me efficiently."
[Talbot, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, p. 224]
"According to Howard's daughter, Fritzi Lareau - who was a teenager at the time - her motivations were largely emotional. "She fell for Castro," Lareau told me, recalling her "wild" and "iconoclastic" mother. Lareau remembered her mother bluntly asking her stepfather, film producer Walter Lowendahl, whether she should take her diaphragm to Cuba before she left on one of her frequent trips there. (Lowendahl agreed she should. According to Lareau, her stepfather was not happy with her mother's adventures, but the German immigrant suffered his wife's exploits with European equanimity.) She liked powerful men. And Fidel was very macho. And, of course, the peace mission appealed to her dramatic sensibility because it was very grand, it was on a world playing field. It was secretive and exciting."
[Talbot, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, p. 225]
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The title is "The Man on the Grassy Knoll", by "anonymous". You can find it on Amazon at:
Capital pictures has supposedly optioned it and I had some exchanges with the screen writer - who seemed like a nice
fellow. The position he has been given is that it is actually factual. I scanned a Kindle version and told him there
were lots of issues - it could easily have been written with what info is pretty widely available these days but the inconsistencies
are pretty obvious if you look at it closely (most of them having to do with the CIA and Cuban operations circa 62/63).
We really didn't have much dialog after that exchange.
Actually its well written fiction and all in all a pretty good story. Of course its the same story that has been told time
and again in fiction. It's getting sort of boring; for my money Assassins from Tomorrow is a lot more fun if you are going
that route...well and of course November Patriots...grin.
-- Larry
LH:Didn't we just get blasted with the "anonymous" book abut the college kid being recruited to kill JFK...the detailed story of a CIA plot that he won't support in public but just let his lawyer submit to the publisher and film industry for him, the fiction story that's supposed to be really true and has already been optioned for a movie.
Larry, I missed this one.
Can you give us a link to it?
What happened to the rest of Ray’s ammo?
in Martin Luther King and Civil Rights
Posted
Len, the quantity and type of bullets certainly raises several questions. Of course one would be in regard to Ray's explanation of why he bought the rifle in the first place - and that scenario doesn't support the need for much ammunition. On the other hand, a premeditated shooting with that sort of rifle doesn't really call for you bringing along all that ammo either....
However, equally interesting to us was something the FBI report really doesn't explore in much depth:
-- four unfired ".30-06 Springfield caliber U. S. military cartridges containing full metal-jacketed bullets”
We have attempted a bit of research based on the head stamp for that ammo, the goal being to determine when
it was declared surplus and when it would have been put up for resale and through what outlets. So far we have not
come up with satisfactory answers for that. Certainly the gun shop where Ray bought the rifle was adamant that they
did not carry that sort of ammo.
Perhaps even more interesting is that the military shells had marks on them suggesting that they had originally been "belted"
military ammo for automatic weapons - with the shells later removed from the belts . That raises all sorts of interesting speculation
about the theft of military ammo from national guard armories....who was stealing that stuff and for what purpose.
In any event, how much target practice, or familiarization with a pump action rifle, that might have been done is actually only one ancillary question in regard to the recovered ammo.