Joseph Milteer

[John Simkin]

http://www.mmdnewswire.com/martin-luther-king-4864.html

(MMD Newswire) April 3, 2009 -- As the 41st anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., approaches on April 4, newly discovered FBI files say that a small group of white supremacists paid for James Earl Ray to kill Dr. King. This vindicates the 1979 conclusion of a Congressional investigation headed by Rep. Louis Stokes--the House Select Committee on Assassinations--which found that Ray acted for money. There is no evidence that the newly-released FBI files from 1968 were given to Rep. Stokes' committee. The 1968 King plot also has similarities to several recent white supremacist assassination plots against President Obama that have resulted in arrests.

The recently-uncovered 1968 FBI files support new evidence showing that the late Joseph Milteer was one of four Georgia white supremacists who funded the assassination of Dr. King. Rep. Stokes's committee had actually investigated Milteer for the murder of President John F. Kennedy, because of a Miami Police undercover recording of Milteer made two weeks before Kennedy's death. On that November 9, 1963 tape, Milteer discussed a plan to "assassinate the President with a high-powered rifle from a tall building." On the same tape, Milteer also discussed an unsuccessful attempt to kill Dr. King. The FBI did not provide any information to Stokes's committee indicating they had looked at Milteer for the assassination of Dr. King. As a result, the Congressional committee didn't investigate Milteer for King's murder.

FBI files, along with other new information, indicate that Milteer and his white supremacist associates in Atlanta turned to the Mafia to "broker" the contract to kill Dr. King. The mobster involved was Louisiana/Texas godfather Carlos Marcello, who died in 1993. Congressional investigators uncovered statements and evidence indicating that in the months prior to Dr. King's murder, James Earl Ray was a low-level heroin runner for Marcello's drug network.

James Earl Ray's backing by Milteer and several associates in Atlanta explains for the first time why Ray--after shooting Dr. King in Memphis and fleeing to Canada--first made a 450-mile detour south to Atlanta, where Ray abandoned his getaway car only blocks from Dr. King's office and church. Ray then called one of Milteer's associates, and Milteer himself admitted in a letter that he was in the area when Ray abandoned his car. Authorities have long known that after killing King in Memphis, Ray was somehow able to flee to Canada, then to England, to Portugal, and back to England, where Ray was finally apprehended.

The declassified FBI files about King are detailed for the first time in "Legacy of Secrecy," written by Lamar Waldron, with Thom Hartmann. Liz Smith in "Variety" called Waldron "the ultimate JFK historian" and "Talkers" magazine recently ranked Hartmann as the most important progressive talk show host in America. The authors used files from the National Archives and exclusive sources--from former government investigators to two dozen associates of John and Robert Kennedy--to explain why agencies like the FBI withheld key files from Congressional investigators.

Key FBI and Justice Department files quoted for the first time in Legacy of Secrecy were not cited in a June 2000 Justice Department report about Dr. King's assassination, prepared at the request of the King family. That June 2000 report failed to mention important 1968 Justice Department and FBI files linking Marcello and the white supremacists to Dr. King's murder.

The new information about King's assassination uncovered by Waldron and Hartmann bears striking similarities to several white supremacist plots against President Obama which have resulted in arrests in recent months. Arrests related to the Obama plots have taken place in Tennessee, Arkansas, California, Florida, North Carolina, Colorado, and Maine, and some of the charges are still pending. The Associated Press noted that "One of the most popular white supremacist Web sites got more than 2,000 new members the day after [Obama's] election."

The new FBI files described for the first time in "Legacy of Secrecy" indicate that more records remain to be released about Dr. King's murder. Attempts in Congress to pass a Martin Luther King Assassination Records Act, to release all the relevant files, has so far been unsuccessful, even though it was co-sponsored in the past by Senator John Kerry and former Senator Hillary Clinton.

[Michael Hogan]

From The Los Angeles Times

By CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT Art Critic

March 14, 2010

Luc Tuymans: Don't take his images at face value

"The Heritage VI" (1996) is a portrait of the late Joseph Milteer, a notorious Georgia white supremacist who figures in numerous conspiracy theories about the 1963 JFK assassination. Tuymans' painting, based on a widely circulated photograph, adorns the cover of the show's excellent catalog.

Differences between the oil painting and its photographic source grow stark the longer that you look. The painting is gray in tone, recalling the black and white photograph, but instead of black Tuymans employs a dark mix of greenish-brown. The palest blues, pinks and occasional yellows flicker from within the under-painting. Ordinary gray is transformed into something closer to a deathly pallor, like blood draining from flesh or cadaverous decay.

Tuymans has cropped the original photographic portrait just below the chin, which visually pushes it forward, like a close-up. The subtle change enhances a feeling of intimacy between viewer and subject -- a feeling slightly creepy, since odds are the bespectacled, slightly grinning older man with the white pompadour who is now in your face will be recognized by few who see it. Milteer's head is also moved slightly off-center, creating a less static composition than in the camera image. Altogether the portrait shifts from formally posed to momentary -- a casual glance in passing, here nailed down for our proximate inspection.

The picture is anything but photographic in its realism, emphasizing the differences between the camera image on which it is based and the painting that it has become. It has no frame, and the tacks along the sides that hold the canvas to the wooden stretcher bars are left exposed. As if to emphasize the difference and underscore its handmade quality, Tuymans carefully painted around the nails.

Perhaps the most remarkable variation is achieved in the paint-handling: oil pigments laid down in short, quick, almost nervous marks. Tuymans paints all his pictures in one sustained sitting, and if he doesn't like the finished product he throws it away and tries again. Although this small canvas (about 21 by 17 inches) is vertical, nearly every carefully placed, self-evidently applied brush stroke is horizontal -- including the brush strokes that create the vertical drapery folds behind Milteer's head.

The result of all that emphatic, sometimes jittery horizontal motion is a distinct if elusive impression of a blur -- of a face glimpsed on its way by but not truly seen nor remotely understood. "The Heritage VI" flatly contradicts our assumptions about portraiture, which hover around the belief that an artist is somehow exposing the sitter's complex inner life. Do not count on appearances, this acutely considered portrait of a grandfatherly fellow -- a venomous, perhaps even deadly bigot -- calmly but insistently says. Milteer matters because an artist has lavished attention on him, but under no circumstances should you take what you see at face value.

Milteer Image: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/...,0,491951.photo

Full article: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/...0,3094181.story

[Ron Ecker]

If it's true that Atlanta conspirators paid Ray, I wonder why he wasn't eliminated as soon as he got to Atlanta, instead of enabled to travel the globe till his arrest and trial. (Remember Margaret Mitchell? Ray could have been fatally hit by a car in busy Atlanta as soon as he abandoned his.)

[John Dolva]

I've taken some liberties with it. While it may be of no value, there is a logic to representation of that which the artist sees and using those clues to ''reconstruct'' a face on image. I haven't adjusted for width and heigh and not been thorough in some details, but the suggestion is there. An opportunity for an artisticall minded person to apply whatever skills. A prompt.

[Michael Hogan]

If it's true that Atlanta conspirators paid Ray, I wonder why he wasn't eliminated as soon as he got to Atlanta, instead of enabled to travel the globe till his arrest and trial. (Remember Margaret Mitchell? Ray could have been fatally hit by a car in busy Atlanta as soon as he abandoned his.)

Maybe they learned a lesson from Dallas. A dead patsy was potentially more threatening than a living one that had been kept in the dark.

Or maybe the Atlanta connection was framed too, albeit in a different manner.