Original subtitles

I was looking through the peephole of the glass.

As I was watching Dr.

King, I saw him look over toward the boarding house.

And then whenever he looked back, like he was going to look into the parking

area, that's when he'd come up off of the grating, and that's when he was

I would say I was the only one that saw him get shot, actually get shot from the

front.

And it's not no pleasant sight.

I felt very bad inside that this had to happen in Memphis, Tennessee.

The shame of fireman George Lonecky watching Dr. Martin Luther King through

police spy hole at the moment of his death was soon to be shared by many as

weight of world condemnation came down on the city of Memphis on the 4th of

April, 1968.

This was the killing of a major world figure.

How could they have allowed it to happen?

There were even suspicions that the Memphis authorities were accessories to

murder and involved in a cover -up.

Over 20 years later, the man convicted of King's murder, James Earl Ray, still

protests his innocence.

In this film, we show new evidence that there was indeed a conspiracy and that

the trail leads into the heart of government itself.

position is that you are completely innocent? Yes.

I don't have no responsibility for it.

I did commit certain, they probably considered criminal offenses, but they

nothing serious. I probably wouldn't have got over five or ten years for

aggregated.

Would you say that those criminal offenses were related to the case?

No, most of them are related. I escaped from Missouri prison in July 1967 and

went to Canada.

Most of them are related. They have false driver's licenses and fictitious

and all that type of thing.

There's nothing really serious.

Obviously, an individual had to pull the trigger.

I'm not 100 % sure if it would be James Earl Ray. I really don't see how that

could be the case. It's possible, but I don't believe. I believe there was

involvement by James Earl Ray.

The magnitude of the bombing, I don't know. I think there were a number of

forces. I always say the forces of evil. Who that represented, I really don't

know. I would hope that it wouldn't be the government.

You see, when there's an assassination, you have to have a lone nut.

Because a lone nut can kill somebody for no reason.

If you admit that three or four people were involved or that there was, to use

an overworked term, conspiracy, then you have to say, well, the conspiracy had a

reason. Well, they don't ever want to face that reason. What was the reason

Kennedy was killed? What was the reason why King was killed?

By having a lone nut, you don't have to ask that question.

We concluded that James Earl Ray was, in fact, the person who murdered

Dr.

Martin Luther King.

We also felt that in all probability there was a conspiracy.

However, we were unable to name any conspirators.

I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I

a dream that one day this nation will rise up.

Live out the true meaning of its creed.

We hold these truths to be self -evident that all men are created equal.

By the early 1960s, the government was publicly supporting Martin Luther King.

Privately, they targeted him as a threat to the stability of the United States.

President Kennedy said on one occasion, mankind must put an end to war.

A war.

will put an end to mankind.

The world must hear this.

I pray God that America will hear this before it is too late, because today we

are fighting a war.

I'm convinced that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought

in the history of the world.

By 1968, King's stance on the Vietnam War and his plans for a poor people's

march to disrupt Washington... put him on a collision course with President

Lyndon Johnson.

When King came to Memphis in the spring of 1968 to support the city's striking

garbage workers, he led a march which ended in violent disarray. The National

Guard was called in, and an atmosphere of tension and fear hung over the city.

We've got some difficult days ahead, but it really doesn't matter with me now,

because I've been to the mountaintop.

After leaving a trail of false identities, small -time crook James Earl

arrested at Heathrow Airport in London.

He was brought back to the States and sentenced to 99 years after pleading

guilty to King's murder.

With a trial that lasted only two and a half hours, suspicions were raised.

Was the verdict rushed through to cover up a conspiracy?

I don't give a continental damn whether there was a conspiracy or not. Well, Mr.

Pullman, did you ever ask your client whether he was a part of a conspiracy,

whether he'd been hired?

No, I never asked him that, but I asked him enough other questions to convince

me that he was not.

Did you ever feel that you could ever do more than save his life? Never at any

time, and so told him from the day I came in.

When Foreman came in the case, he was off for a trial, at least he pretended

be, and everything went okay up until sometime in February of 1969. We were

going to trial up until then, and one time he came in with the...

Paper one mean signing saying that you know, we enter a guilty plea He give me

list of reasons why we should enter a plea He also said the newspapers done

convicted me by pretrial publicity So I told him I didn't think that was the

grounds for an inner guilty plea because I thought we could Overcome some of

this adverse publicity during your trial.

He is the next gamut was that if I didn't enter a guilty plea they might

brother Jerry Ray in prison for as a co -conspirator.

He also indicated to defy forced him to trial, he wouldn't put forth his best

efforts. Are you actually stating that you never recommended to Mr. Ray that he

plead guilty? I have so stated, I state again, I never have recommended to any

client. I did tell him the facts as I saw them. I told him I thought he would

convicted. I told him I thought he would be executed.

And I had to tell him that because that was the truth.

Foreman's assertion that he didn't coerce Ray into a guilty plea is belied

the letter he wrote to him on the eve of the trial.

Foreman's fee was coming from a book contract.

Ray asked for $500 so that his brother could hire a new lawyer.

Foreman agreed, quote, contingent on the plea of guilty going through without

any unseemly conduct on your part in court.

So Mr. Foreman came to see me, and we discussed it, and I told him that I

as in every case, where appropriate, accept a guilty plea.

on the basis of a 99 -year sentence.

I talked to the governor of Tennessee, the United States Attorney General, the

Department of Justice.

I did this as a matter of courtesy. They did not ever interfere with the way I

conducted the prosecution of the case.

It's only recently become apparent that there was a conflict of interest in the

court's appointment of Hugh Stanton Sr. to assist Ray's lawyer, Percy Foreman,

in Ray's defense.

Stanton had also acted as lawyer for the state's chief witness against Ray,

Charles Stevens.

Did you ever consider that Hugh Stanton was in a conflict of interest

because he'd also represented Charlie Stevens?

Was that ever considered?

No, as a matter of fact, I believe you're right that Mr. Stanton did.

I believe Mr.

Stevens finally got somebody else. I don't know, but no, we didn't consider

any... You're telling me something that I...

If that's a fact, I had forgotten it. But whatever it was, nothing came up to

bother us about it.

Dr. Bill Pepper is James Earl Ray's current lawyer. As a journalist in 1967,

wrote a major article on the effect of the war on the children of Vietnam, and

this brought him into contact with Dr. King.

Disturbed by the circumstances surrounding Ray's trial, he's been

investigating the assassination ever since.

I think it's quite clear that...

The first suggestion of a guilty plea was made by co -counsel Stanton on

December 18th, the very day he was appointed.

He was appointed co -counsel in the morning, as I recall from the record,

o 'clock that afternoon he was already in the prosecutor's office having had a

quick word with Percy Foreman suggesting that James Earl Ray should plead guilty

and the state should accept that plea.

It is also, I think, quite clear that it was...

around 60 days later, when James had the subject broke to him by Percy

Foreman at that point in time.

The effect of the guilty plea was to prevent the state's case against Ray

scrutinized in public.

In our view, that case is seriously flawed.

The state's case is that at 6 .01 p .m. on April 4, 1968... In Memphis,

Tennessee, James Earl Ray shot Dr. King with one bullet from a high -powered

rifle. King was standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.

The state said that Ray fired from the bathroom window of a rooming house 200

feet away.

He then fled the scene, dropping a bundle, including the rifle with his

on it, in a shop doorway.

Then he drove off in his white Mustang down Main Street moments before the

police arrived.

James Earl Ray had been almost a year on the run from the Missouri State

Penitentiary where he'd been serving a 20 -year sentence for robbing a

supermarket. Ray claims that in July 1967, he met a mysterious character

Raoul in Montreal.

Over the next eight months, he carried out various assignments for Raoul.

taking packages across the Canadian and Mexican borders for money.

Raoul gave Ray $2 ,000 to buy a Mustang car.

In late March 1968, Ray says that Raoul instructed him to purchase a rifle and

bring it to Memphis as a sample for a gun -running deal.

Ray says that at 3 p .m. on April 4th, he rented a room in a flophouse on Main

Street, as previously agreed with Raoul.

Later, Raoul asked Ray to leave while he met up with gun dealers.

So I went down and got the Mustang.

I don't know what time it was that time. I guess it was 10 minutes to 6.

My recollection may be wrong. I drove, I thought it was three, four blocks north

and three, four blocks west and stopped at the service station and asked them to

fix the tire, if they could fix the tire. And this guy was, he said, no,

too busy this time of day. So then I drove around. I was going to circle

back and park the car at the same place that I'd picked it up.

When I got back up there, I'm...

I think there was a squad car blocked off the street. Now, I don't know if

right there at the intersection or he's about halfway down, but the street was

blocked off, and I seen two, three people running around out here. So I

well, I better not go down there. There's a police running around here. So

turned left, drove down to a predominantly black section. So after a

got on to a main street, and I was going to call this telephone number in New

Orleans and find out if they could contact Ronald and see if anything

out here, because I thought maybe there was guns around there.

It's some type of raid or something.

Anyway, when I was driving out there, they said something about the... I had

radio on. It said something about Martin Luther King had been shot.

I didn't think too much about that. And then about 10 minutes later, when I was

on the outskirts of Memphis, or maybe I was actually in Mississippi, it said

that they were looking for a white man in a white Mustang in connection with a

shooting. So I decided then that I'd better, you know, move on out of there.

drove on and cut off and went to Atlanta. And from Atlanta, I, you know,

to Canada, caught a bus.

For 20 years now, Ray has claimed that he was framed for the assassination of

Dr. King by Raoul, who, he believes, was a professional gunman.

If the assassin had fired the shot from the bathroom window, he would then have

had to get out of the bath, put the rifle in its box, run to his room to

the bundle.

then run 85 feet across the hallway, go down the stairs, drop the bundle in the

shop entrance before walking to his car and driving away.

All rather implausible. It would have required split -second timing before the

first policeman arrived at the scene.

Veteran assassinations investigator Harold Weisberg has obtained more FBI

documents on the King case than anyone else. He was one of the first people to

cast doubts on the state's case against Ray in his book, Cover Up. That's

ridiculous.

He's required to have gone to his room in the flop house and picked up the

widest collection of junk.

Bobby pins.

Bobby pins.

Cans of beer that hadn't been opened.

You know, a guy has been a crime like that and he's fleeing for his life.

going to pick up a couple cans of beer or a bobby pin?

The box didn't hold the rifle. He had to put the rifle in that. All sorts of

other junk. A ridiculous collection of it.

The one thing that that bundle served to do was to point a finger at Ray.

We were in the fire station when we heard the shot.

One of the first policemen to arrive at the balcony was Sheriff's Deputy Vernon

Dollarhite.

Officer Maley and I proceeded north on Mulberry to Hewling Street.

We turned west on Hewling and ran up towards Main.

and there's an alley behind the buildings where the shot was fired from.

I directed Officer Maley to take up a position there.

He was armed with a shotgun and a pistol and guard the alley.

I proceeded on up to Main Street.

I turned to go south on Main Street, checking those buildings.

I proceeded on south, checking all the doors of all the establishments.

There's one place called Jim's Bar and Grill. The door was open. I entered the

building, and I told them there'd been some trouble.

Everybody stay inside, and I backed out of the building. At that time, I

observed a rifle, a blue suitcase, and a green blanket laying on the sidewalk.

Did you see the package with the rifle when you went into Jim'sville? I did

After I came outside, I turned to my right.

Facing south, I immediately saw it.

I feel sure that I would have observed it as I came down the sidewalk because

was very noticeable and I would have seen it.

How long were you in Jim's Grill?

Not more than 10 to 12, 15 seconds at the most.

Three different policemen have claimed to be the first to find the weapon.

Astonishingly, even after 20 years, this question remains unresolved.

But the fact is that Dollahite was certainly in Main Street within less

minutes of the shooting.

I think it's very significant that a bundle of the alleged murder weapon

appeared within two minutes on the street after the assassination.

I think it's also significant that he didn't see it the first time that he

out. And it is very possible that... Someone was lying in wait in the

entranceway to the rooming house and then only came out and dropped it

after he went into Jim's grill.

Do you think that person was the assassin or was it somebody else?

I don't believe that person was the assassin.

I believe that the person who dropped the bundle in all likelihood had a very

specific role to play and it was placing the bundle there. I don't believe the

assassin was in the rooming house at all.

and that this is just a part of disinformation.

So where do you believe the shot was fired from?

After considering this issue over many years and balancing the variety of

factors, I think it's quite likely that the shot was in fact fired from behind

the rooming house, under the cover, and from within the cover of the brush on

the bushes. It's the rear of the rooming house.

Solomon Jones, King's chauffeur, was standing under the balcony when King was

shot.

I interviewed Solomon Jones in the lobby of the St. Joseph's Hospital

approximately about 7 .05.

This was a story he told all of us. As soon as the shot was fired, he looked

over the limousine. He saw a sniper with a white sheet on his face ducked back

down into the bushes.

A few seconds later, he rose out of the bushes without the sheet, walked to the

wall, jumped down from the wall.

And you must understand that other people were coming out of the fire

the same time, jumping from the wall.

Solomon said the person he saw in the bushes joined in with the people jumping

from the wall, jumped from the wall, walked on the premises, and he said he

scared. New York Times reporter Earl Caldwell was staying in motel room 215

he heard the shot.

What I saw, this man just very clearly rise out of these bushes. He was in sort

of a...

crouched, stooping position.

I did not see a weapon in this man's hands, but I saw this figure directly

across from the motel. And also, of course, the man in the bushes was a

man. From the day of the assassination until this day, no police, no FBI agent

has ever come to me and said, what did you see?

The only person the state named who identified Ray as the man who left the

rooming house after the shot was Charles Quitman Stevens.

Good customers.

Bought a lot of beer in my place.

Got drunk every day that I bought it.

On the day of the shooting of Martin Luther King, he came downstairs in the

afternoons. Come down, I'd just gotten to work at 4 o 'clock, so come down

4 .10 after I'd arrived at work.

He was too drunk for me to sell him beer, then arrested, so I sold him two

quarts of beer to go.

We tracked down cab driver James McGraw, who got a call to pick up Stevens from

the rooming house that day.

Mr.

Stevens, what do you think of that picture? Does that look like the man?

Well, from the glimpse that I got of his profile, it

doesn't.

It doesn't? No, sir. It certainly doesn't.

For one thing,

he's too heavy. His face is too full.

He has too much hair.

and his nose is too wide.

So, Stevens was drunk that afternoon and failed to identify a picture of Ray.

Yet he was regarded as such an important witness that he was kept in protective

custody for weeks before the trial.

After Ray's conviction, Stevens claimed the $185 ,000 in reward money. His claim

was rejected.

This is probably the most crucial exhibit in the case. The rifle is so

guarded by the authorities that it's never been filmed before.

Where's the evidence that this rifle killed Dr. King?

We invited one of the most renowned ballistic experts in America, Herbert

MacDonald, to review the ballistics evidence in the actual bathroom from

the shot is alleged to have been fired.

He's using an identical rifle.

I'm standing on the floor and the bathtub is no longer in this physical

configuration. With this setting, with this scope on this rifle and that window

at three and a half inches, I'm looking partially into the window.

But that only cut the light down very slightly. I have a very excellent view

the balcony.

With this scope, it would be an easy shot for someone like myself who knows

how to breathe and position themselves for a shot and to very gently squeeze

trigger.

An inexperienced person, it would be a more difficult shot, considerably more

difficult, especially standing in the bathtub.

There was no evidence that Ray ever fired a rifle in his life.

That's a mechanical skill, and to be a good shot, you've got to keep it in just

like a constant pianist or a constant violinist practices daily.

The only piece of physical evidence that appeared to link the rifle to this

bathroom was a dent in the windowsill.

That is the exact width and length of an indentation that I examined in the

windowsill in Memphis in 1974.

The dent, therefore, since it has no microscopic characteristics...

It has no individual characteristics and certainly does not reflect either the

geometry or any of the microscopic scratches on the barrel.

They just would not be reproduced.

This dent could never have been made by this weapon.

And the point about the dent is that it was used to demonstrate as evidence that

the rifle was fired from this room.

They fed the dent from the rifle on the window sill, therefore it was fired from

this room. That's ridiculous.

That does not prove anything.

I took several pictures of the bullet, including every land and groove.

This is just one of them. I had been told that the bullet was so badly

that identification would be impossible.

There is a great amount of lands and groove area for comparison.

I would say that the FBI's decision not to test fire the rifle.

When they want to see if a projectile came from a specific rifle, it was a

poor case of judgment.

Their reasoning that it was mushroomed and distorted so badly that it was

unsuitable for comparison purposes is absolutely ludicrous.

It had excellent characteristics, and they should have tested it.

Was the FBI's failure to test the weapon just incompetence, or, more ominously,

are we beginning to pull back the veils of conspiracy and cover -up among the

authorities?

Consider the actions of the Memphis Police Department.

Usually when a king would come to Memphis, well, even I, if

he was at the church or something, we would, maybe I'd have maybe 20 men

that block.

He had plenty of security.

He was coming, we'd have men at the airport to meet him, and we tried to

him more security than we could give him.

If security was always supplied to Dr. King, why was the seven -man police unit

attached to him stripped away only 24 hours before the assassination?

Under close questioning from the House Assassinations Committee, Memphis Police

Director Frank Holliman denied that he had authorized the removal or had known

about it at the time.

On top of that, it's a matter of public record that three 12 -man police

tactical units were pulled back five blocks from the vicinity of the Lorraine

Motel on the morning of the assassination.

Now, on this occasion, the tax car units were withdrawn at some point on the day

of the 4th of April, weren't they?

No, my cars was never withdrawn.

Well,

April 4th?

No, we still had cars in the area.

Wasn't it some suggestion that they were pulled back at the request of one of

Dr. King's party, that they were pulled back a number of blocks?

No, to my knowledge now, and all the way they've been pulled back was on

my command.

Philip Melanson, author of the recent book The Merkin Conspiracy, has made a

special study of the issue.

I questioned Sam Evans about the withdrawal of the tactical units because

was a very important matter.

Evans told me clearly and forcefully that the tactical units were withdrawn.

at the request of the Reverend Samuel Kiles, a man in King's entourage, and

he, Evans, had received the order, the request from Mr. Kiles, and had acceded

to it. And he told me that flatly two years ago.

Could Melanson's book refresh Sam Evans' memory?

No, I didn't pull my man back.

Why is Sam Evans now being evasive on this important issue?

Is it because the official excuse for removing the tax cars just does not ring

true?

For someone in the SCLC to have instructed, quote -unquote, the Memphis

to move back those tactical units would be laughable in that situation.

And it's absurd to think that the Memphis Police Department would have

to that request. These tactical units were riot control forces that were there

to keep the lid on the Lorraine and monitor King.

And if he or anybody in his party had told them to move back, I think they

have increased the surveillance net or begun to look more sharply for trouble.

It's unthinkable that they would simply be that accommodating.

Colonel Fletcher Prouty was chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs

Staff at the Pentagon in the 60s. When Kennedy was killed, Prouty resigned,

suspecting an enemy within.

The policemen are taught to go to where there's been a murder and solve the

murder. And just consider either of the Kennedy cases or the King cases, the

thing you notice most is that the police stood with their hands down and did

nothing.

There were no on -the -spot detectives. There was nobody really looking into the

ballistics. There was no one checking any of the things that the police would

have gotten into in the first place.

So there's where you begin to see the cover -up patterns. Somebody has told

police department, stay away from this.

Now, they don't tell them that way.

They say, look, because this was Mr. King in town, we have a special group of

Secret Service or a special group of whatever here. And so the police think,

well, that's covered. We're not needed. But in any event, they're away.

In Dallas, I know for a fact myself that there was an army unit we intended to

use in Dallas for protection on the streets, simply to watch everybody,

the windows, watch everything.

The commander of that army unit had received a call, a very simple call,

we don't need your unit. He knows there are other units, so he thinks they're

going to use somebody else's unit.

The next day he found out there were no units there. Well, it's too late then,

you see. Who made the call to that colonel?

In Memphis, there is evidence that the secret service did influence the

activities of the police.

Ed Redditt was a detective in a surveillance post at the fire station.

You could see the back of the back, and you could see all of the courtyard of

Lorraine, like the office, the whole bit from there, all the way down to the

corner of the building. You could see everything around Lorraine.

Then Lieutenant Arkin arrived and stated that I was wanted at the headquarters.

I said, for what? He said, I don't know. He said, get in the car. Let's go. I

was told to bring you back.

As I viewed the room, there appeared to be numerous law enforcement people from

all of the various agencies, local, county, state, and nationally. Director

Frank Holliman stated that the man standing across from me was a secret

from Washington, stating that there was a contract out on my life.

At that time, he told an archer to take me home and wait until someone arrived

to guard me.

Once we arrived at my house, while seated in the car awaiting the security

me. Being there, I imagine, on more than five or ten minutes, the radio by

Assault .King had been shot.

From various sources, we've been able to piece together that the information

about the assassination attempt on Detective Redditt did indeed come direct

Chief Holloman from a Secret Service man in Washington.

This departmental communication reveals that by 4 .15 that afternoon...

Lieutenant Arkin of the Memphis Police Department had been alerted by a phone

call from the FBI that the assassination threat attributed to Redditt was a

mistake.

So why was Chief Holloman sending Redditt home at 5pm, three quarters of

later? He testified to Congress that he was not told of the mistake at that

time.

Lieutenant Arkin, then head of the police intelligence unit, can have no

excuse. He received the phone call and then personally took Redditt home.

The reasons for his actions are unexplained. He refused to be

this program.

The Reddit affair represents the distraction of the Memphis Police

a false intelligence report from Washington that was inputted into the

Police Department within hours before the assassination, and that seemed to

distracted everyone in the department to the extent that they were off on

missions and having meetings, and that's very significant. The fact that Reddit

had a different assignment is not the entire affair. Where that information

from about a false threat, why and how it was taken seriously, and what its

distraction factor was is the importance.

I think that has yet to be fathomed.

In the famous Lao photograph of the associates of Dr. King pointing away

the motel and toward the rooming house, there was for a long time a mystery

about the person who was kneeling over Dr.

King, checking him for life signs.

That person was Meryl McCullough, who somehow, when hearing the shot,

streaked up the stairs to the balcony and checked Dr. King.

He was an undercover operative for the Memphis Police Department, but reporting

directly to an intelligence officer of the Memphis Police Department.

Part of a web of covert action conducted by the security forces in Memphis,

Meryl McCulloch was just one of the shadowy figures involved.

We learned from a police source that the owner of the Lorraine Motel was a

police informer. So was Dr. King's chauffeur.

The FBI had informers among black groups in Memphis and in the heart of King's

party, the SCLC.

This hidden network was partially revealed in a secret intelligence report

written by Lieutenant Arkin.

Apart from McCulloch, codename Max, the report also discloses another agent as

yet unidentified, codename Bill.

Whether these spies had a sinister purpose is unclear.

Certainly they failed to prevent the assassination.

A decade later... the Memphis Police Department was still concealing their

actions, providing the House Assassinations Committee with a version

report that was clearly doctored.

Congressman, would it surprise you if a document supplied to your committee by

the Memphis Police Department had in any way been sanitized or doctored?

It would surprise me because I'm not aware of any document given our

by the Memphis Police Department that was sanitized or doctored.

The secret intelligence report was definitely doctored. The version that I

which was the original version, was fuller and material was excised for the

congressional report. It leaves out crucial details such as Mr. McCulloch

his spying role. It leaves out many of the other details and it factors in

things that didn't happen in the original data.

Links between the police and the FBI were unusually strong in Memphis.

Not only was Fire and Police Chief Holloman running the Memphis FBI in the

60s, but he also worked for seven years in charge of the office of FBI Director

J. Edgar Hoover.

The Communist Party of the United States is a fifth column if there ever was

one.

It is far better organized than were the Nazis in occupied countries prior to

their capitulation.

They are seeking to weaken America, just as they did in their era of

obstruction.

When they were aligned with the Nazis, their goal is the overthrow of our

government. During the course of our investigation, we revealed the fact that

the mission of the FBI was to destroy Dr. King. That is all documented in the

course of our reports, and we did criticize him severely for

the illegal, unconstitutional way in which his civil rights were violated.

It certainly was immoral, illegal, and unethical for the Bureau to use

its power to try to destroy Dr.

King, and particularly to do so by falsifying information.

And they did falsify it over and over and over again.

And he should know, Arthur Murtag was FBI agent in Atlanta for 11 years.

I was designated as the agent in Atlanta.

to handle black probe the black probe was a program set up to develop

and black organizations to keep the bureau advised of the activities of

in connection with the civil rights movement during that period i spent a

my time developing black informants and these were generally paid informants

during that same period there was a vendetta against king that

gained in momentum as the years went by, and I was in a room with my

seven other agents for the whole period while the wiretap was on.

Across the street from their office in downtown Atlanta, the FBI took a seventh

-floor apartment for a 24 -hour -a -day bugging operation on King's office,

house, and hotel bedrooms.

This was initiated by Hoover, who was at first convinced that King was under

communist influence, then became obsessed.

with the wiretap revelations of King's sexual promiscuity.

The FBI were guilty of bugging and harassing, but were they guilty of

more sinister?

It was about between 6 and 7. I remember that it was beginning to get dark, and

I was standing at the sign -out desk with another agent, and the news came

the radio that Dr.

King had been shot and killed in Memphis.

And this agent at that... moment uh turned to me and uh

hit his fist together like that and said something to the effect by god we

finally got him did he say they finally got him or we finally got him no he said

we finally got them got him that was what it was the we that uh

stuck in my mind he didn't say they he said we

I see the Constitution as a framework which is in the process of development,

and it's our job as Americans to constantly embellish the

Constitution and build it into a type of system, not necessarily just a

document, that will result in equal rights, equal opportunity for

all Americans.

And I take this very, very seriously. I always have.

And when I saw the Bureau and saw the way that it was working, saw what they

were trying to do to King, I felt that we had within our own country a sort of

fifth column trying to destroy the purposes of the Constitution.

It is not enough to simply say the FBI did it.

or retired FBI agents or former FBI agents killed Dr. King. I mean, that has

been a view that 10 years ago was certainly much in vogue, but it's much

complicated than that.

In early 1968, Myron Billet, a gopher for the mafia, drove two senior mob

figures, Sam Giancana and John Roselli, to a meeting with federal agents at a

motel near the small town of Appalachian.

in upstate New York.

At the meeting, the Mafia leaders were offered a contract to kill Martin Luther

King.

The FBI and the CIA were the ones that came up with the hit.

They wanted to come up with a new order.

They wanted to pay the mob a new order and make a hit.

And Sam said, no way.

There's no way we're going to get involved in nothing like that.

And that was it.

Who was it who made the suggestion?

The CIA now or the FBI now? CIA now.

Myron Billet is a dying man.

We think it's unlikely that he would tell such a story now if it weren't

And it's documented fact that Rosselli and Giancana were contracted by the CIA

to kill Castro.

If they rejected the CIA's offer on King, there is evidence that a contract

local mob figures in Memphis may have been affected.

In Memphis, we were aware of several frightened witnesses.

Bill Pepper is taking us to see one of them. I found a very fearful man with

John. I found him very fearful then, and I find him now increasingly fearful.

The first night I saw him, he insisted on retiring to a room in the back of the

garage general store and sitting with the lights out. I saw him again, and he

always reminded me that he wasn't really on duly paranoid, but that, in fact, he

had been shot at, and people had attempted to kill him, and he had been

up.

He at one point was hospitalized.

There's a basis for his profound uneasiness. I don't know whether he'll

us this afternoon.

Keep out the lights.

Well, we have a very frightened man.

He's just very, very afraid to come on camera and to say anything about this

matter.

Tell us what's his story.

On April 4th, 1968, at 5 .15 in the afternoon, John McFerrin went to Liberto

Latch Produce Company to do his shopping. It was the last stop of the

coming back to summer.

Shortly after he entered the place, he heard a man who he originally called the

Fat Man, Frank Liberto, on the telephone.

Heard Liberto...

say words to the effect, shoot the son of a bitch when he comes on the balcony.

Don't come around here.

Don't call me here.

Go to New Orleans and pick up your money from my brother.

The conversation ended at that point.

The parent didn't think too much about that conversation until 6 .30 p .m. He

heard that Martin Luther King had been assassinated shortly after 6. Then it

made sense to him. He gave a statement to the FBI, Memphis Police Department.

investigators, and eventually the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

They all disregarded his comments and ignored.

I've known John for 10 years. I believe John had a crucial bit of information

that was never looked at properly, never followed up, and disregarded. And the

only reason it would have been disregarded was because it was

the scenario that became, in effect, the official story.

What's the evidence of mafia involvement with the CIA in assassinations? Colonel

Fletcher Prouty was head of special operations in the Pentagon in the 1960s.

I certainly knew of plans that were intended to bring about an

for example, in the case of Castro.

So they created an organization called Mongoose. Mongoose was the cover word

it. Now, the objective of the Mongoose program was...

to assassinate Castro by any means.

We even used mafia hitmen, skilled mechanics, skilled killers.

Now, there's no reason to believe that Mongoose ended when somebody decided

that, well, we're not going to kill Castro this year, we'll let it go.

But Mongoose is an assassination incorporated organization.

From your experience in government, Fletcher, do you think it conceivable

secret intelligence unit could have planned and carried out the

Martin Luther King?

you needn't have to include the word intelligence unit it's just a secret

and there's no question about it being a unit anybody that thinks today that

either kennedy assassination either one of them or the king assassination and

others that we might go into we're done by individuals just doesn't understand

that doesn't understand the business at all the easiest way to see that the

program is laid on you know team effort carefully planned and carried out begins

after the murder. It's how to get them out of there and how to cover the thing

so people don't realize that a team of gunmen did the job. Martin Luther King

was registered on the first floor.

Somebody went there ahead of time and told the landlady of the motel that he

didn't want to be on the first floor. He wanted to be on the second floor.

Nobody in King's party had made that contact.

You see, that's the advanced planning.

Then afterwards, all the things that happened, the chase of Ray halfway

the world and all the other things that came up, are a cover plan which is so

complete that even to this day no one has broken the system completely and you

can't get into the courts anyway they claim that their file only had his

travels and world reaction to his death. I have a memo to that effect.

But the documents that were released to me show something entirely different,

and that is that they had an operational interest in Dr. King. They were worried

about communist influences upon him, as described by the FBI, and they were very

much concerned, as was the FBI, that King's opposition to the war was

by communists and was a subversion of the United States' Vietnam War effort.

From 1965 until after King's death.

A leading white civil rights campaigner, J. Richard Kennedy, met regularly with

a CIA contact and briefed him on King's actions.

He's agreed to talk about this for the first time on television.

Here comes Martin Luther King.

He marches out and he says, a plague on this war.

Don't fight in it.

Turn your guns the other way.

Well, the fact that millions of middle class whites...

whose sons were going into this war and who believed in it.

You just tug at this, boom.

What do you think they did? Just exactly what they did. They quit.

With his own hand, he killed the coalition and he killed the revolution.

Don't ever blame your allies if you're the leader of the revolution.

You're supposed to get it right.

Kennedy believed that King was under the influence of Peking -led Marxists

within the SCLC.

Well, first of all, you start with the people in Beijing.

pays in the United States.

When they start moving from one field to another, you have to assume that

Beijing has asked them to.

The Black Panthers and the Muslims, the Black Muslims, had moved straight into

the King headquarters.

They had gotten out imprint books in the thoughts of Mao.

They were selling them.

And a journal that purported to list the financial contributions of the Mao

Zedong government in the United States listed the Black Panthers.

the black Muslims, and several other black organizations as being now on the

payroll of Mao Zedong.

Do you think the CIA, when you told them about this, about King, took you

seriously? Did they take me seriously?

I don't know.

How are we knowing someone takes us seriously?

I don't know.

I suppose I would have to judge by the fact that they did work that sector of

the CIA. Let's be careful.

that agreed with Kennedy, the president, and were friends of mine and agreed

with me. I think they took me seriously on all these things because they were

facts.

You see, I didn't give these people information. Let's be clear about

I never gave the CIA any information. It would be absurd and pertinent of me to

think I could.

They had people all over the place.

They wanted information, they got it.

What they got from me was an interpretation of information.

I think that Kennedy's statements about King being controlled by Peking line

communists may appear to be absurd to us now and absurd to us then if we had

known about them, but quite likely were believed by the agency and by the people

who were reading them. And I think they heightened the paranoia and the fear

about Dr. King and what would happen should he not be stopped.

So when you run into data that says the FBI did this or the CIA did that,

you have to be very careful or you have to investigate a little further because

what it really is probably is the overlap of the two.

The strongest evidence of an FBI and CIA involvement with the assassination

begins with a trail that starts here in Toronto with the aliases or alternative

identities used by James Earl Ray.

In 1967, two months after escaping from prison, Ray began using different

identities at every opportunity.

Four names recur.

All four are real, perfectly innocent people living within a one and a half

radius of each other in a Toronto suburb.

All four had similar physical characteristics to Ray.

One name, Eric Galt, was used by Ray over an entire nine month period prior

his assassination.

When King was killed, the name of the man police thought they were hunting was

Eric Galt.

A sharpshooter with relatives in Rhodesia, Galt could indeed have been a

plausible assassin.

His similarities to Ray are remarkable.

Ray has a scar on his forehead, so has Galt.

The scar on my forehead runs from one eye across to the other one. It's right

over the bridge of the nose.

The other scar that I think Ray has would be on the plastic surgery, which

on the tip of my nose.

One month before the assassination, using Galt's name, Ray had plastic

on his nose. In addition, Ray and Galt both have scars on their right hands.

Coincidences that really fascinated me was the fact that when I was in Ottawa

an Ontario Council meeting, Ray, who had been there, was in two blocks of where

I was.

While I was in Montreal on another occasion, Ray was also in an area, was

couple of blocks of where I had stayed.

Identification that he would pick up on me would be absolutely remote.

I don't think there's any way that he has gotten my name out of some

How did Ray get access to these identities?

It's recently come to light that Eric Galt's details were in a top security

because of his work on a then -secret defense contract for the Union Carbide

Company in Toronto.

There are files in every company that we have defense contracts with, very, very

elaborate files, because they want to know who they're dealing with. I myself

have had access to Canadian and Australian and British material that

countries considered secret, top secret and all, and in exchange we provided our

material. So if you were going to fabricate a record for somebody or use

somebody else's record as a cover, that could be done, even though it involved

two countries or three countries.

The alias of this question is crucial because it was unexplained by official

investigations, and it's obviously central to this case.

James Earl Ray was able to use the names of people who looked like him, who were

totally innocent, and in the case of Mr. Galt, who shared uncanny

characteristics with Ray, when Ray had no capacity to have gone to Toronto and

scouted these names out or gotten them from a file. And to me, that means they

were provided to Ray, which means a conspiracy.

I really don't recall the Galt name where I got it. And there's a couple of

others I don't recall the details of.

You weren't supplied with a package of alias or identities at one stage?

No, I was never supplied with that. I was supplied with money and things of

nature, but I was never given any alias.

It would have been more simple to give me a passport than give me all those

phony names to look up.

It was here in July of that year that Ray first started using the Galt name,

here also in July that he claimed to have met the man he knew as Raoul.

After Ray's arrest in May 1968, a Canadian journalist, Andy Salwin, in

evidence of Raoul, came across the footsteps of a mysterious American a few

blocks from where Ray had been living in Montreal.

His name was Jules Rico Kimball.

Kimball's girlfriend told Salwin that Kimball kept guns and explosives in his

car. made frequent phone calls to New Orleans, and was known to her as Rollo.

Was Kimball riled, or could he be linked with Ray in any way?

Sowern couldn't get to him, could we?

So we came to New Orleans, a city frequented by both Jules Rico Kimball

James Earl Ray, where in the 1960s the CIA, the FBI, and the Mafia at times

worked together in an unholy alliance.

We came here on the trail of Kimball and discovered that a famous district

attorney, now a judge, interviewed Kimball as part of his inquiry into the

Orleans connection to the Kennedy assassination.

In the early part of our investigation into John Kennedy's murder, one of the

most interesting individuals we encountered was Jules Rico Kimball.

We learned from him about his relationship as, you might say, a spear

for the CIA here in New Orleans, his relationship with David Ferry and Clay

Shaw, who were considerably more than spear carriers, who were involved here

New Orleans with the New Orleans and the murder of John Kennedy, and about Jules

Rico Kimball's trip to Montreal, a town where he seemed to be knowledgeable, but

we weren't able to get much more than that.

But in the final sum of things, spear carrier or not, Jules Rico Kimball was a

small load, but a rich one with a few specks of gold and

most useful in giving us insights into the role of the covert intelligence

operation in the murder of John Kennedy.

Then we talked to New Orleans private investigator Joe Oster, who'd done

extensive surveillance on Kimball in 1967 because he was a suspect in the

bombing of a left -wing union leader.

Could Kimball have been in Montreal at the same time as Ray?

Up to now, nobody's been able to answer this key question.

But there is a week in July 1967 when no one can account for Kimball's

movements.

We interviewed his in -laws, interviewed his relations, we interviewed his wife.

We had his home under surveillance, and we cannot account for that week, week

and a half of where he was.

So he could have been in Montreal.

He could have been anywhere.

He could have been in Montreal.

Where is Kimball now? With the help of Foster's contacts, we finally tracked

Kimball down to a federal penitentiary.

My name is Jules Ron Kimball. I'm 45 years old. I'm doing a double life

for organized crime and racketeering and murder for underworld killings.

Worked for the government and CIA for quite a few years. I worked on different

things. I was a Google client, a BFB invasion to the assassination

of President Kennedy.

Can you tell us the story of how you got connected to Montreal?

I had a contact there, and I would visit up there.

At that time, CIA was working at...

They had a, I can't think of the name of it right now, but it was the Quebec,

you know, the Free Canada, which was the French were trying to take over there.

And I went up there, I started going up there, went down and done, I had done a

couple of jobs up there for them.

Can you give me a clue as to what kind of work you did up there for them?

I had done two murders for them there, yes.

In Canada.

Were they political things?

Yes, some of the political things. There was, I think, the CIA front.

See, CIA bail back anybody as long as they can put a man on the inside.

Campbell says he was introduced to an FBI agent in New Orleans and put on the

payroll of the FBI to undertake assignments.

This agent told him to meet Ray at Atlanta Airport and fly him to Canada.

Yeah, mister told me to pick him up.

Told me to pick up and go to Atlanta to Charlie Brown Airport.

And this guy would meet me there.

And I went there, and I stayed there. And he asked me, what's my name? I said,

yes, you're so passionate.

I said, okay, well, I'm ready to go. I took him to a place on Mount Royal

Street, which is in Montreal itself.

And I had a contact there. It was a CIA front in the building.

And I got him his fake identification stuff.

He would give you a whole makeup, you know.

Well, good one, you know, that would stand any kind of security, you know.

you could travel with it just like if you travel on your own and not even

about it, you know.

It was legitimate.

How do you know that this place was a CIA front?

It, uh, uh, well, back when I first went to Canada, I was given that

information.

I went there and I gave him a code and he recognized me, you know.

I was told what to say when I got there to him.

It was a business place.

And I just went there and no problem.

How did you know that the man you picked up that day later on was James Earl

Ray?

I threw another contact I had.

They told me that they were going to use him for a job at that time.

So did you fly him back to America after his visit?

No, I didn't.

Not him. I threw somebody else back.

Now, his story is that he met a man called Raoul.

It sounds like that part of Raoul was you.

And they call me Rico.

So would you say that at least for the Canadian part of Ray's story, you were

Raoul?

Ah, yes, uh -huh.

Yes.

Later in the interview, Kimball claimed that he had assisted Ray after the

assassination.

Yeah, I blew it from down in Montreal, yes.

And turned him over.

The people are.

Can you clarify that?

What did you do after the assassination?

What did I do after the assassination? What did I do after the assassination? I

told you I flew into Canada after the assassination.

So can I show you a picture in front of you and ask you whether you recognize

him or have you seen him before?

No,

I don't believe I do.

There was a person that looked similar to him in this Jim's grill I mentioned a

while ago.

But that's been 20 years ago, and it would be difficult for me to remember

what he looked like. I gave a description of the person I saw in

course, like I mentioned, that's been 20 years ago, and I don't think they'll

ever... His name is George Rico Kimball.

Yes.

Now, he's in prison at the moment. He specifically alleged that he flew you

to Canada and assisted you in gaining your...

identities from a character in Montreal.

Is there any truth in that at all? No, there's no truth in that whatsoever.

I don't know.

I've never had any contact with him.

Possibly I've seen him, but I don't even recall that.

He may be under some type of... Is he in prison now?

Well, there's a possibility he's under some type of pressure from the

government.

He may know something about the King case, but he's trying to disinformation

things of that nature.

Every single statement that he gave us turned out to be true without exception.

There was no dissembling.

The only, in retrospect, I can see from going through his whole file here,

the only information that is not true is what had been planted in his mind back

at that time towards the end of his service for the CIA here in the city,

covert operations.

is where they have planted in his mind the idea that he was really working for

the Ku Klux Klan or the white citizens or something like that, which is kind of

a standard operating procedure for intelligence agencies before they

somebody after they perform things. But in the final analysis, Kimball himself

never lies.

I think there are several reasons why Ray won't tell us more.

First of all, what he knows will probably not make him look more innocent

he wants to claim to be innocent.

Second of all, I think he was compartmentalized and kept in the dark

what he knows about the case may only make him look worse and not be able to

turn over to law enforcement the identities or position of the

it won't help them that much and it won't help him that much. He wants to

he was framed by Raul. I think that Raul does not exist and is a composite in

Ray's mind.

a series of shadowy figures, a network, if you will, who helped him in the

Baffination conspiracy.

And I believe that some of the characteristics Ray attributes to Raoul

characteristics of some of these people who associated with Ray and helped him,

but there is no one Raoul.

He does not want to talk about who the conspirators really might be or how they

might have provided him with aliases and couriers.

Kimball's statement to us is the first time that anyone has confessed to being

part of the conspiracy to kill King, although he says he did not know that

the purpose.

In subsequent communications, he's been more insistent about the CIA's central

role in the assassination, and further alleged that he flew in two snipers to

Memphis the week before the killing.

Ray, he says, was not the assassin, but a pawn.

We believe that the evidence of Ray as the assassin is weak, that he had a

relatively minor role.

A House Assassinations Committee investigator told us that if they could

got evidence of a Kim or Ray connection, it would have been very significant.

Surely, now is the time.

to reopen this case.

I think we should challenge them to do what is right. But I think that good

someday is going to triumph over evil.

And if there is evil, if it relates to the Justice Department, if it relates to

the entire federal government, good will one day prevail.

That's what my father taught us. That's what my mother taught us.

That's hopefully what we embody as a family.