The FBI Has Some Explaining to Do About King's Murder

[Octafish]

From alternet.org:

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

The FBI Has Some Explaining to Do About King's Murder

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, New American Media
Posted on April 2, 2008, Printed on April 4, 2008

"Dangerous," "evil," "colossal fraud," were the choice terms that then FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and other top FBI officials routinely spit out about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They didn't stop at name calling. They talked ominously of "neutralizing" him as an effective leader. And even more ominously they sent him a letter flatly saying "King you are done."

The FBI's name calling, paranoid harassment and violent threats brutally and disgustingly captured the secret and patently illegal wiretapping of King. This is not smoking gun proof that the FBI had a hand in King's murder. The tapes do raise the legitimate question: What did the FBI know and when did it know about possible attempts on King's life?

Americans certainly deserve to know the whole truth about the killing of King. But there are two truths about the murder. The first is painful for those who fervently believe that James Earl Ray was a Lee Harvey Oswald-type patsy and that the government orchestrated King's killing. Yet, the evidence is still overwhelming that Ray was the triggerman. His fingerprints were on the alleged murder weapon. He was at the crime scene, and he confessed. At different times before his death, Ray gave conflicting, confusing and muddled accounts of his activities and whereabouts at the time of the murder.

His protests of innocence and frame-ups sounded like a discredited man's desperate effort to salve his conscience, grab media attention, and cash in on the notoriety of the case. It worked. Ray's public trashing about on the King murder sent conspiracy buffs stampeding to the barricades shouting that the government killed King. The King family gave Ray's much belated feigning of innocence credence when Coretta Scott King took the stand on his behalf at a civil trial in Memphis in 1999.

The verdict of history stands that Ray killed King. But Ray's guilt, however, doesn't let the government off the hook, as the FBI wiretaps disgracefully show. Unfortunately, the other truth is that the House Select Committee on Assassination that investigated King's murder ordered the files sealed for fifty years. They are still sealed. So we don't really know what the FBI did or didn't do in the run-up to King's murder. The files just might answer many questions about the secret war the FBI waged against King from the late 1950's to his murder.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/story/81108/

Dr. King got us to where we can do something about the situation.



Please, we must help each other continue the good work.

[H2O Man]

1. When the House Committee

was investigating the assassination of Martin Luther King, Dick Gregory spoke to a member who had been closely associated with Martin. Dick wanted the committee to make public everything they knew. "We know Hoover had him killed, Dick," the friend said. But they were intimidated by the dark forces running the country.

[Octafish]

2. Hoover was the protector of the status quo...

...as in the old-line reactionaries who consider themselves superior because of parentage. These figures hold on to power by distributing material wealth, divide America through the Big Lie, and enrich themselves through war. These are the ones threatened by a true Democrat, a man who believed in the Republic, a real American -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

PS: I heard Dick Gregory speak at my juco in '77 or '78. I am not the same person I was before then.

[trof]

4. And said to have a dossier on every politician in DC.

One reason JFK let him remain in office.
J. Edgar had the dirt on everybody.
What a vile little man.

[Horse with no Name]

8. reminds me of the current administration

that HAS to be the answer as to why they do nothing.

[Richard Steele]

3. 5th rec.

[conscious evolution]

5. K&R

[quadriga]

6. A Special Forces Group was operating in Memphis at the time

of the assassination. They were from Alabama. Recently it was discovered the Sirhan Sirhan did not shoot RFK. That news slipped under the radar, too.

This is how the assassination game works. Kill a world leader, obfuscate the facts, hound any dissenting voices and accuse them of being 'conspiracy kooks' and 'nut jobs', start some conspiracy theories of their own.

In the future when it is proven that the person set to be the fall guy did not pull the trigger, 'the powers that be' know that a.)nobody will be paying attention; b.)nobody really cares anymore and c.)that they have muddied the waters so mush that even if the "official story" is disproven that most people will still believe it because 1.) most people don't question what they have been taught by the modern media 2.) A lot of people simply won't hear about any revelations pertaining to the assassination so they will perpetuate the official story anyway and 3.) Given a story going against the official story a lot of people will consider the "new facts" to be conspiracy nut jibberish.

[JohnyCanuck]

7. Audio mp3 clips of a 2003 talk by King family lawyer Dr. William Pepper

broadcast may 31, 2006 on KPFA Guns and Butter program. Click here for Part1 58min and Click here for Part2 56min (Part 2 includes Q&A session).

[KaptBunnyPants]

9. Something tells me those files won't be unsealed when the 50 years is up.

A democratic government shouldn't have the right to cover up its actions for half a century or more.

[Vidar]

10. Ahh, they were just trying to catch up with the CIA for killing the Kennedy brothers.

[bluesmail]

11. I think I read his assasination file

would be sealed till 2029, that's something I didn't know, and I was wondering on what grounds it was sealed? Thanks, (I am probably going to feel like an idiot).oh and on edit K&R