Dr. William F. Pepper on Air America Radio - 4.11.2008

[reprehensor]

Last Friday, Air America DJ Richard Greene interviewed lawyer Dr. William F. Pepper about his involvement with the MLK case, the recently aired CNN disinformation piece on Dr. King, and his current position as the attorney for Sirhan Sirhan.

For more background on media disinformation, check out my YouTube page linked below as my signature, which features testimony from an expert on disinformation, William Schaap, and footage from the 1999 civil trial mentioned in the Greene interview.

Here is the Richard Green interview:
(36:23 Minutes - 6.2 Meg)

[JohnyCanuck]

1. For those who might have missed it...

Check out this GD thread started by reprehensor on the MLK assassination and the civil trial that found US government agencies were involved in a conspiracy to have him killed.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3101300

On edit, it looks like reprehensor linked to this thread in the OP. However, still glad to give this post a kick.

[Aviation Pro]

2. Did he bring Professor Coca-Cola with him too?

...budda-bah.

[TroglodyteScholar]

3. No, but Mr. Pibb is waiting in the car....n/t

[JohnyCanuck]

4. As attorney for Sirhan Sirhan,

I guess Dr. Pepper must know about the BBC Newsnight report that identified 3 CIA operatives at the scene of RFK's assassination.

CIA role claim in Kennedy killing

New video and photographic evidence that puts three senior CIA operatives at the scene of Robert Kennedy's assassination has been brought to light.

The evidence is a result of a three year investigation

The evidence was shown in a report by Shane O'Sullivan, broadcast on BBC Newsnight.

It reveals that the operatives and four unidentified associates were at the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles in the moments before and after the shooting on 5 June, 1968.

The CIA had no domestic jurisdiction and some of the officers were based in South-East Asia at the time, with no reason to be in Los Angeles.

SNIP

Three of these men have been positively identified as senior officers who worked together in 1963 at JMWAVE, the CIA's Miami base for its Secret War on Castro.

David Morales was Chief of Operations and once told friends:

"I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard."

Gordon Campbell was Chief of Maritime Operations and George Joannides was Chief of Psychological Warfare Operations.

Joannides was called out of retirement in 1978 to act as the CIA liaison to the Congressional investigation into the JFK assassination. Now, we see him at the Ambassador Hotel the night a second Kennedy is assassinated.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/6169006.stm

You can watch the BBC Newsnight program here:
Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkkUJp2pi3Q
Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMOeE4qn_V4

[Aviation Pro]

5. Here are my questions regarding....

..."David Morales was Chief of Operations and once told friends:

"I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard.""

Who are these 'friends' and why would Morales say something that stupid? Was he drunk? Was he just being fanciful? Is he a fucking moron?

Whenever I hear the catch phrases "friends have said" and "some say" my bullshit meter goes off the chart.

[JohnyCanuck]

6. In the Newsnight program it appears Morales told his lawyer,

Robert Walton, "I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch,and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard." The lawyer is interviewed starting around the 6:17 mark in the Newsnight/Youtube video Part 1 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkkUJp2pi3Q

[Aviation Pro]

7. A lawyer is not a friend....

....

[JohnyCanuck]

8. So, maybe he told his friends too. n/t

[DrDebug]

11. The Morales story was based on the identification by Bradley Ayers

The story behind the BBC documentary:

Shane O'Sullivan
Did the CIA kill Bobby Kennedy?
The Guardian
November 20, 2006

(...)

Three years ago, I started writing a screenplay about the assassination of Robert Kennedy, caught up in a strange tale of second guns and "Manchurian candidates" (as the movie termed brainwashed assassins). As I researched the case, I uncovered new video and photographic evidence suggesting that three senior CIA operatives were behind the killing. I did not buy the official ending that Sirhan acted alone, and started dipping into the nether-world of "assassination research", crossing paths with David Sanchez Morales, a fearsome Yaqui Indian.

(...)

The source of early research on Morales was Bradley Ayers, a retired US army captain who had been seconded to JM-Wave, the CIA's Miami base in 1963, to work closely with chief of operations Morales on training Cuban exiles to run sabotage raids on Castro. I tracked Ayers down to a small town in Wisconsin and emailed him stills of Morales and another guy I found suspicious - a man who is pictured entering the ballroom from the direction of the pantry moments after the shooting, clutching a small container to his body, and being waved towards an exit by a Latin associate.

Ayers' response was instant. He was 95% sure that the first figure was Morales and equally sure that the other man was Gordon Campbell, who worked alongside Morales at JM-Wave in 1963 and was Ayers' case officer shortly before the JFK assassination.

(...)

Morales died of a heart attack in 1978, weeks before he was to be called before the HSCA. Joannides died in 1990. Campbell may still be out there somewhere, in his early 80s. Given the positive identifications we have gathered on these three, the CIA and the Los Angeles Police Department need to explain what they were doing there. Lopez believes the CIA should call in and interview everybody who knew them, disclose whether they were on a CIA operation and, if not, why they were there that night.

(...)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1952393,00.html

The family of Morales of course deny that the person is Morales, and the CIA cannot confirm nor deny whether Morales was in Los Angeles, because he was officially stationed in Vietnam working for the Phoenix Operation.

Morales was a heavy drinker and might have used a lot of foul language, Morales was definately no moron:

Biography of David Morales
by Spartacus Educational Website
(...)

In 1953 he returned to the United States and after a spell at the University of Maryland he assumed cover as a State Department employee. Morales became involved in CIA's Black Operations. This involved a policy that was later to become known as Executive Action (a plan to remove unfriendly foreign leaders from power). This including a coup d'état that overthrew the Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 after he introduced land reforms and nationalized the United Fruit Company. After the removal of Arbenz he joined the staff of the US embassy in Caracas (1955-58). During this time he became known as the CIA's top assassin in Latin America.

Morales moved to Cuba in 1958 and helped to support the government of Fulgencio Batista. In 1960 Wayne S. Smith was a State Department officer in the American Embassy in Havana. Smith tells the story of being in a bar in Havana with Morales. After a heavy drinking session Morales began talking about the CIA’s secret operations that involved frog men operating out of Guantanamo Bay. Smith told Gaeton Fonzi (The Last Investigation) that Morales was very indiscrete when drunk. According to fellow CIA agent, Robert N. Wall: "He (Morales) was a rough-neck. He was a bully, a hard-drinker and big enough to get away with a lot of stuff other people couldn't get away with.”

(...)

According to CIA agent Tom Clines, Morales helped Felix Rodriguez capture Che Guevara in 1965. "We all admired the hell out of the guy. He drank like crazy, but he was bright as hell. He could fool people into thinking he was stupid by acting stupid, but he knew about cultural things all over the world. People were afraid of him. He was big and aggressive, and he had this mystique. Stories about him permeated the Agency. If the Agency needed someone action-oriented, he was at the top of the list. If the U.S. government as a matter of policy needed someone or something neutralized, Dave would do it, including things that were repugnant to a lot of people.”

(... much more at the link ...)

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmorales.htm

[defendandprotect]

14. Is David Morales the guy who interviewed the young woman who had

been working at the LA hotel where RFK was killed -- and she was sitting outside on the back steps and says that two people -- a male and a female -- came running by her shouting something specific as to they're having killed RFK. This is the girl in the polka dot dress.
A& had the TAPE of someone interviewing this girl and pretty much threatening her.
I think it was David Morales???

[bluesmail]

9. Sirhan Sirhan, a palestinian

no coincidence there, laying the groundwork for future dirty tricks.

[bleever]

10. K&R.

Thank you.

[Octafish]

12. COINTELPRO

COINTELPRO (Ko-IN-tell-pro. NOT: Coin-TELL-pro. It stands for a criminal COunter-INTELligence-Program that was used against innocent Americans.

Strange how so few Americans know about the government's concerted effort to destroy Dr. King:

Federal Bureau of Investigation

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began monitoring Martin Luther King, Jr., in December 1955, during his involvement with the Montgomery bus boycott, and engaged in covert operations against him throughout the 1960s. FBI director

J. Edgar Hoover was personally hostile toward King, believing that the civil rights leader was influenced by Communists. This animosity increased after April 1964, when King called the FBI ‘‘completely ineffectual in resolving the continued mayhem and brutality inflicted upon the Negro in the deep South’’ (King, 23 April 1964). Under the FBI’s domestic counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) King was subjected to various kinds of FBI surveillance that produced alleged evidence of extramarital affairs, though no evidence of Communist influence. The FBI was created in 1909 as the Justice Department’s unit to investigate federal crimes. Hoover became FBI director in 1924 and served until his death in 1972. Throughout the 1930s the FBI’s role expanded when President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked the FBI to research ‘‘subversives’’ in the United States, and Congress passed a series of laws increasing the types of federal crimes falling under the FBI’s jurisdiction. During World War II, the FBI was further authorized to investigate threats to national security. This loosely defined mission formed the heading under which the FBI began to investigate the civil rights movement.

The FBI initially monitored King under its Racial Matters Program, which focused on individuals and organizations involved in racial politics. Although the FBI raised concerns as early as March 1956, that King was associating with card-carrying members of the Communist Party, King’s alleged ties with communism did not become the focus of FBI investigations under the existing Communist Infiltration Program (COMINFIL), designed to investigate groups and individuals subject to Communist infiltration, until 1962. In February 1962, Hoover told Attorney General Robert Kennedy that Stanley Levison, one of King’s closest advisors, was ‘‘a secret member of the Communist Party’’ (Hoover, 14 February 1962). In the following months, Hoover deployed agents to find subversive material on King, and Robert Kennedy authorized wiretaps on King’s home and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) offices in October 1963.

Hoover responded to King’s criticisms of the Bureau’s performance in civil rights cases by announcing at a press conference in November 1964, that King was the ‘‘most notorious liar in the country’’ (Herbers, ‘‘Dr. King Rebuts Hoover’’). Surprised by the accusation, King replied that he could only have sympathy for Hoover as he must be ‘‘under extreme pressure’’ to make such a statement (Herbers, ‘‘Dr. King Rebuts Hoover’’). King asked an intermediary to set up a meeting between himself and Hoover to understand what had led to the comment. Andrew Young, a King aide was present at the meeting, recalled that there was ‘‘not even an attitude of hostility’’ between the two, but at about this same time, the FBI anonymously sent King a compromising tape recording of him carousing in a Washington, D.C., hotel room, along with an anonymous letter that SCLC staff interpreted as encouraging King to commit suicide to avoid public embarrassment (Senate Select Committee, 167).

Hoover continued to approve investigations of King and covert operations to discredit King’s standing among financial supporters, church leaders, government officials, and the media. When King condemned the Vietnam War in a speech at Riverside Church on 4 April 1967, the FBI ‘‘interpreted this position as proof he ‘has been influenced by Communist advisers’’’ and stepped up their covert operations against him (Senate Select Committee, 180). The FBI considered initiating another formal COINTELPRO against King and fellow anti-war activist Dr. Benjamin Spock in 1967, when the two were rumored to be contemplating a run for the presidency, but ruled it out on the grounds that such a program would be more effective after the pair had officially announced their candidacy.

In August 1967, the FBI created a COINTELPRO against ‘‘Black Nationalist–Hate Groups,’’ which targeted SCLC, King, and other civil rights leaders. King was identified as a target because the FBI believed that he could become a ‘‘messiah’’ who could unify black nationalists ‘‘should he abandon his supposed ‘obedience’ to ‘white liberal doctrines’ (nonviolence) and embrace black nationalism’’ (Senate Select Committee, 180). In the last few months of King’s life, the FBI intensified its efforts to discredit him and to ‘‘neutralize’’ SCLC (Senate Select Committee, 180).

CONTINUED...

http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/about_king/encyclopedia/fbi.html

Stranger still are the Americans who know about this COINTELPRO and don't give a damn.

Thank you for another most important post, reprehensor. KRB.

[defendandprotect]

13. Wow . . . he's the attorney for Sirhan Sirhan now . .. !!! He's terrific---!!!

I've read his book and watched a number of his tapes ---
Thank you for this --- I'll bookmark to listen to later ---

[autorank]

15. K*R!!!

[seemslikeadream]

16. Thanks reprehensor