The Plot To Kill King: MLK’s “Act Of State” Assassination, 50 Years Later (CONSPIRACY FILES)

Publisher’s Note: Thanks to our partners at Global Research for this multimedia interview with civil rights activist, lawyer, and researcher William Pepper, who has spent three decades tracking down the truth behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s 1968 assassination: not the work of “lone gunman” James Earl Ray, but an “Act Of State.” Listen to KPFA/Project Censored’s April 2018 interview with William Pepper. And here’s Jimmy Dore for some context about why U.S. State actors at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conspired with the “Southern Mafia” and the Memphis police to assassinate MLK on April 4th, 1968. 

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

In cities across the United States, Americans gathered to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of the iconic African American leader whose gospel of civil rights and non-violence would come to shake a generation, and inspire the world. [2]

A single bullet from an assassin’s rifle targeted Martin Luther King the evening of April 4th 1968 while he stood on the third floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The murder was rightly recognized as a tragedy for the progress of civil rights and anti-racist struggle in the United States. [3]

Other dimensions to King’s legacy, of course, involved his championing economic justice – he was weeks away from leading a Poor Peoples’ March on Washington – and his quest to reverse the tide of war, particularly the Vietnam War. These aspects of King’s activism were effectively (and in a sense literally) whitewashed from the history books, drowned out by the repeated, and by today’s standards less controversial footage of his 1963 ‘I have a Dream‘ speech. [4]

That speeches, writings, and activities over the course of the last year of his life might have served as a motive for King’s murder barely gets addressed half a century later. A simple lone racist gunman theory is apparently sufficient for addressing Nina Simone’s heart-broken query: Why? (The King of Love is Dead).

But the ghosts from that turbulent, revolutionary period in American history, including King’s own, remain restless as long as lies and false narratives animate the imaginings of those fighting for a more just world today. Government, profit-making corporations and media continue to play a role in falsifying and distorting the past for the benefit of power.

William Pepper’s account of King’s death, as encompassed in three books, including his latest, The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., provides an indispensable resource for those not content with the official story of King’s Murder. Not only does his work lay out more than 3 decades of diligent research into the assassination, including an under-reported wrongful death civil trial in 1999, it provides a notable case study on how and why high-level conspiracies, involving government entities, carry out crimes and successfully conceal them from the public.

In this 50th anniversary commemoration of the death of one of America’s most inspiring crusaders for social and economic justice, the Global Research News Hour is proud to present this exclusive feature-length interview with Dr. William Pepper. A transcript of the entire conversation is available below.

William Francis Pepper is a barrister in the United Kingdom and admitted to the bar in numerous jurisdictions in the United States of America. Bill Pepper was a friend of Martin Luther King in the last year of his life. Believing King’s convicted killer James Earl Ray had been framed, he represented Ray in a televised mock trial in the early 90s.

In 1999 he represented the King family in a wrongful death civil trial which found the assassination to have been the result of a conspiracy involving “governmental agencies.” Dr. Pepper is also the author of three books on the King assassination, including Orders to Kill: The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King, An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King, and his latest from 2016, The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Pepper has also acted as counsel for Robert F Kennedy’s accused murderer Sirhan Sirhan. His website is williampepper.com

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

Transcript- William Pepper Interview, March 29, 2018

Part One

Introduction

Our guest is William Pepper. He is a barrister admitted to the bar in the United Kingdom and in jurisdictions throughout the United States. He was a friend of King’s in the final year of his life. He came to believe that James Earl Ray was a fall guy in the murder of Martin King, to cover up for the involvement of a broad conspiracy involving the Memphis Police Department, the FBI, and the local mafia. He represented the King family at the wrongful death civil trial and has written now three books on the King assassination: Orders to Kill: The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King, An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King, and his latest from 2016: The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

He joined us from New York City.

We asked Dr. William Pepper to give us some background on how he came to be associated with Martin King.

William Pepper: I had been a journalist in Vietnam, and when I returned, I published an article in Ramparts Magazine, called The Children of Vietnam, that dealt with American war crimes and some of the reality of the war. He was a subscriber to Ramparts, saw the piece, read the piece, was very distressed by it, and asked to meet with me. So I met him and opened up more files to him, and he was devastated by what his government was doing. I then worked with him that last year of his life, really, for the National Conference for New Politics. He asked me to run that, and we were looking to have a King-Spock ticket which was subverted at a convention on Labor Day weekend in Chicago.

Global Research: You’re talking about Dr. Benjamin Spock.

WP: Yes, it was ….Dr. Benjamin Spock. That was their projection for the ticket.

GR: And, course, the assassination was taking place, took place, on april 4 1968, and this would have been right in the middle of the U.S. primary season.

WP: Yes, it was, it was. And, of course, we didn’t have that third party ticket because the convention with 5,000 delegates was subverted, disrupted by government agents who made it impossible to run this kind of ticket because the attending black caucus, a small part, but a disruptive part, Blackstone Rangers began to introduce anti-semitic resolutions which drove away all of the northern liberal Jewish money, so it cut the legs off from under that potential campaign.

GR: Interesting. Now, when it came to the assassination, you originally accepted the official story that James Earl Ray was the lone killer. He had been in a rooming house across from the motel where King had been staying, or at least he had a room checked out, and that was the official line. He pled guilty in 1969 and was sentenced to 99 years. At what point did you start to doubt that official take on events?

WP: Well, I began to doubt it when I interrogated Ray for 5 hours in August of ‘78. Abernathy wanted me to do that. He and I and Jim Lawson and a psychiatrist friend of mine attended effectively that interrogation at the Brushy Mountain Penitentiary in August. And it raised a number of issues and number of facts that conflicted with the official story, and so I decided at that point to begin to look into it and see what I could find out for myself.

And that’s really when this 40-year investigation began, following the interrogation of Ray. I would go to see him periodically and give questions and ask questions and try to get more information from him, and he kept asking me to represent him, and I refused to do so until 1988, which was 10 years after I met him, because I had to be certain that he was… we all knew he was not the shooter. That was evident from the interrogation that I conducted in ‘78. But what we didn’t know was what role he might have played in terms of the assassination. It took 10 years for me to be convinced that he was an unknowing patsy.

GR: Now, adjacent to this idea that he wasn’t the shooter, there’s that, there the spectre that there’s a conspiracy involving a lot of different players that had conspired to kill King and put James Earl Ray in this patsy position. Did you come to this realization about the same time, or was there, as you continued to interview James Earl Ray, that the spectre of conspiracy started to come out?

WP: Well, the more I dug into the issues in Memphis, the more I became gradually convinced that this guy knew nothing about the plan but was really just being set up to take the fall. That became really, clearly evident to me as I worked in Memphis.

GR: So, tell us a little bit about the man himself. He had actually been serving a prison sentence and then escaped, correct?

WP: Yes.

GR: Okay, so you discovered at some point that there had actually…he had some help in escaping from the penitentiary where he had been detained, right?

WP: Yes, that was arranged. J Edgar Hoover sent $25,000 Into Memphis with Clyde Tolson, his number 2. Tolson was always a intermediary…intermediary with the Dixie Mafia people, and government and police people who were involved in the assassination. With respect to Ray, they sent him 25,000 with Tolson. The head of the Dixie Mafia, Russell Adkins, took the $25,000 to the prison and gave it to the warden to pay him for arranging the escape.

James knew nothing about it, but they had profiled him as a candidate, an ideal patsy candidate and then they arranged for this escape and then they kept him on a leash and knew where he was, and kept him under control, moved him around to have him where he needed to be as a patsy. I learned this because the 16-year-old son of the Dixie Mafia leader went along with his father to give the money to the warden, so he was able to confirm that.

GR: And over that period..when he escaped that was in ‘67, less than a year before the assassination. And what was he doing in that period between his escape and the time when he had been given access to that room in the rooming-house

WP: Well, he was trying to get out of North America… He was trying very hard to get into Africa, and so that was his goal. He started to head towards Canada. He picked up a job, he had a job in a restaurant for a period of time and gathered a little bit of money, then he went on to Canada. It was in Montreal that he met Raul, who offered to help get him papers and get him out of the country and keep him out. But he asked him to do, he would have to do certain things for Raul before that and Raul gave him money to buy a car and pretty much kept him on a string until they were ready to use him.

GR: And there was a period when he was up in Canada, right?

WP: Yes, that was in Montreal, when he met Raul.

GR: Tell us a little bit about Raul. He was a mysterious figure that seems to be a very important player in this whole drama.

WP: Well, he was the handler for James. He was a Portuguese immigrant; I believe he was involved with military intelligence in Africa for Portugal. He came to the United States and had certain connections both with organized crime and with the government, and he was involved in activities for the government and he was a natural person they selected to take control and handle James and make sure that he was where they wanted him to be. So he played a significant, a very significant role, in the assassination, yes.

GR: Now, I understand that he ended up… among the identities that James Earl Ray ended up adopting was one that would have given him a certain amount of protection in the event that some, that there was some intervention by the law enforcement that might have upset the plans to put them in that patsy role. Could you talk about that identity that he adopted?

WP: James was given the identity of a man who work in a weapons warehouse outside of Toronto in Canada. The identity was Eric S. Galt. They gave him that identity because if James was ever stopped for speeding or anything else, any police track would show that he has special security clearance and he would be let go very, very easily. So that’s why he was given the Galt. There also was somewhat of a physical relationship resemblance between Galt and James.

GR: Now, what can you tell us what James Earl Ray’s activities while he was in Memphis leading up to that fateful day April 4th?

WP: Well, he came into town as he was instructed by Raul. He had brought a weapon, and he had turned it over to Raul the night before on the outskirts of Memphis. Then he came into Memphis that day, and parked the car in front of a rooming house as he was instructed, and he went upstairs, brought his belongings upstairs, and rented a room from Bessie Brewer who ran the rooming house.

And it was the room that had a window overlooking the Lorraine, but it was a small room and he would not spend much time there because Raul would tell him that he was really meeting with some gun sellers and he was promising to meet with them to conduct purchases of weapons and things, so Ray was not in the room a great deal. But the room was used, so we learned, as a staging place for the shooting. And the shooter and his spotter went down and met Loyd Jowers and Earl Clark in the bushes in the back of that rooming house.

GR: Now, we know that James Earl Ray was nowhere near the crime scene when the assassination took place. What was he doing?

WP: Yeah, that’s right. He remembered that he had a flat spare tire. And that if Raul took the car, as he thought he was going to, and had any problems with the flat tire, and there was a flat spare as well, he wouldn’t be very happy. So James decided to go to a gas station some blocks away and to have that spare tire repaired.

He was seen heading in that direction by two men who came out of Jim’s Grill and who saw him driving toward that gas station. That evidence was buried deep in a file drawer and never referred to or used. When James was up at the gas station waiting he heard a siren, sirens. They had begun already to send the ambulance down to the area where he was to be.

So he took off from the gas station, decided not to wait, and drove back towards the rooming house, but as he came up to the rooming house he was waved away by the police, and he then just decided that he should make a break and head out of there, really go to Atlanta where he was intending to go earlier at Raul’s suggestion. But, he left the Memphis area and headed south to Georgia.

GR: When did you get your first real lead as to who was involved in the assassination? Your first lead?

WP: Well, I mean, there were evolving developments. I thought Earl Clark, who was the captain of the police department, was involved. He was a very good shooter on the police force and very much a racist. It turned out he wasn’t, he was only acting as a spotter for the shooter, who was another policeman who was an excellent shot.

Bits and pieces of information started to come from various witnesses all along. So, it’s not easy to… so, we ran a mock trial in 1993. Our research and investigation produced results which led us in the direction of the army being there. And they were there with an eight-man squad as backups, but they also had two photographers on the roof of the fire station. So it all developed gradually. It was all put together gradually.

GR: Where did you first start to notice the involvement of Loyd Jowers?

WP: Well, Jowers was always in question because he owned a grill in back of where the shot took place. He was always in the frame, but we never put him so directly in it as when he carried the smoking rifle into the back of the kitchen, broke it down, then took it out and put it on the shelf in the restaurant. Jowers’ secret was kept by Betty Spates from 1968 to 1994 when I was able to break her down, and she told me the story of Loyd and what she thought Loyd had done.

GR: Loyd Jowers was also he was a former police officer before becoming the proprietor of Jim’s Grill. He had made some connections with the local Mafia, right?

WP: Yes, he was very close to Frank Liberto, who hired him to do this job. He owed a lot of money to Liberto. That all got forgiven, and he put $100,000 in a unused stove, and he bought a taxi cab company after the assassination. So, he was well in with them. His gambling was forgiven, and he was given quite a bit of money to cooperate.

GR: So, in terms of Loyd’s involvement in the assassination, could you comment a little more on what you’ve been able to piece together in that critical couple of hours during and after the assassination?

WP: It’s sort of difficult to provide all the details. We knew that James was a patsy. We knew that Jowers had involvement because he brought the smoking rifle in. Earl Clark, who was out there was a spotter, went over the wall. He was seen by a taxi driver who was killed that evening.

The shooter was a fellow named Frank Strausser, and Jowers was reluctant to name him, and we only got his name gradually over a period of time from Lenny Curtis who was a janitor at the rifle range where he saw Strausser get the special rifle and practice with it all day, before leaving around 3 p.m. So this is what we know in terms of setting up the shooting that was taken from the bushes in the back area of the rooming house and Jim’s Grill.

Intermission

Part Two

GR: In case you just joined us, we’re speaking with Dr. William Pepper. He is a human rights lawyer most known for his defense of James Earl Ray in the trial of the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. and the author of three books, the most recent being The Plot to Kill King: the truth behind the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

Dr. William Pepper, I’m wondering if we could also talk about the various ways in which the King delegation in Memphis had been somewhat set up. The fact that, for example, he had been asked to change, or made to change, rooms from a more secure area at the Lorraine Motel to one where he would be exposed on the balcony. Can you maybe provide us some insight into how and why those…because that figures into the overall conspiracy too, right?

WP: The Dixie Mafia Family and, in fact, the wife of the leader of that family, received a phone call sometime shortly before 4th of April, because King had only arrived there, and he was placed in room 202 which was a secure room.

She received a phone call from her son, who, along with Frank Holloman, was running the operation, the assassination operation, and she was asked to talk to… one of the Adkins’ employees was a black fellow called O.Z., and she was asked to call him, ask him to get to Jesse Jackson and ask Jackson to go to the owner of the motel and move the room.

Her son was there at the time that she took the call when she was making the arrangements, and she discussed it with him. So her son was my informant of those events. Martin was moved to room 306. It was an open area and a clear target.

GR: Yes

WP: And that’s really what was required. When that happened Mrs Bailey, after the shot, Mrs. Bailey realized what she had done, she actually managed the motel, and she said, “Oh my god what have I done.” She ran to her room and collapsed. Had a cerebral hemorrhage and was taken to St. Joseph’s hospital where she died about 5 days later. So the room change was organized by the conspirators and was thus carried out.

GR: There’s also the fact that there’s a major involvement on the part of other figures that would have acted as backup in case this sniper in the bushes had missed. Can you talk about how that was organized.

WP: You’re talking about the backup?

GR: Yes, the backup shooters.

WP: The Army had a team In Memphis as a backup unit. They were instructed, they came from Camp Shelby in Mississippi, and they were given their instructions, and they left around 4:30 in the morning. They were shown two photographs one of Andy Young and one of Martin King. Those were the targets, they were told they were enemies of the state.

They drove in and took up positions, one on the roof of the fire station and we believe the other one on the water tower. Each with a spotter. And they were waiting. If the shooter, the civilian shooter, did not do the job, they were prepared to do it they were not going to let Martin King ever get to Memphis. He was too dangerous. I mean from Memphis to Washington. He was too dangerous and they were not going to allow that. To allow him to bring half a million people that could turn into a revolutionary mob.

So they were determined to kill him, one way or another. They had the initial plan with Strausser’s civilian – quote civilian, he was always a police officer – shooter and the army was backing him up in case he couldn’t get the job done.

GR: Some other details relating to the conspiracy… the fact that the police, that there had been some irregularities in terms of arranging for police to not be at or near the scene in the run-up to the assassination?

WP: Let me have that question again, exactly what you want?

GR: Well, I’m just wanting to clarify some of the details. Irregularities in terms of police being called off their normal rounds in the lead up to the assassination on April 4th.

WP: Well, that day, the two black fireman at the local fire station were replaced. They were told to go somewhere else. But the Kings’ usual black body guard unit was kept in the police station. They were not involved. So they were taking all the necessary precautions to make sure that the effort would go off promptly and smoothly and without any eye witness observations.

They also had two photographers put on the roof. That was a military side of it. Two photographers put on the roof to shoot the back of the Lorraine Motel at the time of the shooting. One was to shoot at the balcony and the other was to shoot on the ground, and he was the one who brought his camera around into the bushes and actually caught the shooter lowering his rifle. The shooter he said who was not James Earl Ray

GR: There was also the issue that on the morning of April 5th, the next day, they sent up a crew to clear the bushes near the grill from the location where the people locate… some witnesses had seen the shooter.

WP: Yes, that is right. They sent a clean up crew from the public works department to clean up the entire back area, which was filled with high bushes and brush. They cut all that down and they cleaned it up thoroughly so that it would never appear that a shooter could be there without being spotted. So they took all the bushes and even one tree limb I think was cut down. So they made it a safe haven for the shooter. And he then, was able to escape by running back through the back of the building along the side of it because it was a vacant lot along the side and out onto the sidewalk.

GR: Was there any concern, I mean the fact is, I understand it, the Memphis Police Department had ordered, had sent out the orders to clean up that area which was a credible a credibly accused crime scene. So that’s an irregularity for which there’s no official explanation, if I’m not mistaken.

WP: No, there was no official explanation, there was no public knowledge that it was done, and they cut in fact a large bush, an intervening bush between the fire station and the vacant lot because if that bush had been there, then their story of James having seen a police car and panicked and dropping the bundle in front of a store would have held true. Without that bush there, James could have seen the police car, but with the bush there, even if there was a police car, there was no way he could have seen it.

GR: Now, going back to the assassination itself, the shot took place at 6:01, an ambulance came and took him to St Joseph’s hospital. Now, could you maybe comment on that choice of hospital. Why King would have been taken there as close to another location?

WP: Well, it was fairly close, but it wasn’t as close as a couple of other hospital facilities. But, of course, they had to take him to St. Joseph’s because that was, if it became necessary. that was where they were going to make sure that he didn’t leave alive.

GR: Could you expand on that what happened, from what you’ve been able to determine, what happened from the time of the arrival at the hospital? St. Joseph’s Hospital, that evening.

WP: Well, he was moved into the emergency room, eventually not immediately, but eventually they began to work on him, and they were trying to identify pieces of paper that had been dropped so that they could know their way out at the right time, but for the time being they were in the hospital. Raul was there, as well, with with them.

It’s important to know about Raul was that he didn’t have his passport with him, and he was on the list of people who should leave the city as quickly as possible. So that was the escape area that they had left, Frank Holloman and his crowd. Now as you back out of here, you’ll tend to see a lot of people.

GR: According to your book, there was an unusual number of military and intelligence people inside the hospital?

WP: Yes, they got there early, and they identified everyone. They knew every nurse and every doctor. They were very well-informed and supposedly protective, although they weren’t being protective; they were effectively there to facilitate whatever Dr. Breen Bland wanted to do. He was the one who took control of the room and control of the operation in the hospital. And he’s the Adkins’ family doctor. He had been out with the Adkins family a couple of weeks before, and he insisted that they have, that the group have a strong position with respect to covering up the assassination by Strausser.

GR: So, according to your book, Strausser, who you identified as the shooter, actually didn’t kill King. That King appears to have, or the job is finished you might say, inside that hospital. In his last moments alive, who was with King?

WP: Well, Dr. Bland that chased everyone out of the room. As they were going out, the last one leaving was the nurse Shelby. She heard them gathering spit up in their mouths. That caught her attention as she was at the door going out. She then turned around and saw the three men, two in suits and Dr. Bland she saw the three of them spit on the body. That was when she saw Bland take a pillow and put the pillow over Dr. King’s face and effectively suffocating him.

The next morning when she went home at 11 o’clock, she called her family around and said I don’t know why they had to kill him. And then she told them the story, and it was years and years later of course, that I deposed one of her sons, who knew the whole story from his mother, and who, under oath and video transcription, told us exactly what had happened to Dr. King.

He was killed in the emergency room. He might have died anyway. He was badly injured by the bullet, but they were not taking any chances. There was no way they were going to let him bring the mob into Washington. They were afraid it could turn into a revolutionary situation.

Intermission

Part Three

GR: So, a high level conspiracy…Yet another interesting aspect to this case. This idea that it wasn’t just happenstance that King happened to be in Memphis, that he was somehow drawn there, that the sanitation workers’ strike itself was bait for this trap of getting him to Memphis specifically! Could you comment on that?

WP: Well, the sanitation workers’ strike was the reason that he came to Memphis. That’s true. The sanitation workers were determined to strike independently of Dr. King. But two of their members had’ve been crushed on a rainy day in the back of the garbage truck where they went for shelter. They weren’t allowed to go into regular shelters that other workers used in Memphis. And they were crushed in the back of the garbage truck by a man who was a member of the Adkins group. That precipitated a great deal of anger, sympathy, compassion for the strikers and Dr. King determined that he was going to go and do the best that he could on their behalf.

He went to lead a march which became disrupted and aborted so he went back to Atlanta, decided to come again and do work with one of the black radical groups to try to make it a peaceful march, and one of that black radical groups, the invaders, were also chosen to leave – told to leave the hotel about 15 minutes before the assassination. They were dangerous. They could have seen something. They also were armed. So the plotters decided to get them out of there. And they were ordered out of the hotel.

GR: Mm-hm. Just in the last few years, as I understand it – this is since the civil trial that you represented on behalf of the King Family – you came up with this new information that pointed you in the direction of this Frank Strausser. And this comes down to an individual whose identity you kept secret until he died. Could you tell us more about that last tidbit of information which really helps complete the picture?

WP: Well, Lenny Curtis was the man’s name and he was a janitor in the rifle range of the police department. And that’s where Strausser and Clark used to work and hang out. He saw a special rifle come in and be given to Strausser. And he saw Strausser on the day of the assassination practicing all day with that rifle. And then he saw him leave around 3 o’clock. And Strausser had at various times said ‘he was going to get his head blown off’ that type of thing. So he was suspicious of Strausser.

He also found that they were suspicious of him. And they kept him under surveillance. Unmarked car outside of his house. Excuse me. He was lighting a cigarette, going into his house one day, and he smelt gas. He had to put the cigarette out. He saw a V-sign in a tree above – behind his kitchen window.

And then finally, the final straw was Strausser asked him to come with him – ride with him downtown when he was going to pick up pay-cheques for the men. And on the way down he didn’t go the usual route he went through a wooded area and he showed his gun – brushing his coat back – and asked Lenny who he thought – what he thought about the – Ray being the murderer of Dr. King. And Lenny quickly said, ‘Yes of course he was. Everything points to him.’ He was of course, speaking for his life.

So, down, they went down, they came back. Um, but he had enough suspicion of Strausser from the background information and experience, and then the shooting and practicing of the rifle all day long. But I couldn’t use – I deposed Lenny, put him under oath and transcribed him and video-taped him. But we couldn’t use that. We couldn’t use that until – until he died, because I would have had no doubt that they would have killed him. So we kept that as a part of our gathering information, but quietly held.

GR: So, William Pepper, could you comment then on what makes this case so important in terms of helping us understand the ability of ordinary citizens to confront power in our society? What is the particular significance of this assassination and cover-up?

WP: Well, because of the evidence we’ve uncovered, there is no question that this was a government operation. And it was an operation led by the FBI, by J. Edgar Hoover, uh using his number two Tolson, and using the head of Police and Fire in Memphis, Frank Holloman, who used to work in Hoover’s office and who toward the end became very involved in the details of the assassination. So it was a government operation using local Dixie Mafia people, and a local hit man, with strong government back-up.

So that we know. We know governments can do that, government did do that. What average citizens can do is is really to try to pay attention to their governments, and what they’re doing and what the officials are doing, and be as well informed as possible about that. And also I think probably move to change the whole culture of this country from materialism and capitalism and militarism into something much more humane. And that would require really extensive work on amending the constitution of the United States. And that’s a task in my view that must be undertaken at some point in time. But an alert citizenry is essential for the salvation of a democracy, and unfortunately in America we don’t have that alert citizenry yet. Hopefully, with cases like this coming to the foreground, we will be able to have it.

GR: I have just one last question, because I know you got to go, but there has not been a lot of respectful media attention paid towards the case that you’ve put forward. Could you comment on why that is so?

WP: Well, the corporate media in America for the most part does not want to cover cases like this. Corporate media is determined to keep the status quo and the credibility of governmental agents. You can imagine what the people would think if they knew that their governmental agencies were acting in this way, not only domestically, of course, but internationally as they have been. So that’s really the case. It’s been a cover-up by the mainstream media which is corporate-controlled. There may be a breakthrough on that with the new Washington Post doing a major feature on this case, either – coming out either on this Sunday or Monday, so you – one might look for it.

But let me encourage people try to get a copy of the book The Plot to Kill King anyway, because that’s the one way to get the truth about this case. I put in every deposition, every piece of testimony that’s of evidentiary value, it’s all there in that one book. So any students of history are free to read it and revise this nation’s history with respect to at least this case.

GR: Dr. William Pepper, I did have the great fortune 9 years ago of meeting and interviewing King’s speech-writer Vincent Harding, and I now can add to that having had the opportunity to interview another key figure in his life, William Pepper, so thank you so much for agreeing to this interview, and I do hope we can speak again at some point.

WP: Okay, thank you very much.

*

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Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border.

It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia, Canada. – Tune in  at its new time – Wednesdays at 4pm PT.

Radio station CFUV 101.9FM based at the University of Victoria airs the Global Research News Hour every Sunday from 7 to 8am PT.

CORTES COMMUNITY RADIO CKTZ  89.5 out of Manson’s Landing, B.C airs the show Tuesday mornings at 10am Pacific time.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 6am pacific time.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 10am.

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday Morning from 8:00 to 9:00am. Find more details at www.caperradio.ca

RIOT RADIO, the visual radio station based out of Durham College in Oshawa, Ontario has begun airing the Global Research News Hour on an occasional basis. Tune in at dcstudentsinc.ca/services/riot-radio/

Notes:

1. Dr. William F. Pepper, ESQ. (2016), ‘The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.’, p.207, Skyhorse Publishing.

2. David Smith & Jamiles Lartey (April 4, 2018), “Martin Luther King anniversary marked by events from Washington to Memphis”, The Guardian; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/04/martin-luther-king-anniversary-events

3. Jamiles Lartey (April 5, 2018), “Martin Luther King’s death commemorated with 39 bell tolls in Memphis”, The Guardian; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/05/bell-tolls-39-times-to-commemorate-martin-luther-king-jrs-death

4. Cornel West (April 4, 2018), ‘Martin Luther King Jr was a radical. We must not sterilize his legacy’, The Guardian; https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/04/martin-luther-king-cornel-west-legacy