Thursday 24 May 2012

TrinDay & A Memoir of Injustice reviewed by Bill Kelly



A Memoir of Injustice (TrinDay, 2011) by Jerry Ray as told to Tamara Carter, with an Afterward by Judge Joe Brown.

From the moment Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed it was clear there was a war on, not a race war, a perspective encouraged at the time, but because the violence also consumed the lives of John and Robert Kennedy, it was a war over the hearts and minds and political lives of the America people.

It is a war that continues today, a violent one that uses murder and assassination as a tool in the chest of strategists who remain behind the scenes and immune from justice, and a war that is manifest in the refusal of the government to release the now historical investigative records of the Congressional investigation into the murder of King.

The assassinations of MLK is not unique in the failure of the government to bring Justice to an historic homicide, or release of the relevant government records, as that is also the case with the JFK and RFK assassinations. More specifically in the MLK case, the government failed to put the accused assassin on trial, or to properly identify and locate the shadowy Latin smuggler “Raoul,” who holds the key to the true powers behind the assassination, thus requiring amateur sluths, civilians, historians and the younger brother of the accused to do the job.

While there are dozens of other books that go into the details more thoroughly, Jerry Ray’s view of the proceedings is fascinating and reads like a Raymond Chandler novel, without pulling any punches, short, crisp and to the point.

The early part of the book, describing the dysfunctional and basically criminal nature of the Ray family, is a sad tale that sets the stage for how Ray could have been easily persuaded to be part of the plot or, like Oswald, set up as the patsy and fall guy.

One might expect the brother of the accused to stick up for his kin, even after James Earl Ray died in prison, but Jerry’s story is engaging and believable, and thanks to T. Carter, is delivered in a style that serves a fine example of the proper way to draw out oral history from a closely engaged witness like Jerry Ray.

Jerry first learned the authorities were looking for his brother when he heard they were after a suspect named Eric Galt, which he knew was an alias James used. He immediately drove to St. Louis to talk to another brother who owned the Grapevine Tavern, a seedy, shot and beer joint on the hard side of town.

After James was caught in England, and the details began to emerge, Jerry learned that, “Don Wilson, a 25 year-old agent with the Atlanta FBI office, was one of two agents who made the initial response. While the senior agent conferred with Atlanta police, Wilson opened the driver’s side door and two pieces of paper fell out. Thinking the papers were insignificant and that possibly he had messed up a crime scene, Wilson stashed the two pieces of paper inside his pocket. It was not until later that Wilson discover the great significance of the two pieces of paper: they had the name ‘Raoul’ written on them…”

From prison, James Earl Ray asked his brother to check out a guy “Randy Rosensen,” whose name was on the back of a car “Raoul” had, a card from the Le Bunny Lounge on Canal Street in New Orleans.

A cab driver told Jerry the club was probably one of Carlos Marcello’s joints, and as Jerry relates: “At the time, Carlos Marcello was the biggest crime boss in the United States, his criminal empire claiming the entire Gulf region, even stretching into parts of the Caribbean. At the time, there was strong evidence that Marcello, who harbored bitter hatred for Robert F. and John F. Kennedy, had played a direct role in JFK’s assassination.”

As recounted by Jerry, “I walked inside, sat down at the bar and ordered a beer. To my surprise, Le Bunny Lounge was an average place. There were only a few other customers there, and they were sitting at tables away from the bar. The cocktail waitress was an attractive woman. We started talking back and forth. I asked her if she knew Randy Robenson. She stared my way and said, ‘Who’s asking?’ I didn’t beat around the bush, and replied, ‘Twenty Dollar Bill, that’s who.’…”

She knew a Randolph Robenson, a guy from Florida who came in with a Latin looking guy, good tippers.

Jerry thought it significant, “Jimmy and Raoul meeting at Le Bunny Lounge, owned by a New Orleans crime boss, an acquaintance of Percy Foreman, an attorney with ties to both the Kennedy and King assassination – the pieces were coming together, and a big picture was starting to take shape. It was not a pretty picture.”

Though Ray never acknowledged killing King, and it is questionable that his rifle that was left at the scene was the one used in the shooting, Percy Foreman, who became James Earl Ray’s lawyer, convinced Ray to plead guilty to avoid the death sentence, and also avoid a trial during which all the facts in the case would have emerge.

Some of those facts would come out during the 1978 House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) investigation and two subsequent civil trials, one led by Dr. William Pepper on behalf of the King family that resulted in the conviction of co-conspirators, thus proving conspiracy. The other case was COPA v. the DOD – the Coalition on Political Assassinations and Department of Defense that sought the release of the military Army Reserves After Action Reports, and though COPA lost the case on appeal, the DOD did release a summary of the reports, which clearly indicated they had maintained a very close surveillance of King and in fact, watched him being murdered.

William Pepper once said that he had identified “Raoul” and even talked with him on the phone, but since then, we haven’t heard any more about the shadowy Latin smuggler, or whether the other leads were properly followed and investigated.

The records on the Martin L. King assassination of the HSCA are still locked away, and were not included among the JFK Assassinations Records Act as they should have been, though they can and should be released by an act of Congress, if people will only ask them to do so.

Justice many never be served in this case, as Jerry Ray concludes, but history still can be, if the relevant government records are released to the public, as they should be.

TRINDAY – A few words about the publisher – TrinDay.

Not your traditional mainstream publisher, TrinDay is run out of Walterville, Oregon, by Kris Millegan, who asks, “Will we stand up and take back our country from the crooks, cronies and cabals?”

Millegan has found a nice niche, publishing radical and conspiratorial, though historically documented books that are too hot or controversial for other publishers to handle.

Some of the books, like “The Bilderberg Group” by Daniel Estulin and “Shadow Masters” by Daniel Estulin, concern the larger strategic conspiracies behind big governments, big money and maintaining the drug-oil industrial scheme of things that we have no real control over.

“Dr. Mary’s Monkey,” “Me & Lee” and “The Last Circle” bring out first person stories much like Jerry Ray’s “Memoir of Injustice.”

“The Last Circle” is Cheri Seymour’s story of Danny Casalarso’s fatal investigation into the “Octopus” and Promis software scandal, “Dr. Mary’s Monkey” is Ed Haslam’s personal investigation into the death of a New Orleans cancer researcher, and her ties to those on the edge of the assassination of President Kennedy, which dovetails nicely with Judyth Vary Baker’s Harlequin style love affair with the accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

Though there has been some dispute over the details, Baker certainly was employed at the same coffee company at the same time as Oswald, and with few questionable witnesses to them being together, their love life may be exaggerated, but the overall story of what happened in New Orleans in the summer of ’63 is accurate and colorful enough, enlivened by documents, photos and maps that adorn practically every page.

More significant are other TrineDay books, like a revised and expanded versions of John Loftus’ classic “America’s Nazi Secret” and the late George Michael Evica’s under appreciated “A Certain Arrogance” – subtitled “The sacrificing of Lee Harvey Oswald and the Cold War manipulations of religious groups by U.S. Intelligence.”

Then there’s Hank P. Albarelli Jr.’s “A Terrible Mistake,” about the MK/ULTRA death of CIA officer Dr. Frank Olson, Douglas Valentine’s book on the DEA “The Strength of the Pack,” Lt. Col. Dan Marvin’s “Expendable Elite,” and Peter Janney’s recently released “Mary’s Mosaic” - “Mary Pinchot Meyer & John F. Kennnedy and their vision for World Peace,” that may have a major impact on their both yet unsolved homicides.

Janney, the son of a CIA official, ties the murder of Mary Meyer to that of her lover, JFK, and her influence on JFK’s change in thinking about war and peace, best exhibited in the “Peace Speech” at American University on June 10, and a change that led to both their murders.

In all, TrinDay continues to give us much to think about, and how those changes should also influence the way we think about politics and murder.

TrinDay P.O. Box 577, Waterville, OR, 97489
1-800-566-2012

[Bill Kelly is author of “300 Years at the Point” and “Birth of the Birdie.” His research on the JFK assassination is supported in part by a grant from the Fund For Constitutional Government Investigative Journalism Project. He can be reached at Bkjfk3@yahoo.com]         

Wednesday 23 May 2012

Gerald McKnight, the FBI, the MPD, and the MLK Assassination

Gerald McKnight is the author of one my all-time favourite books, Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why, which is, for my money, the best critique of the official investigation into JFK's death ever written. So I was quite excited to come across a copy of his hard to find (in the UK anyway) 1998 book, The Last Crusade: Martin Luther King Jr., the FBI, and the Poor People's Campaign.

Man was I disappointed when I came across this passage:

“...there is nothing in the released documents to support, and persuasive evidence to reject, assertions that the FBI and the MPD conspired to assassinate King. Had Hoover and the FBI elites actually planned to neutralize King by assassination, it is reasonable to assume they would have called off their COINTELPRO campaign against him and destroyed these records once the decision was finalized. Any truly independent federal investigation into the King assassination uncovering this kind of incriminating evidence would place the FBI at the top of its list of prime suspects. It is equally untenable and baseless to imagine that the Hoover FBI, a virtually independent security state within a state that had succeeded so spectacularly over almost 50 years under the operational premise that control was the name of the game, would conspire with parties outside the bureau to kill King.” (pgs. 81-82)

When I read the above, I found myself saying out loud, “Are you serious, Jerry?” because I just don't see how the man who wrote Breach of Trust could also be responsible for writing such unmitigated nonsense. There is, in my opinion, nothing about his argument that is reasonable or logical.

Firstly, I have no idea how anyone could attempt to use Hoover's well-documented hateful campaign against Dr. King as some kind of “proof” that Hoover was not responsible for his murder. To me that's like saying you can rule out the KKK as having any involvement because they've spent a century persecuting African Americans and allegedly made numerous attempts on King's life! Seriously, does that make sense?

Secondly, despite McKnight's claim, destroying the records of its campaign would not have removed the FBI from any list of suspects. Why? Because it was never a secret anyway. Officials of the Justice Department and everyone in the SCLC knew about the surveillance and wiretaps and Hoover had been feeding his “friends” in the press derogatory information about King for years. Hell, in 1964 he publicly called Dr. King “the most notorious liar in the country.” And because it was no secret, destroying records would actually have cast more suspicion on the FBI, not less. On top of that, Hoover never had to fear being investigated because he was always going to be the investigator. He would lead the Bureau's investigation down the lone nut path and, just as they had done with the Kennedy assassination, the mainstream media would dutifully play along. And once the fix was in, the cover-up became institutional and there was never going to be a “truly independent federal investigation”. Did anyone ever seriously believe that the HSCA would find the FBI responsible for the assassination? It was never gonna happen! Not even if the bullet that Killed King had Hoover's fingerprint on it. It was always going to be a case of the fox investigating the chicken coop and Hoover was smart enough and arrogant enough to know it.

Finally, this stuff about conspiring with “parties outside the bureau”, which is presumably meant to dispel the notion of Memphis Police involvement, ignores the obvious fact that the director of the MPD, Frank Holloman, was a 25-year veteran of the FBI who, as McKnight admits, “was professionally close to Hoover, having served seven years as inspector in charge of the director's Washington office.” (p. 47) On top of that, key members of the MPD investigation like N.E. Zachary and Glynn King had attended the FBI academy. So just how far “outside the bureau” was the MPD? Not very. In fact, McKnight himself writes about their special relationship: “...relations between the FBI and the MPD resembled a textbook version of cooperation between local and federal law enforcement agencies. There appeared to be none of the instances of paranoia revolving around issues of control, refusal to share file resources, or attempts by the bureau to shoulder aside the local police and grab the headlines that historically marred relations between Hoover's agency and local police functionaries. Frank Holloman, the Memphis director of public safety, characterized this relationship as 'unique.'” (p. 46) How McKnight can provide these details and less than 40 pages later seem to completely ignore them is quite baffling to me.