DOUGLAS VALENTINE REVIEWS: AN ACT OF STATE

Bill Pepper's book, An Act of State: the Execution of Martin Luther King (Verso, 2003), is a book whose time has come. It is required reading for anyone interested in how they illegitimate Bush regime will wield its ill-gotten power, not against Iraq, but against dissenters here in America.

not by James Ray, a bumbling patsy, but by a Memphis policeman in league with the Mafia, backed by soldiers -- some armed with high-powered rifles, others with cameras to film the event -- in a special Military Intelligence unit.

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implicates high-ranking officers in all the American intelligence and security branches. And it stars Raoul, the assembly line worker now living under government protection

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The trial was held in Memphis in 1999, but the Department of Justice, as Pepper explains, buried the verdict beneath an avalanche of lies and distortions, with a little help from its friends in the media.

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assassinations of this sort could happen on a regular basis in Bush's war-mongering America, where wiping out his political opposition under the guise of fighting terrorism will

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only through a revolution can we stop the budding fascist dictatorship

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important leads

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what CIA agent Marrell McCollough doing on the balcony of the Lorrain Motel while King was lying there dying?

McCollough had infiltrated the local black power group, the Invaders, and was part of an Invader-staffed security group that Jesse Jackson allegedly disbursed moments before the assassination.

DOUGLAS VALENTINES ARTICLES

WILLIAM PEPPER REDUX

WHO KILLED MLK, JR

This article is based on the work of a remarkable man. Dr. William Pepper is an attorney, author, and friend of Martin Luther King and his family. In February 1967 King had asked to meet a young man whose work as a journalist in Vietnam showed the terrible impact on the civilian population. King wept and never wavered in his opposition to the war. That young man was Bill Pepper. He became James Earl Ray’s lawyer and assembled the evidence that exonerated Ray — some of which is described below.

Six-oh-one p.m., April 4th, 1968, Martin Luther King has been felled by a single shot.

In 1977 the family of Martin Luther King engaged an attorney and friend, Dr. William Pepper, to investigate a suspicion they had. They no longer believed that James Earl Ray was the killer. For their peace of mind, for an accurate record of history, and out of a sense of justice they conducted a two decade long investigation. The evidence they uncovered was put before a jury in Memphis, TN, in November 1999. 70 witnesses testified under oath, 4,000 pages of transcripts described the evidence, much of it new. It took the jury 59 minutes to come back with their decision that Loyd Jowers, owner of Jim’s Grill, had participated in a conspiracy to kill King, a conspiracy that included J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, Richard Helms and the CIA, the military, the Memphis Police Department (MPD), and organized crime. That verdict exonerated James Earl Ray who had already died in prison.

Creative Maladjustment

Martin Luther King, "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam"

You may not know it my friends, but it is estimated that we spend $500,000 dollars to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend only $53 dollars for each person classified as poor and most of that $53 goes for salaries for people who are not poor. War is an enemy of the poor.

Sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church on April 30, 1967

Along about the nine minute mark it becomes abundently clear why he was murdered.

I NEVER INTEND TO ADJUST MYSELF

Dr. Martin Luther King's 1963 WMU Speech, see words here. See YouTube here

Herman W. Read Fieldhouse, west campus of Western Michigan University

"Social Justice."

Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word in psychology. It is the word "maladjusted." This is the ringing pride to modern child psychology. Maladjusted. Now of course, we all want to live the well adjusted life. In order to neurotic and schizophrenic personalities.

But as I move to my conclusion, I would like to say to you today in a very honest manner, there are some things in our society and some things in our world which I am proud to be maladjusted and I call upon all men of good-will will be maladjusted to these things until the good societies realize.

I very honestly say to you that I never intend to adjust myself to racial segregation and discrimination.

I never intend to adjust myself to religious bigotry.

I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. and leave millions of god's children smothering in an air tight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society.

I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, to self-defeating effects of physical violence.

But in a day when sputniks and explorers are dashing through outer space and guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can win a war.

It is no longer the choice between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence.

BONUS: Martin Luther King, "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam"

"You may not know it my friends, but it is estimated that we spend $500,000 dollars to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend only $53 dollars for each person classified as poor and most of that $53 goes for salaries for people who are not poor. War is an enemy of the poor."

WILLIAM PEPPER: AN ACT OF STATE, THE EXECUTION OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR

The trial that should have changed history

“In 1977 the family of Martin Luther King engaged an attorney and friend, Dr. William Pepper, to investigate a suspicion they had. They no longer believed that James Earl Ray was the killer. For their peace of mind, for an accurate record of history, and out of a sense of justice they conducted a two decade long investigation. The evidence they uncovered was put before a jury in Memphis, TN, in November 1999. 70 witnesses testified under oath, 4,000 pages of transcripts described that evidence, much of it new. It took the jury 59 minutes to come back with their decision that exonerated James Earl Ray, who had already died in prison. The jury found that Lloyd Jowers, owner of Jim’s Grill, had participated in a conspiracy to kill King. The evidence showed that the conspiracy included J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, Richard Helms and the CIA, the military, the Memphis police department, and organized crime.” – TUC Radio

WILLIAM PEPPER

WHO KILLED MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR

by Maria Gilardin / April 4th, 2008

Dr. William Pepper

William Pepper’s 2003 book, An Act of State, The Execution of Martin Luther King, published by Verso

The evidence they uncovered was put before a jury in Memphis, TN, in November 1999. 70 witnesses testified under oath, 4,000 pages of transcripts described the evidence, much of it new. It took the jury 59 minutes to come back with their decision that Loyd Jowers, owner of Jim’s Grill, had participated in a conspiracy to kill King, a conspiracy that included J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, Richard Helms and the CIA, the military, the Memphis Police Department (MPD), and organized crime. That verdict exonerated James Earl Ray who had already died in prison.

The news of the verdict, in one of the most important national security trials in modern history, was suppressed.

In a new attempt to break the silence Verso has just issued An Act of State in paperback.

The evidence presented — under oath and on the record — made it abundantly clear that the reports of the 1997 House Select Committee on Assassinations, of the Civil Rights Commission appointed by Clinton’s AG Janet Reno, and the New York Times were all wrong. James Earl Ray did not murder King.