Dealey Plaza UK's Melanie Swift; Dr. William Pepper; Joseph Backes
Dr. Pepper-"Thank you Phil. I guess my brief here today is to attempt to bring you all up to date on some of the developments in this case. The media follows it fairly carefully. They do so on a selective basis often with a fixed agenda. So I will try to cover the particular areas of new developments and incidents that are presently unfolding. Let me deal with James' health first; that is most currently challenging us. He became critically ill last December, and was rushed to the hospital with a great deal of concern and mystery surrounding what had happened to him because we did not expect, no one expected, this immediate catastrophe to result. He was in critical condition in December for a period of days. It turned out that he had terminal cirrhosis of the liver and that was the result of a hepatitis C infection, that had been latent and only diagnosed quite recently. In fact, when I obtained the medical file it was obvious that the prison doctors in the medical facility in Tennessee had diagnosed him having had hepatitis C in 1994. No one ever mentioned it. No one ever revealed it to the family or to me as counsel or to anyone else.
"He survived that attack in December, obviously, and was returned to the special needs facility in Nashville. Since that time he has been in and out of hospital on a regular basis. He has been critical on two other occasions and almost died when he became comatose. When that happened I went to Nashville and spent some time with the attending physician, a chap called Dr. Babul Ral (sp?) And he is outside the prison system and works for Nashville Memorial and is on a contract basis, and so he is the person to whom they turn whenever there is any incident of James, any question about his health, any incident of him having any kind of attack. Dr. Ral and I agreed to be in touch if necessary on a daily basis. The family had initially decided that if James was in such extreme pain and discomfort for any sustained period of time that he be removed, that all life support systems be removed from him. After the conference that we had with Dr. Ral, near constant deliberation obviously, the family withdrew those instructions and decided that James should be continued on life support should he again become comatose.
"And that was a reflection of primarily, I think, his sister and his brother's position that he had always desperately wanted to have his name cleared. And, of course, if James Earl Ray dies his petition dies with him, and there will be no trial and it is unlikely that either truth or justice may emerge in this very old and very difficult case.
"What has happened since then is that he is under the care and maintenance of the medical facility at the Department of Corrections but he gets rushed to the hospital if anything appears untoward. And now on an almost weekly basis his stomach is tapped or drained of fluids. Last week, for example, they, well, just the week before last they took 8 liters of fluid from his stomach. The liver is not functioning and there is quite a buildup. I saw him last Sunday prior to arguing in Nashville in Chancellery court on Monday and his stomach would become bloated again. So within, it is almost now going to be a weekly, a weekly event.
"For a period of time after December of 96 I explored the possibility of alternative medical arrangements for James, and alternative medical treatment for him. And I spoke with Drs. at Shanghai Hospital who had specialized in Chinese traditional medicine treating cirrhosis for their patients in China; I spoke with colleagues of theirs at a similar alternative, Chinese alternative medicine hospital in Germany; I spoke with Dr. Kahn at Cambridge, who is a neighbor of mine who is the leading liver transplant specialist in Europe and Dr. John Fung who is at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, the Thomas Starzel Transplantation Institute. The reports and the consensus was that only a liver transplant could save James Earl Ray at this point in time based on all of the known medical facts. So we began to focus on the ways and means of getting him a liver transplant. Now his record was sent to the Vanderburg Hospital Center in Nashville Tennessee and they rejected it.
(end of tape)
Dr. Pepper- "...the Commercial Appeal saying no liver, ever, for this man. There is a shortage of organs and he certainly shouldn't have a liver, and shouldn't survive. In this context and really I suppose under the cover of the firearms examination work that was going on just outside of Pittsburgh, I went in to see John Fung at the University of Pittsburgh Center, which is one of the leading transplant centers in, I think, this country, and I believe I've spoken to him on the phone for over four months, and I was very happy to meet him and to feel a sense of humanity about a lingering death here that I had not found elsewhere. John Fung told me that in Pennsylvania they do indeed transplant inmates. They do conduct transplants for inmates. In Tennessee they have never done that. He expressed serious interest in trying to work with us to get James Earl Ray in a situation where he could be first assessed, and on the basis of the file that he had already seen, he thought he might well be acceptable for a transplant and he also believed that in that instance he probably would save his life.
"So we began to plan a legal strategy to try to get an order of court to allow James Earl Ray to be taken to Pittsburgh for three days, 72 hours for the tests that John Fung wanted to perform. Now, it is important to understand that Dr. Fung wanted him in Pittsburgh. He wanted him (Ray) to come there. He didn't want to have to go to Tennessee, and one of the reasons why he didn't want to have go to Tennessee was because we want to treat him like anyone else, if we have to make a special trip to Tennessee, that's not treating him like anyone else, and everyone is going to be subject to a great deal of political controversy. In addition to that the King family had come out in support of a transplant for James but they also were of the mind that he should be treated like everyone else, anyone else in these circumstances.
"So we drafted a petition to the court, thinking in the first instance we would go before Judge Brown at the Shelby County Criminal Court because he had control, jurisdiction over the body and we have an ongoing post conviction relief petition before the court, and then we are advised that even if Judge Brown ruled in our favor in that case, the State would delay us further by going up on appeal because a peculiar law in Tennessee requires any petition against a state agency to be brought in Davidson county. So we then had to refile a petition and it was done within 24 hours at Chancellery court in Nashville and we argued that motion last Monday. Now without boring you with the details of the law, the law is really quite clear and has been settled for over 21 years, the Estel and Gamble case in 1976 and forty cases since then clarifying it have said that to deny an inmate in these circumstance a liver transplant or the medical care that is required to keep him alive is tantamount to being "cruel and unusual punishment" under the 8th Amendment. It is what's known, the standard became known as deliberate indifference. The State has been put on notice. They know what is required and they are being deliberately indifferent. It is a case, really, on all fours. Even the attending physician. Dr. Ral, who is the State's contracted physician swore an affidavit that this is what is required and this is his prescription.
"Well as is often the case in the state of Tennessee when we appear before the state courts there, they like to pretend that the Constitution of the United States does not exist and that somehow they are outside of the federal constitution and they look to Tennessee law and regulations and, of course, Tennessee laws and regulations give the Commissioner of Corrections discretion in these cases. So he has a discretion to violate the 8th Amendment, which he freely did. After lengthy argument he went away for an hour and a half and came back and ruled against us and denied our petition and dismissed it.
"So we are going to, we are in the process of appealing that, of course, but in the meantime I have asked Dr. Fung and the King family to assist and to reconsider the situation, and that at this point in time I think is being done and I suspect what is going to happen is that we are in fact going to get James Earl Ray assessed and evaluated in Tennessee. There are a series of tests that can be completed there and we are going to do that and we are going to arrange for a physician from Dr. Fung's staff to come to Nashville and to visit James and to complete the assessment there.
"But I think we will go through that process, if in fact, he, as we should certainly hope, passes the assessment and becomes a viable candidate for a transplant and is listed at the University of Pittsburgh Center, then we will await the availability of an organ, and within a period of time it is quite possible that one will become available. And it's quite possible then that we will be asking the State of Tennessee, once again, not to allow James Earl Ray to go for three days but to allow him to go for a more sustained period of time so that he can undergo this necessary lifesaving procedure. And it will be very interesting to see if they, at that point in time continue to deny him access to that medical care because then it, in my view, will be tantamount to murder. What they have already done by denying him the first stage is to increase his sentence to death because he will not get care in Tennessee, and he is terminally ill and he will die in a matter of months. So he effectively has had a death sentence imposed upon on him. It will be very interesting to see how this all sort of fleshes out once it becomes possible to have the, if it becomes possible to have the operation completed.
"Now the second development since, I guess since the beginning of the year really is the emergence of the King family and their entrance into this case and their very strong positions with respect to, now, the fight for a trial, I think, I've been in touch indirectly with the family over the years just to let them know some of the progress of my work but they were not then ready to come forward. They were to some extent informed but not ready. When a member of the family read my work sometime within the year after it was published it began to raise questions in that person's mind and he then began to pull at the coattails and the arms of some of the other members of the family and to try to make them aware of some issues that they had not dealt with because of the pain and because of, I guess what Dexter had said was a frame of mind of denial of these events.
"Then when James became critically ill, they realized, that if they, if they were going to act as a family, they had to act now otherwise the truth that they want to come out might be lost forever. So they as a family took a decision, without consulting with me, I didn't influence that decision, anymore than one might imagine, I had no direct contact with them, after they made their public statement, they then called me and asked me to come and meet, and in one very emotional evening, really which I guess went on for the better part of twelve hours, I walked them through the evidence that I had uncovered over the last nearly 20 years in this case and showed them affidavits and statements and documents and reports that lay behind a lot of the work in the book, and they then decided to develop a strategy and come fully forward for a trial. And Dexter on his own after consulting with the family had come to the conclusion, in fact, as I had in 1988 that James Earl Ray was innocent, and was a patsy, and was prepared to say that, and did say that.
"Now they have been firmly behind this effort. They have been far wiser than I have been with respect to the media, and how the media is used in these kinds of cases, and while we consult on various public relations issues and events, I have to say they have been far more cautious and prudent, and I think, Dexter and I have discussed this at length, and I think it has come out of the fact that if you grow up in a family that has been under surveillance, and under harassment, and as a child you remember that, quite a period of time, there tends to be almost a natural reaction, and a gut feeling when you start dealing with media people. And so I think they have been careful and cautious but I think we all have been somewhat victimized by some of the coverage that has resulted, and is going to result in the case.
"Now another development that occurred, in January of 1996, a few months after the book was published, Steve Tomkins, who is a friend, and is a colleague of mine, and who had taken my questions to two members of an Army team who were in Memphis on the day of the assassination received a phone call, received a phone call from a man who we thought was dead, the man who I called "Gardner" in the book. He was a Colonel in the 902nd Military Intelligence group who organized the basic details of structure and team and movements of that operation back in 1968. And he called Steve and he said, 'I've read Bill Pepper's book and it's accurate except he's overplayed my role. I was in a chain of command situation and I would like to work with you guys over the period of time so that you more fully understand how these things work and how this mission was planned and carried out.' So we set up the same format of my providing questions and him giving answers. He refused to meet with me. I am after all a lawyer, I am James Earl Ray's lawyer, so he refused to meet with me but he agreed to follow the format that we had successfully used before. And it emerged that he had been legally dead, declared legally dead, some years ago, about a decade or so ago, and that he had a new identity, and said he was feeling somewhat insulated and prepared to go forward, that process has been going on now for quite a period of time.
"There has been a recent break in, and I'm not quite sure why, for the first time ever, a contact has not occurred, and I'm not quite sure why this has happened except I have suspicions because of a movement that has occurred.
"Now moving on to the post conviction relief application, and the firearms identification work that is going on at this moment. Under Tennessee law, the only way you can open up a guilty plea is by using scientific evidence to prove actual innocence of the person who has plead guilty. Now that is a law that has been tightened over 25 years, gradually. They are trying to make it more and more difficult, and I think it is a national temper here, they are trying to make it more and more for people to open up guilty pleas. They plead guilty, they want to keep them in there, they don't want to allow these petitions to go the old habeas corpus petitions. Habeas corpus is virtually gone in the state of Tennessee, and of course it has been emasculated, nationally as well. But we're constricted now by having to have scientific evidence of actual innocence in order to open this up. So there are very few areas you can even go, and one obvious area is the murder weapon, the alleged murder weapon.
"Now that rifle we have believed for a long time, is a throw down gun. It is not the murder weapon at all. We know the history of how it was thrown down. We know the history of how the killing took place, and where the real weapon was hidden by Lloyd Jowers, and who he gave it to the next morning and we know that that weapon is not the real murder weapon.
"We know that the FBI tested it in 1968, and the Select Committee tested it in the mid-seventies, that neither test was able to test the death slug to the rifle. So therefore, in terms of the state claiming this is the murder weapon, it's useless as a piece of evidence because the death slug itself could not be matched to the rifle. But the hype of propaganda, and the media reports and analysis over the years have treated it as the murder weapon, in a common mentality, this is the murder weapon, even though it has never scientifically been established as the murder weapon, it is.
"Also, the defense in this case has never been allowed to test the weapon, very interesting, 29 years, we come to 29 years, and the defense has never once been allowed to test this weapon. Never allowed to conduct it's own test with it's own experts. So we went into division 9, Joe Brown's court and we asked back in 1994 for the right to test this rifle. He agreed, the Court of Appeals, Supreme Court disagreed. We came back on a motion to reconsider, what happened on the timing of the motion to reconsider, of course was the fact that James was ill, he had become critically ill, and the King family had decided to come forth, to become involved in this case. So there now was a spotlight, there was a focus that we didn't have before. And people started asking who had never known before, why haven't they been allowed to test it, why not let them test it, what are they trying to hide? So this time the judge ruled in our favor, and the State appealed, but the Court of Appeals, the Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed their appeal. And so we finally have been given the right to test this rifle.
"So we've appointed a team of three experts, and a fourth, and the fourth was for the company, a company outside of Pittsburgh, called CAMSCAN. And they manufacture and distribute an instrument called a Scanning Electron Microscope. It allows you to go into much greater magnification of an object than a usual comparison microscope allows you to. So what we have started about the business of doing was trying to find out, and for those not familiar with ballistic works and firearms and how it works, there are two steps you have to take, one you try to see if the bullet and the weapon have what is known as common class characteristics, lanes and grooves and a twist, for example, the same number of lanes and grooves and a twist. Thousands of rifles have the same class characteristics so that doesn't really get you very far. What is essential in terms of matching bullet to gun are the individual markings that a test fire bullet will have compared to the individual markings on a death slug. And that's how you match them, if you don't find those markings, you can't match them.
"We went about the task with the experts charged to see if they could match them. That was the first step, and then their secondary instructions were, now see if you can exclude it, which is the most difficult of all because you have to have a sufficient number of matched test firing (something). So they have been about that business now for a period of time. Some of their own schedules have actually interrupted part of the work and the judge has, of his own, decided to impose certain protocols for the rest of the work that have to be carried out.
"Now the judge is a ballistics expert. He's a very bright guy and when it comes to firearms he knows as much as any expert I've ever talked to, without exception. And he has imposed certain very specific protocols on these examiners, and it has to do with more fine examination of that weapon and the death slug, and that is going on.
"The judge has also done something else, he has put a gag order on the details of the examination, and the reason and the nature of the protocols that he has imposed and he has said he doesn't want anyone connected with the case talking about it. So I am not able to go into those details with you. It is unfortunate that others in Memphis have begun to leak out information about this, and I expect when the judge returns to the bench on Monday from the judicial conference he is going to be very unhappy, and he will be furious with any person whom he can actually identify as having leaked that information.
"Anyway, that process is going on, I think one can expect to see it resolved and back in court sometime in July, probably the second week in July at this point in time. Now in the course of all of this, again, after word of James' illness was made public a new witness contacted me. He had never come forward before. He was a former federal agent, of very high standing and commendation and he had specific evidence of a documentary nature which he said absolved my client James Earl Ray of the murder. Or at least substantiated, and he was a lawyer, at least substantiated a major area of his, and he had been tested all these years, of his defense. I have since met on three occasions with this witness and he is prepared to come into court, and he is prepared to testify and he is prepared to authenticate documentation. And it's always very pleasing when you want to see whistle blowing at work in a case as sensitive as this one, and it's gratifying to know that there are those people however long it takes them to come forward who are prepared at the end of the day to try to help us obtain truth and justice in this case, so that witness will be coming forward.
"There is nothing new to report on "Raul" other than we still know where he is, we monitor his activity from time to time and we are awaiting a trial. When we get that trial he will be subpoenaed, he will be brought forward and we will see where that takes us. 'Cause, you see, the problem that the State has, the problem that certain powerful people still alive have with this case, it is not just James Earl Ray who is disposable, but if James Earl Ray gets a trial, and is acquitted, and he is acquitted on the basis of evidence that is put out there under cross examination then the people responsible will have to be found and we are perfectly happy to begin naming them for the purposes of indictments, initially issuing, and going along that indictment road and counseling even in the granting of immunity in order to get to the next step on the ladder and just moving through that prosecutorial process because the King's do not want vengeance. They want truth and reconciliation for this land and they want that to occur as a result of this whole process. And they see truth and justice for James Earl Ray as being very important aspects of all of that process, so we will be going down that road.
"Now there is one other development which is not a happy development in some ways, and in the short term it's going to be, I think, a negative development and I think it will hurt to some extent, in the long run I think it's already now beginning to have an impact that is going to cause another type of reaction. In my work I name the leader of the Alpha 184 team in Memphis. I name him because I was told from the guy who take place from one of two members of the team and someone else, independently, that he was dead. So I put his name out there because I was one, convinced that he was the Captain of this unit, and two that he was dead. There was another member of the team who is also dead, a Sergeant J. D. Hill, John.D. Hill, he was killed in 1979, so his name is there. The main informants I call "Warren" and "Murphy", they are alive living South of the border, we are not using the names of primary providers of information. Well it turns out that the Captain is not dead, that he is in fact alive, and that he has been living in Costa Rica, that he is living in Costa Rica because there was some manslaughter charge that he had, or some problem, I'm not quite sure of all of that, but there was some problem, and he fled to Costa Rica. Now when the material for that crucial chapter 30 was reviewed by the people South of the border, and by the Colonel called Steve Tomkins, they all said nothing about this person being alive. It was generally assumed that by those that knew him that he was dead, but also there was not the slightest dissent or questioning that he was the leader of the platoon, that he was the Captain. I have reports that indicate, his name is spread on the reports, that indicate that in fact he led that team. Well now, he has been brought forward as being alive, and as having been at work on the 4th of April at the Birmingham firehouse. He was a retired Green Beret, he was back and forth on National Guard duty, as were the other seven members of the team. Now I have not seen any of the work, the informant documentation, but I think it will produced on television, and I think what is happening here is that there now is an effort coming about to discredit the whole story of the military being there, and the whole area of military involvement in the assassination of Martin King is going to be now looked at very carefully it this respect.
"I did a television interview recently, where this Captain was brought forth, and there were five military people in the studio, no one below the rank of Colonel, and the General, who at the time was a Colonel running the 20th Special forces sat on my left and the Captain, who is now a Colonel sat on my right, and I was asked if I was surprised, and questions like that, silly questions like that, "was I surprised to see him alive?", of course I was, and sorry for saying that he was dead before his time, and if I had known he was going to be here I would have brought quite a bit of information I would have liked to question him about, but I haven't recently had that opportunity, but what I do have, is I do have his address, and I have his telephone number and I would not be adverse to issuing a subpoena for this chap and letting him come forward under oath at the right time.
"I have also commissioned certain investigatory work to check on his background, certain background information, and I have begun to go back to the sources who provided me with the information in the first place and so far they are still coming back with the same answers, and one deep cover source is so upset and so angry that they are trying to whitewash this situation that he is actually considering coming into court, testifying under oath, and bringing classified documents, and putting them into evidence. And if we can accomplish that it will be a major milestone in this whole effort but it will take a very considerable amount of courage for this person to do that. We will wait and see where that rests
"But this type of media program, and Dexter actually warned me about this and I give credit to his sense of media in the beginning, is very, very, dangerous because you don't know the significance when they switch from one presenter to another and then when they delay a program for 4 months, and then you just don't know what these things are all about, those people have been through it, as the King family has for years, there is something really wrong here, there is something going on, they are up to something. And then when a colleague of mine and a friend, as Steve Tompkins is, tells me that they are going on at him, and he is Deputy Press Secretary to the Governor of Georgia and they are trying to show the differences in his analysis of things and my analysis, and Steve says I told them, you had different sources for much of this stuff than I did. I, for example, said Steve never talked to Carson, another fellow in the book who is the best friend of J.D. Hill. It was Carson, totally separately, that gave the story of the team to me, not from J.D. Hill's mouth, so Steve said we have had two different perceptions, I (Tomkins) may have come to believe that that team was there for the purpose of shooting King and Young only in the event of a riot, whereas you (Pepper) thought they were on an assassination mission, you know, I just said, I can't imagine why on April 4th, Steve, when the Lorraine was one of the most peaceful places in Memphis that just didn't make any sense to me, so I couldn't give credibility to that, I thought people were trying to cover themselves. But I am sure some of the problems that you face in this kind of an investigation, the more high profile it becomes the more you are subject to this kind of, almost media manipulation, if you will. And one has to be very, very, careful about it. And I suppose for the most part I am going to be comfortable from here on in focusing where we have to focus best in a court of law, because that's where the decisions that amounts to anything are going to be made in any event.
"But please be aware, be alert of this in terms of all of the other work that any of you are about doing 'cause you are all involved, those of you who are actively involved, and perhaps for very long period of time you are involved in very sensitive activities and we all know I am sure how the media will deal with you. It's unfortunate, but it's reality. When they start doing it, you know you are getting closer and closer to the bone, and that's very important. For two years, well a good year and a half, "Orders to Kill" was ignored in this country, it was better known in France than anywhere in the United States. It was never reviewed in America. It was ignored. They had no reason to be concerned about the allegations. Now all of a sudden we are in a situation where we might actually get a trial if this man is allowed to survive. So it is no longer safe and sound policy to ignore it, they are going to have to come with everything they have, and that power is awesome, make no doubt about it, it's awesome, and we will just have to withstand it to the extent that we can and ask for support from folks like yourselves, and Jimmy Lesar, and Phil Melanson, who have worked, and I hate to even begin naming people because I will leave people out but we have to have support from those who have been closely involved with this case in particular as much as we can.
"You know Martin King said, one of the more famous things he ever said was, 'Truth crushed to earth will rise again.' I'm sure many of you have heard that or seen that on clips. And it's taken on a new meaning, it's taken on a new meaning because the truth in this case has indeed been crushed to earth, and it has begun to rise again, it has begun to rise particularly over the last four years and to come out and begin to flower, and now the boots are out and they are attempting once again to crush it. And we are just determined that that is just not going to happen. Thank you."
Gary Aguilar- "Can I ask a question, if both the original investigation of the FBI and the HSCA determined that the bullet didn't match the rifle how is it that no greater issue of it was made from a legal stance at that point?"
Phil Melanson- "We'll take this one question and then we will let Mike talk a bit, and then well go to all the questions."
Dr. Pepper- "Yeah, I think, I began representing James in 1988, I think the defense had made half hearted attempts back in '68 to test the rifle and were not able to do it, they were not allowed, the judge simply said no. And they didn't carry it any further. And I can't answer you why the issue was not taken up. The FBI originally said the bullet, the death slug was too badly mutilated and distorted to be capable of being matched. Well, no expert I have ever talked to who has seen that slug has said that. In fact, they said it's virtually a perfect evidence bullet and that if they could have matched it they would have matched it. That's the stuff of trial, though. If you get to trial, and they try to produce that as the murder weapon the mere fact that they couldn't match it would go in our favor, and it would be excluded as evidence."
Phil then introduced Rev. Mike Clark who has helped Phil with an analysis of suspect Jules Ricco Kimble.
He said nothing new or of substance, well very little. He spoke of four scenarios of the MLK assassination, 1.) Ray did it, 2.) that Ray was fixing a flat tire and something extraordinary happened and Ray got drawn up into that, that he is innocent of killing King, 3.) Dr. Pepper and a British documentary crew were beginning to hear in the late 1980's that Lloyd Jowers had some role in this that went beyond what other have said, and finally in 1993 on ABC's "Prime Time Live' he (Jowers) said as much himself. No response. So 3 is basically Jowers in the bushes, 4.) is what we now have in the last two years, it comes from "Orders To Kill" putting the killing in a much broader context.
Clark commented on the shift in the case from where it was to now zeroing in on the bushes. Clark mentioned that Harold Weisberg in "Frame-Up" mentioned "bushes" on only two pages. Weisberg spent a great deal of time wondering who ran down the hallway. Mark Lane and Dick Gregory in "Code Name Zorro" had seven references to "bushes", still concentrating on the hallway. Then in the 1980's what's going on behind the building, in the shrubbery. Now, he thinks brought to fruition in "Orders to Kill".
Someone asked Dr. Pepper how did Ray get the Hepatitis C?
Dr. Pepper-"Don't know, it can even be airborne. I think it is probably quite likely that he did get it while he was in the care and custody of the Tennessee Department of Corrections, but he doesn't smoke, he doesn't drink, he hasn't to the best of anyone's knowledge been involved in any sexual activities. Hepatitis C is a fairly new, as you may not know, it's a fairly new strain of Hepatitis and it's one of the more mysterious ones, but it may even be airborne we don't know how he got it."
audience member- "Was there an outbreak of it in prison?"
Dr. Pepper- "I'm advised that 80% of all inmates have one form or another of Hepatitis.
Someone jokingly asked if Gerald Posner is an expert in this area. Dr. Pepper responded that he doesn't think that he is. Posner is supposedly writing a book on the King assassination.
Someone asked if Dr. King's mother was shot in church? Dr. Pepper said that he didn't know a great deal about that incident but yes, she was shot in church. When Martin's brother, A.D. King went to visit the shooter, Dexter King, Martin's son was present, A. D. said he was there to see this guy and to forgive him The killer replied, "I was really after you. And if I get out of here I'm going to get you." And A.D. replied that he was sorry to hear that but "I still forgive you."
Someone asked about the English and U.S. intelligence apparatus that worked together to make appear that Ray was in Portugal when actually he was in England during part of his escape, never in Portugal, prior to his capture. And he wanted to know the name of the individual who might come forward with classified documents.
Dr. Pepper pointed out that he is not English but rather he has Irish citizenship, as well as American. He is a barrister in England and he is an attorney in America too. He has lived in England for 17 years. He said that of course there is a close working relationship with the CIA and MI6, and Cheltenham, and GCHQ, and the NSA. There is a great deal of collaboration. Pepper clarifies that in fact Ray did go to Portugal. Ray was trying to get to Angola and Mozambique, and he did spend some time in Portugal, and he did return to England.
It is just the reverse, for the confused reader of "Frame-Up". They want to have Ray in England, not Portugal, so as to tie him in with a bank robbery that occurred in England during the crucial period to explain away the nagging question of Ray's finances, and where in the hell Ray is getting his money from, because it sure as hell looks like someone is financing him.
A young man, who said he is an attorney, had a problem understanding a point raised during a discussion on the recent developments in the MLK-Ray case held earlier during the non-existant, non-working working panels. That point was that when Ray filed to have a trial and set aside his guilty plea there is a 30 day period for review of that, and if the judge who has jurisdiction dies while reviewing the appeal, under Tennessee law a trial is automatically granted. Judge Preston Battle did die at his desk with Ray's appeal file on the desk in front of him. Without getting into whether or not that is a "mysterious death' issue, the law was automatic and Ray should have been granted the trial, right then and there. This was argued for but the powers that be in Tennessee said no.
This young man could not understand that and that could not get into his head with a stick. We went around and around with him. He was insisting it had to be discretionary and that we were wrong. No one agreed with him. Everybody knew the case and was trying to tell him that this is what happened. He finally asked Dr. Pepper and Dr. Pepper referred him to Jim Lesar, who told him exactly what we told him. Dr. Pepper reemphasized, "To carry on with that, the law in Tennessee requires if a motion for a new trial is pending and the sitting judge dies it requires that that motion be granted. Judge Battle died while he was considering two motions for a new trial, one was for a chap called Webster, who was granted a new trial, and the other was for James Earl Ray, who was not granted a new trial.
"Now, I am going to take you a little bit further down the nuance road. They say in Tennessee that that is because James Earl Ray technically was trying to set aside a guilty plea and then get a trial, whereas the other fellow had already had a trial and he was trying to get a new trial. So they will split those kinds of hairs. But we have raised that and we have argued that motion and they just do not want to hear it and denied it."
He said thank you for clarifying it but I wonder if he has yet got it.
Someone thought that it would be unlikely that they would throw down Ray's rifle unless it had fired the fatal shot because they would not risk a ballistic test proving that it did not fire the fatal shot.
This is not great thinking.
Dr. Pepper- "I think in fact no ballistics tests were done for 29 years and they were very confident that the defense would never be allowed to test that rifle and they were almost successful, and if it hadn't been for the fact that we, frankly, just kept coming back and we had this Judge Joe Brown, who is a judge from heaven, in terms of a case like this. (laughter) He's curious, he's dynamic, he's creative and he's bright, he's not from Memphis, (big laughter) he's originally from California, and he has friends who were Panthers, and he's a ballistic expert."
I asked if wasn't the bullet that killed Dr. King recovered at autopsy intact and now it's in pieces, could you comment on that, Dr. Pepper?
Dr. Pepper-"The bullet was removed as a single piece, intact. The pathologist testified at the guilty plea hearing some months later when it had been returned from the FBI, it was in three pieces, it was in fragments when it came back from Washington, and he testified that was the bullet he took from Dr. King's body, and Cyril will probably appreciate this, it was Dr. Franciso, Jerry Francisco was the pathologist, he was testifying for the State, and when he was shown the three fragments, and he said yeah that's what I took, that's the bullet I took from Dr. King's body. And a great deal has been made of the fact that, and I among others have made it, the fact that something happened to that bullet when the FBI had it, when they were working with it, but I have been advised in fairness, I've been advised that when firearms experts and examiners work with a slug of that sort and they pry back some of the jacketing, that the core often does fall out, so there's nothing unusual about that, what is critical is whether or not there are enough markings still there whereby you can match that slug to the rifle. And they are there in this case and that's really what's important."
Gary Aguilar- "Yeah, I'm kind of curious, not knowing this case as well as I will on the way back, I just bought your book by the way, I could not find it in California, I was curious to see now in the video which I saw a part of last night, the emergence of the CIA in this case, and certainly that explains some of his travels and that sort of thing but I'm trying to think in my own mind if the CIA was involved in some way in this case how it is that you see the CIA and the FBI acting in this case and what motivations they would have if you're the CIA."
Pepper- "Well, in many ways. You see through a glass darkly-
Gary Aguilar- "I mean we see the FBI very clearly, J. Edgar Hoover had it out for him there is no question about that, that's been revealed in public, You know, Church Committee, and Pike Committee, and so forth, but CIA, that I'm trying to understand."
Dr. Pepper- "Dr. King had become a serious foreign policy threat to the security state in the United States, and the Central Intelligence. He had by deciding to oppose the war, in 1967, and coming out frontally and dramatically against that war he was taking on a whole new posture and a whole new political persona that he did not have before. It's important to understand, what I have learned is that the intelligence establishment in Washington is not as divided, and does not work against, is not as contrary to each other and at cross purposes, but in fact at 10:30 every Thursday morning and I have the notes on this from Army intelligence sources, General Yarborough used to motor over to Langley, and he would sit there with the United States Intelligence Board members, chaired by Richard Helms. This was a concerted, as are many of these activities, coordinated operation. One of the soldiers indicated that when they came up from the boats that they road on the river and they were taken to the Illinois Central railroad building and put in their place by a guide he referred to as a "spook", and by that he meant a Central Intelligence Agency agent, and he named the fellow. And I have a photograph of two people coming down over the wall, one of those same soldiers identified the figure on the left by name as a cross agent between the NSA and the CIA, because he knew him in Vietnam. So there is an awful lot of cross fertilization and use of agents, and that's what's sometimes deceptive. "As Martin King stood on that balcony he could have no idea that he was being photographed by a psychological operations team, that he was being monitored covertly by Army security agents, that he was being watched covertly by the 111th military intelligence group, and the FBI at various times, and the Memphis Police Department intelligence operations from the firehouse. He could have had no idea the wealth of attention, could have imagined it perhaps, that was being paid to him. Nor, that he was in the view of the sights of the 20th Special Forces, Alpha 184 Green Beret team, that were a part of that special operations group in Memphis at that time. So there is that kind of coordination, that kind of linking, and that kind of abuse. And I would dare say that without knowing at all the range of activity and support services that the [Central Intelligence] agency might have provided that they did what was required. The FBI did what was required. They took control over the investigation immediately after the assassination, took over control of it, monitored every bit of it, there was always an agent with key detectives of the MPD as they interviewed witnesses and they then began the process of closing it down, closing doors, rather than opening them. So when John McFerren comes forward and tells about Frank Liberto, saying 'shoot the son of a bitch on the balcony' they close that down, they forget about that. They knew about that within three days of the killing, they didn't have any interest. It has taken us, I think as Mike said, [Mike Clark] and as Phil said it has taken us all of these years to put together pieces that a good investigatory team on the spot could have put together within two weeks because everything was fresh and there.
"The fact that the bushes were cut is well known, who cut them is well known, who ordered them to be cut is well known, the removal of the TACT force, the removal of the firemen, the removal of Det. Redditt, it was all, all of that is well known. Jowers role was well known, because we know learn that in the planning meetings prior to the assassination a senior Memphis Police Department Inspector was present at each of those meetings and at his left arm was a man called Marrell McCollough. Marrell McCollough was a Memphis Police Department undercover agent, he infiltrated the Invaders, but no one knew he had been activated on June 16th by the 111th, called back into active Army service. He was there as an agent of the 111th military intelligence group, and he was present throughout.
"Do you know where he is today?
Me-"Langley!"
Dr. Pepper-"Sam Donaldson, Sam Donaldson's program called him at Langley and they said, 'Marrell McCollough?', 'Yes?', 'Do you know a Lloyd Jowers?', I'm paraphrasing, 'Do you know a Lloyd Jowers?', 'Oh, yes. I know a Lloyd Jowers.', 'Well, what would you say if you were told that he had implicated you in the assassination of Martin Luther King?', He said, 'no comment.'
An audience member asked a question about the rifle testing, especially about a small article in the Washington Post the Thursday prior, just the day before the conference, about additional testing being required on the rifle.
Dr. Pepper responded saying the test were done in Rhode Island because that's where Mr. Hathaway's lab is, and the University of Rhode Island has a state crime lab there. The first test was a comparison ballistic microscope, a standard test. The second test involved the scanning electron microscope, and the only place for that was in Cranberry, Pennsylvania outside of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Pepper- "The problem with high powered rifles is the heat that is generated can actually melt the copper jacket and some of the lead as the bullet goes through the bore when that happens a plating often takes place inside the board. Now imagine that being done every single time with a test fire. The result is 50% of the time when you test those kinds of rifles, 50% of the times, it is not possible to match the test fires one to another, that's critical for exclusionary purposes which is the most difficult thing we are trying to do here, is to exclude, it's critical for that, you see. So when you have misfires it's a problem. And it might very well work out like Mike said one of the three alternatives is that it's inconclusive. In a court of law that means the rifle is not the murder weapon it cannot be introduced."
In actual fact it's played as if it might be the murder weapon. The FBI's failure, and the HSCA's failure as well, to positively match the bullet to the gun becomes success when "double-speak" is introduced, and the phrase, "couldn't rule it out either" is used, so therefore, it's as if they did match bullet to gun, they just say it is the murder weapon, we don't need to prove it as he plead guilty, if really pressed they admit they couldn't match it, they'll talk about "inconclusive" results but do not allow that same "inconclusive" result to be read as failure on their part, and that it isn't the gun, and maybe Ray really is innocent.
Dr. Pepper referred to the cleaning issue saying that it requires very specific steps to be taken after each test firing.
Dr. Pepper was asked what are the legal strategies in case Ray does not survive.
Dr. Pepper- "Well, in case James Earl Ray does not survive there is in Tennessee a constitutional guarantee, it's statutory in some states, it's constitutional in Tennessee, that the family of a victim has the right to bring a private prosecution. Now we looked at that and researched it fairly carefully and we are convinced that there is a constitutional guarantee in Tennessee, under Tennessee law for that to take place. So that's an option. And even if James goes the possibility of a private prosecution can be considered. Now whether the victims would consider it is entirely up to the victim, whether they would want to go on with this is entirely their matter. That is one possibility. The only other possible thing to do is to put as much information, new information, and we may be becoming, hopefully, to the end, I never thought for all these years we would be coming to the end of it, maybe we are coming gradually to the end where all of this can be laid out, put whether it will be laid on in a movie, or laid on in a book, or laid out in docudrama's, or documentaries, and the man who was going to do the documentary on my work died in April of a heart attack while he was being interrogated by custom officials in Houston, Texas. And our good friend Cyril Wecht has begun to do some pathological work on that case, but you have exposition, that's really all that's left if you don't have a court remedy."
Someone in the audience pointed out that there are still people in the FBI and Justice Department that go back to the days of Hoover. Dr. Pepper replied that he doesn't think he will get any cooperation from either the FBI or the Justice Department.
Dr. Pepper was asked if the bullet could have been switched. He didn't think so.
Dan Alcorn asked about the possibility of locating the photographic surveillance of Dr. King that the Army surveillance team supposedly took, again, mentioning this Brady act that is supposed to force disclosure of material that is in the government's hands if it reveals a person is not guilty of a crime. Dr. Pepper has replied he has been involved in that work for four years. He is not very optimistic about getting that material but he did say he knows the names of the photographers.
Ed Sherry asked about the mock trial that was a joint venture between England's Channel 4 and the American HBO cable channel. Dr. Pepper said he liked the show cause it went in his favor. (big laughter) he said they tried the case for 10 days sunup to sundown in Memphis He didn't like the judge because he was excluding too much evidence.
Dr. Pepper, "This judge had written the bible on hearsay, and how hearsay could be tempered and should be expanded and properly used, and he gave all the exceptions, and he put them all forward, you know, excited utterances, statements against self interest, these are all exceptions, which means you tell me something that is against your interest, that's admissible because why would you tell me if it weren't true, if it's against your interest, so anyway, when it came down to putting those exceptions to the test however, Judge Franlkin decided that they weren't applicable in this case, or this piece of evidence, so he was excluding right and left. James got so frustrated, he decided the night before, on one hearing that he was going to bring a sign, you know he was on television throughout the trial, and he was sitting there, listening, and he was going to bring a sign, have it on the table in front of him, and at the right moment he was going to raise that sign in front of himself and in front of the camera, and it said 'this trial is a farce'. And the fellow who was working with him told me that this was his intention. So I called him very early in the morning and I said, 'Look, don't do that. We got far too much in already. We are getting more in.', placated him, and as it turned out we did only get a fraction of the evidence in but the jury took seven and a half hours and did their thing.
"That's what the State fears. That was a modicum of the evidence that we have available today to put on. That's what they fear. And the problem that I grapple with is, that I am afraid that if we are successful and we get a trial and we mobilize the defense team and try to enlist people like Jimmy Lesar and others who have been involved in this case for years to help us, and to work on that team and to participate, but if we were successful and we got to that point I think the State will not try the case. I think they will let him go. I think they will let him walk. Because they said that is what they are going to do.
"Joe Lowery had a meeting with the Attorney General and he said, 'What are you crazy?,' the Attorney General said to Joe Lowery. "It would be crazy to try this case. What are you thinking? We could never try this case. We could never win this case. We aren't going to try this case now.' If we are successful he walks. What we need, therefore, is such public opinion against that so that the State in fact, has to go to trial, because Ray will forever be branded as guilty and the case "solved", to use a phrase of our friend Posner, "Case Closed".
Someone asked about the possibility of another congressional investigation. Pepper responded that he has no interest in another congressional investigation. This drew loud applause. He did not want to see anymore politics in this case.
Dr. Pepper then reviewed the the chronology of the assassination, "There had been a meeting in the course of that afternoon, the executive committee of SCLC. A lot of the time they were meeting down in room 201, which was A.D.'s room, A.D. King's room, on the bed. When A.D. came back from court he went into that room, and he was fooling around with Martin and Ralph was there. Martin went back, and Ralph, went back up to their room late in the afternoon. They were all going to dinner at Rev. Kyles' house that night. At 10 minutes to 6:00 p.m. Rev. Kyles knocked on Dr. King's door. Dr. King came to the door and opened it. Spoke with Kyles for a few minutes and went back into his room. Kyles walked down the balcony and stood about 60 feet away, on the balcony, with his hands on the railing, waiting for Dr. King, supposedly. Dr. King came out, a minute or a few minutes before 6:00 and approached the balcony and Rev. Kyles stayed where he was down there, did not come back to see Dr. King, just stayed there and watched him. Martin King then began with talk to some people down below. I think he talked with Ben Branch, told him he wanted him to sing a particular song that night, he talked to Solomon Jones, was the last person he was speaking to.
"Jesse Jackson has said that he spoke to him last but that's simply not true, that's a lie, and Jesse has done all kinds of manipulations in this case, I'm sure you all know this better than I do, the story of Jesse running up to the balcony, and putting his hands on the blood and putting the blood on his shirt and appearing on television, I mean that's Jesse. That's unfortunate but that's true. Jesse did not speak to him. Solomon Jones was speaking to him at the last minute, and he said something about, 'Doc it's getting cold, better get a coat.', and he said 'Okay I'll go in and get a coat.', and at that moment, whether he had turned, or was about to turn, or was still bending over slightly, he was struck with the bullet here that exited here and reentered and lodged in his back. That's the chain of events. That's reconstructed from police logs, and Willie B. Richmond's surveillance from the firehouse, he has his notes and I've got all of that material.
"That's a very different story than Rev. Kyles has told over the years. Over the years he has talked about being with Dr. King and Ralph for 45 minutes, in their room, helping Martin chose a tie, and engaging in banter. None of that happened, but Rev. Kyles has said that. I don't make much of that in terms of anything sinister activity necessarily, perhaps it's just a way of puffing himself up."
An audience member asked about was there film of this? Not to Dr. Pepper's knowledge.
Dr. Pepper was asked about "Raul", and how confident he has "the" Raul.
Dr. Pepper- "Well, let me just go over the evidence, and you can draw your own conclusion. A woman came to us in 1993-1994, after the television trial, and said that she believed she knew who "Raul" was. She knew "Raul". She watched the trial. She heard the prosecutor dismissing "Raul", so she knew who he was. She was a lawyer in Houston, Texas. She said she met him first time when she was 14. It was around 1962 when she first saw him, and she described where she saw him how she saw him. And he would come and go but she would see him from time to time at this gas station where her uncle worked. And he befriended her. And there would be a period of time where she didn't see her. And then she would see her again. In the early 1970's, well after that came this, this cousin named, (?) told her that she should be careful of Raul because he was a very dangerous man, he had killed Martin King, and she didn't know what to make of this. Then another associate of their's independently, a fellow called Felix, told her the same thing. She didn't pay much mind to it, she wasn't a political person, but she got involved in these people in a friendly way, it was a group of them and they were involved in a variety of illegal activities, the most dominate were guns. Guns would come into the port of Houston, coming around from New Orleans, and they would pick them up and bring them back and assemble them, and she was there seeing this go on all the time, they were sort of like friends of hers, she would drive Raul various places. In 1974 she went into a room where they were in a particular house on Navigation St. and she had a key ring, and it had a picture of Jack Kennedy, Bob Kennedy and Martin Luther King, you know, one of the viewfinder key rings, and she put the keys down on the table, where the group was seated, and one of them picked it up and looked at it, and threw it to Raul. Raul then looked at it, and became furious, got up, threw it on the ground, stomped on it, said words like I killed that black son of a bitch once looks like I'll have to do it again, pulled a gun, took her into a bedroom and raped her. That was Raul to her.
"She tried to keep her distance from him after that point in time. Percy Foreman, was defending her husband's brother after the matter and she was in Percy's office and she saw all the James Earl Ray memorabilia spread around the office, and she said I didn't know you were involved in that case. He said, 'Oh yes, oh yes.' And eventually he told her that Ray was a sacrifice and one day the people would understand that. Well she thought that now she had someone with some authority and power who perhaps she could tell someone. Eventually she told him about Raul, and to her shock and surprise she learned that he knew him and he told her just to stay away from this and let me talk to him. He talked to Raul apparently, came back to her and said you and Roy better leave Houston or you'll be dead within the year, these people don't like you talking about this. Now that the Cheryl story, (S ee photo #24 in "Orders To Kill") that's who she is, and she moved into Mississippi, and she came forward all of these years later when she saw this on television.
"Then I got a call from an English Merchant Seaman named Sid Carthew, (See photo #22 in "Orders To Kill") lives up in Yorkshire, and he saw the television trial on Channel 4 and he was incensed that the prosecution said there was no Raul, because when he was on ship leave in Montreal in August of 1967, the same time James Ear Ray was in that area, he met a fellow named Raul trying to sell him some guns.
"Then we go to James Earl Ray himself, in 1978 he is shown hundreds of pictures [trying to identify Raul], in 1978 someone sent him a photograph anonymously and he looked at that photograph and he said, 'This is Raul'. On the back was a name, but it wasn't Raul's name, it was the name of a DEA agent, and what I think they are trying to do is sucker him into saying, 'Aha, yes, this is Raul and here is who he is and then say 'Ah, that explodes the story.', right? So we go through a list of people who knew or saw Raul, Lloyd Jowers knew Raul, he took the gun from Raul, he gave it back to Raul for the killing, took it back from him after the killing, he kept it and gave it back to him the next morning. All of these people have been asked to review a spread of six photographs by me and all of those people, without exception, pointed to a person we know to be Raul. His Social Security number, we have, his passport number, we have, his immigration records, we have, and we are reasonably certain the guy whom we identified with the same Social Security number, the same date of birth, entered the country the same way, we are reasonably certain, but even if he isn't the right guy, when I called him and spoke to him on the phone I said, 'I don't want to drag you into this if you're not the right guy. Let me come quietly and sit down with you and go over this evidence, see what you have to say.', he said, 'Well, call me back at six o'clock we'll talk then,' of course his daughter got on the phone then and the curtains came down. And in any event I have a law firm from Rockefeller Center and one in Memphis to defend him in a civil action which I was supposed to bring against him which is still on hold.
"So I mean if you look at all of that evidence, it could still be the wrong guy, that's why within the last month I said [to his lawyer] look this offer is still open because you told the Daily News or the New York Post that we never would sit there because he couldn't be convinced, I said, look, you know that's not true, I'm responsible for sealing the file to protect your client, I don't want an innocent man out there, if he's not guilty, let's get to the bottom of this, but's let meet, of course I haven't gotten a response.
"So you can determine for yourself, that's a brief summary of the evidence."
With that, Phil Melanson ended the presentation.
Next was the Awards Dinner. The food was just god awful. Two Awards were given out, one to Sarah McClendon and one to Dr. Pepper.
Dr. Wecht again lamented on the poor financial status of COPA. He then spoke of plans of a big conference in Dallas commemorating the 35th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination. Sarah wrote a book, "Mr. President, Mr. President" wherein, apparently, she references COPA.
Phil Melanson then introduced Dr. Pepper, again.
Dr. Pepper- "As I stand here I would like to pay tribute to you. Because people in this room, and many of your associates who are not here in this room, have often been the only voices of dissent and the only individuals across the land who have attempted to seek the truth in these very difficult cases of political assassination in this country. I think it is, my view is somewhat detached because I've been overseas, almost commuting, I've been overseas so long, and I spend a great deal of time in France as well as in England. And there is a degree of cynicism over there about mass opinions in America concerning political assassination and my French colleagues simply cannot understand how naive and how unsophisticated the masses of the American people are that they don't begin to understand how power works. And how power has worked in association with wealth throughout all of history.
"And I had some culturalist moments recently with one television reporter, and he felt astounded that one could even suggest that events such as an assassination of a major public figure, a major prophet, as indeed Martin Luther King was could indeed reach into the highest levels of government in this land. He was amazed that that allegation could be made.
"I could only ask him, 'What makes you think that this Empire, this Republic is different than the way [others have] governed and controlled throughout history? If we now realize that this has happened in Egypt with Tutankhamen, we go through the whole Greek experience and see what happened to Socrates, and down to Rome and Caesar, and down then to King Henry the second, and Becket and work our way through all the cycle of history even into the 20th century and the second decade of the 20th century and the death of D. H. Lawrence and how he was run off the road by a Black Mariah that MI5 used to get rid of him. What makes you think, Mr. Sawyer (Forrest Sawyer, of ABC News) that it should be any different here. That America is immune? That the power and the forces in this land would not resort to those means. And indeed have they not elsewhere? I mean, just look at the span of American history even in fairly modern times, the Cold War, and what happened to our friends in Guatemala, Mossadegh in Iran, look what happened in Cuba after that revolution and so we work down into the continent of Africa and see what happened to Lummumba, and his replacement, what is going on now against Kabela in that country. So active abroad and active at home are the forces in my view of wealth and power and they govern, and it's time that we brought this truth to the American people as a general part of the message that this body has sponsored in terms of specific political assassinations because political assassination is a symptom, it's a symptom of a pervasive sickness of this land.
"And that is one of the things that Martin King came to see, came to see with great clarity, very early on. He came to understand that. I've been asked to say a few words about Martin King and I only knew him a brief while, the last year of his life when I came back from Vietnam, I was a journalist, and he read some of the stuff that I wrote and he saw some of the photographs that made him very, very uncomfortable. It made him decide that he would come out against the war. And he saw that war in context of the pervasive sickness of this society. And he said so, and he said so clearly. And he decided to oppose it, and he announced that opposition on April 4th 1967 at Riverside Church in New York. And after he did that, in those ensuing moments SCLC, his organization, lost millions and millions of dollars. And he was harangued and he was harassed. And the attacks upon him personally increased not only from the media, which had been well orchestrated, but also from his own colleagues, people who had stood side by side with him, who now turned against him during that the last year of his life and criticized him and attacked him and who I might add were present at the memorial march for him in Memphis, and whom I also saw at the funeral in Atlanta.
"They showed up to bask in the glory of what was to become the iconization of Martin Luther King, and that treatment, that creation of an icon has come to full fruition in our time and it makes me very uncomfortable, because he is made an icon as a Civil Rights leader, and when I knew him in that last year, I never knew him during his Civil Rights work, I was in in the South, saw him from afar, never knew him, as a student activist in the South, but in that last year he was beyond the realm of being a Civil Rights leader. He was an international figure, having won a Nobel Peace Prize, being awarded that in December '64. The first attempt to kill him was, one was planned in March '65, didn't work, they tried again in '65 to organize something in Louisville 'cause that's where he came to visit A.D., his brother, and they thought they might catch him off guard there, thank goodness for the honesty and candor of a local Louisville police officer, named Clifton Baird, (See p. 140-144 of "Orders To Kill") who blew the whistle and stopped that one in its tracks, but Martin King in that last year was becoming a political force. His prophecy was social, cultural, political and economical. He was prepared to do whatever he had to do in order to try to change this land, to turn this country around, to bring this republic back to it's roots and it's values.
"He was a revolutionary, but he was a revolutionary who saw that political change is irrelevant, unless you have social, economic and cultural change with it. He looked for a change in the total value structure of this country where things meant less than people, where people were treasured, where people were seen as a primary resource, where people's talents were developed, that was his commitment.
"And the violence he abhorred was not just the violence on an ancient people, 40,000 miles away, it was not just the bombing and destruction of an ancient beautiful culture and people, the Vietnamese people, that was one part of the violence that brought him to tears when he saw the results of that bombing but it was the violence that that war brought back home to America. Esoterically, it was the legitimization of violence through the conduct of war that was affecting America and was destroying the poor. And the poor were not only the black poor, although proportionally they were a greater number of the soldiers serving in Vietnam but the poor were the white poor as well who were dragged in. That was another kind of violence and it played hand in hand with and complimented the violence overseas. He was determined to stop it. He was determined to turn the nation around. Now his revolutionary ideas were seen differently by the forces of power here. He was viewed as a serious revolutionary, a major revolutionary threat. When he said he was going to bring half a million people to Washington in the Spring of '68, he meant it. And the Army knew that with half a million people camped in the shadow of this Washington Memorial they didn't have enough troops to put down a rebellion that they thought was going to result.
"They were convinced, and I believe they were convinced that there was going to be an actual revolution that the country had not seen since the days of the depression when the soldiers marched and were fired upon. [In 1932 several thousand unemployed World War 1 veterans marched on Washington. The veterans called the Bonus Army, demanded immediate payment of war bonuses. On orders from President Herbert Hoover General Douglas MacArthur drove the veterans out of Washington.]
"So Martin King then, they saw, as a threat to the stability and continuation of this government. They didn't realize that the revolution he sought, the revolution he was geared up to lead was a non-violent revolution. He was determined it would remain non-violent. They were determined that it was not going to remain non-violent and that they were going to have to prevent him, he was never going to be allowed to bring that force of humanity into this capitol, into this city. He was going to be stopped at all costs. And they were successful. They stopped him.
"Now where are we today? 29 years later? When this prophet was taken from us. Where are we today? It would not surprise him, he would be appalled, but it would not surprise him that we have reached a condition where 358 billionaires, on this planet, control and value the assets and resources of 2.5 billion people. Imagine that, 2.5 billion people having the same asset value as 358 billionaires. That would not surprise him, yet he saw it developing.
"He would not be surprised, but again appalled at the fact that basic governmental functions throughout the world today are dominated and controlled by transnational corporations, not by elected officials, not by serving governments, more and more elected officials serving governments, heads of state, are messengers, they are couriers, they serve the masters of the real power on this planet. And I don't know if it's not too late to do something about it. But you see that power being consolidated all around you. When you see (?) moving, formidably, into the World Trade Organization, and you see the World Trade Organization, overriding public policy in countries throughout the world. And telling individual nations what they must do with their resources, or not do with their resources, you know where the real power lies in the world today. When you see the status and stagnation of life and disarray in Africa. You will understand what has happened and what is the legacy of colonialism, that has walked away but still wishes to control the natural resources.
"So, we have come to this and how is it accepted in a land like America? How are these things accepted here? Why is there not outrage?
"In the middle 50's Allen Dulles addressed a very select group at Princeton University. And he said there are two things we must do to protect our friends, our colleagues, and our interests. We must control the mass of public opinion throughout this land by effectively dominating and controlling the major vehicles for communicating opinion and forming policy and thoughts. We must control the media, and that is point number one. And number two we must pioneer mind control activities, as quietly and discreetly as possible so that we understand this basic science of how to control individuals through all of the processes of mind control. The whole range of mind control experimentation, as you know, that has gone on in this country for more than 30 years, as it has in England, and what he was doing is saying we have to do it because the Soviets are doing it, of course and it became a Cold War issue.
"So we have today in the United States conglomerate control over the basic media. There is no way around it, and in two of the network situations of course they are even owned by major defense contractors. So you have conglomerate control over the media. You have then concerned about, the bottom line, of course, but you have them also concerned about other interests. It is not going to be possible in this context ever, to have a free and independent press, or one that is going to reach the masses of the people. So I don't know quite what solution there is apart from making people aware of the quandary in which, I'm afraid, we find ourselves, because with that kind of control of the media, work such as mine, is not banned in America, they are just not reviewed, and they get remaindered in a year, and very few people read them. And then when there is a development in a case, such as has happened in the King case, with the family of the victim deciding that they want to know the truth and they want a trial in order to try to get at that truth, all of a sudden that starts to snowball into a serious threat. What happens then [is] there are reactions. Reactions are now starting. And cover stories are now starting, and while the military could ignore for quite a period of time the story that was told to me by separate informants from various walks of life, and I treasure those people, I treasure them because they are whistle blowers in the most patriotic vein. They are people who have risked their safety and their lives to come forward and tell a story.
"One of them now is so incensed that there is now mounting reaction, cover stories, and cover-up just to even the existence of that military unit, which did not kill King, didn't kill Martin King at all. Martin was killed by a mafia contract killing from the bushes. These guys were just there in case that didn't work. They were going to have to do the job themselves. But they didn't do it at the end of the day. But the mere fact that they were there is now going to be carefully orchestrated and covered-up to the extent that the government is able to do that, and to the extent that it is going to be able to use the media to do that.
"So, I think, as I said earlier this afternoon, when you get to that point you know you are getting closer to the bone, when they start to do that, you are getting closer to the bone, you must be aware of that in all the other work that you do, all of the vital work that you do, the important work that you do on these cases, you can expect that kind of reaction at some point in time. Well, as I say I have no solutions just that Democracy requires as Mr. Burke said eternal vigilance. You have been among the eternally vigilant. And thank goodness for you and your life because every land that wishes to preserve it's freedom and it's democracy requires people like you, and requires toughness, strength and courage of your convictions and your actions even in very difficult times. The power of this state is awesome. How many times in 20 years have people said to me, 'Do you know what you are going up against? Do you know who is really behind this?'. Of course, eventually one becomes to realize how really powerful that force is, but the power of truth and the power of perseverance towards that truth is also a powerful force. And we will simply have to go on and push as hard as we can to try to bring this truth out. I mean there is really nothing else to do.
"Let's acknowledge the situation we are in. Let's work wherever possible to change it. Not just in terms of finding out the truth of the assassination of Martin Luther King or anyone else but finding out why representative democracy in this land has failed. Because I believe the American experiment in representative democracy has failed.
(applause)
"It has failed because it has not dealt with these types of events in an honest way because it has covered them up, because it has refused to go forward, because it has taken us 28 years to be able to test a rifle that the defense should have been able to test 28 years earlier. Because it has taken millions of dollars not to open up the case but to close doors. And because an innocent man has been in prison all of these years. And the American people have been denied a prophet and they have been denied the truth. So let's acknowledge where we are, as children, I don't know how many of you shared this experience with me but as a child growing up in this land I have always believed that lies were the tools of thieves and rogues, In my lifetime, ladies and gentlemen lies have become pillars of this state and it is time they were disclosed, discovered, stripped away, and as Sarah McClendon said these types of people removed from government, and not only government but from any area of influence and power in this land. And that is I am afraid a revolutionary goal."
(applause)
Sunday started with Dr. David Mantik exploring the authenticity of the Zapruder film. He had five points that trouble him when viewing the Zapruder film.
1.) Conflicts with eyewitness testimony
2.) Conflicts with initial viewers of the Zapruder film
3.) Conflicts with other photographic evidence
4.) Anomalies with other copies of the film, and the reenactment films
5.) Internal inconsistencies with the original
At the archives in October and again in July, two days before the conference Dr. Mantik viewed the Zapruder film at the Archives. He said that the ARRB said that there is at least one copy missing from the Secret Ser vice set of three.
That is not true, to the best of my knowledge. If I'm wrong on that I'll be glad to be corrected. Where did the ARRB "clearly state" this?
The archives is saying that one of the three copies made by the Secret Service is missing. So there are two copies of the Zapurder film submitted to the Archives by the Secret Service.
Dr. Mantik believes that the copies were made using a contact printing process so, therefore, the copies should have the images between the sprocket holes as the original does. Apparently, this is not the case as the two Secret Service copies and the two FBI copies do not have these images in the sprocket holes. Dr. Mantik referenced an interview of SS agent Robert Jamensen conducted by Noel Tyman, in which Jamensen said the copies were made by a contact print process. If that is true then the lack of the inner sprocket images means, according to Dr. Mantik, that we don't really have any of the copies of the Zapruder film made that weekend.
In the Secret Service copy of the Zapruder film there is the "home movie" portion of the Zapruder film, a sequence taken before the assassination sequence involving his son near a small tree in their backyard, and also later filming a short sequence of some people in Dealey Plaza. He thought these areas could serve as controls on the way you would expect both the film and the inner sprocket areas to look. He claims there are superimposed I.D. numbers in the sprocket hole areas. He said if you look at he Warren Commission volumes you will see the Kodachrome label along the edge in the inner sprocket area, and there are I.D. symbols as well. These superimposed numbers are what you would expect in a copy. There is another 1963 date in this area, where the superimposed I.D. numbers are. Again, he thought this is okay. There are many inner sprocket images in this "home movie" portion. He said the color quality is the same in the sprocket area as in the main picture area.
This does not appear to be the case with the Warren Commission reproductions. David Lifton has spoken to people who have seen the Zapruder film at the Archives and they told him the images in the sprocket hole areas are darker in quality. Mantik says the same thing is true with the Warren Commission reproductions.
I would think a comparison of the sprocket hole area in the "home movie" area and the rest of the film might be a good comparison to make, as long as you are staying with one copy of the film, preferably the original. By bringing in other copies, especially the horrible black and white reproductions of the Warren Commission you weaken your argument of falsifying images because you are now bringing in different copies, created in a different manners than the original, and in different formats, i.e. slides, and reproductions of selected frames in a book.
If there was a similarity in quality in all copies and in all mediums of the Zapruder film in the "home movie" area between the sprocket hole area and the main picture area, that part that is projected, and then an obvious change in the quality between the sprocket hole area and the main body once the motorcade sequence starts, then that perhaps is significant.
To me it sounds like Dr. Mantik was trying for this but I can't tell if he examined all known copies of the film in all the known mediums. to me he sounds like he made this comparison only with the film he saw in the archives and in the Warren Commission reproductions.
By "Warren Commission reproductions" what exactly does he mean? The reproductions in Volume 18, the slides, the copy of the film the Warren Commission used? All of the above?
He then talked about the FBI reenactment films, there were two, from Zapruder's position, using Zapruder's camera. Again he thought these would be good controls, again concentrating on the sprocket hole area. Again, there are no inner sprocket hole images. He said this came as a surprise to members of the National Archive staff. Now this could be very significant. Dr. Mantik believes these two FBI reenactment films are not the originals. So, they too are missing.
Dr. Mantik did notice that the cameraman in the FBI reenactments had no trouble centering on the car and the JFK stand in, while Zapruder apparently did.
Well, Zapruder suffered from vertigo, had to have his secretary hold onto him, and was terrified as the unexpected assassination happened right in front of him and around him. The FBI agent would not have to deal with any of this.
Dr. Mantik pointed the above out because some skeptics think that the bottom of the picture frame is cut off to delete perhaps important information.
He noticed the blurring in the Zapruder film which isn't really there at all in the reenactment films.
Dr. Mantik wrote to the Review Board. Dr. Mantik wanted to see the "home movie" portion of the original Zapruder film. The Review Board wrote back that that portion is missing on the original film.
WHAT????? Dr. Mantik, please share this letter.
Dr. Mantik then reviewed the arguments for authenticity.
There is a letter dated December 21, 1995 from the National Archives by a Mr. Charles Mayn. The conclusion of the letter is that the film held in the archives is an original and they had seven reasons. They noted the presence of images in the sprocket hole area. Noel Tyman spoke with a Mr. George Koburn from Chicago. Mr. Koburn recalled that his laboratory in Chicago in November 1963 worked on an 8mm "assassination" film. Mr. Koburn was asked if an optical printer of the 1963 era can reproduce sprocket images in the copy. He said yes. If true then this weakens the argument that if a film has sprocket image it is therefore the original.
Dr. Mantik said there are no artifacts from previous generations in the original, example, no I.D. numbers in the sprocket area, you don't catch an image of a sprocket hole, rather than a real sprocket hole.
Dr. Mantik said the images reproduced in the Warren Commission were from the Secret Service copy. Then we should expect to see two I.D. numbers in the sprocket hole area, one from the original, and one from the SS copy. We don't there is only one.
The Archive letter says the color contrast is consistent with an original. Dr. Mantik asked, well, what if a copy had been made on the identical Kodachrome film.
What does Dr. Mantik mean by "the identical Kodachrome film"?
Dr. Mantik wondered what a Secret Service copy side by side comparison with the original would look like? He has seen no such report like that.
Another argument for authenticity is that the original has the shinny side face out, emulsion side down and away from you. This is also true of a third generation or any odd generation copy.
He then mentioned eyewitness statements. Eyewitness reliability has come under attack by the HSCA and lately by Dennis Ford and Mark Zaid. Dr. Mantik showed data from some study done in 1971 cited in a J. Marshall Harvard Law Review Vol. 84 p. 1620. Subjects were shown a 2 minute movie and asked to recount things they saw in as much detail as possible. Accuracy was measured by what was recounted versus what was in the film. Saliency was measured by how often an item was independently mentioned by the test subjects. When more than 50% of the subjects reported the same item in the film that was considered salient. When that occurred the accuracy of the item was 98%. This was used to refute the idea that eyewitness testimony is unreliable.
The above data is important in considering eyewitness statements about the head wound.
There are about 50 witnesses who said the limousine stopped during the assassination. (See "47 Witnesses: Delay on Elm Street, The Third Decade Vol 8 No. #2-3 January-March 1992. 51-55, a double issue) Bobby Hargis described a one or one and a half second stop.
Dr. Mantik then spoke of arguments against authenticity, one being magnification changes. This happens in the film as published by the Warren Commission when a distance is measured in the main image versus the sprocket image. This is seen with the Stemons Freeway sign.
Dr. Mantik, "The total magnification change between the two upright posts between frames 212 and 218 is over 12%. The left end of the sign lies within the inner sprocket area throughout this time. By contrast compare this to what occurs between Z173 and Z189. Here the image is mainly of the bystanders to the left of the Stemmons Freeway sign. I chose to measure the distance between the left upright on the Stemmons Freeway sign and a specific bystander to the left of the sign." He chose the 7th bystander to the left of the sign because that gave him a similar distance as between the two poles of the sign. "Here the total magnification change was only about 1%," said Dr. Mantik.
Dr. Mantik pointed out that Merriman Smith referred to the limousine stopping in "Four Days in Dallas".
No eyewitness described the head snap we see in the Zapruder film.
8 people described JFK's torso going forward.
Two witnesses saw JFK falling forward, getting up then going forward again. Irwin Schwartz, Zapruder's business partner, who was not an actual eyewitness to the assassination, saw the original Zapruder film at least 15 times. He saw JFK falling forward, getting back up with some help from Jackie then falling forward a second time.
5 people saw head particles in the air. One of those again Irwin Schwartz, who saw that in the film.
Who saw head shots, two head shots, directly or indirectly? 9. According to Dr. Mantik, Clint Hill is one of them.
I agree with Dr. Mantik that there were shots after the final head shot as seen in Z313.
Some eyewitnesses saw a halo of red as a result of the head shot. Dr. Mantik thinks that this could only happen after the first head shot.
Dr. Mantik cannot explain the head snap and thinks that it is not the result of a frontal shot. He cited the ITEK report that said a frontal bullet lacked the required energy for the head snap. He feels that a great deal of gravitational energy is needed to move Kennedy's head and torso up in a gravitational field and a bullet does not have that energy. The neuromuscular reaction that Belin loves and uses as an explanation is not supported by any scientific evidence.
I'm just astonished that Dr. Mantik would feel that the backward movement of President Kennedy's head is, in his view, not caused by a bullet.
The alleged rapid head turns of limousine driver Greer is supposedly an issue against the authenticity of the film.
He claims that head debris that eyewitnesses saw fly out posteriorly is not seen in the Zapruder film. This is demonstrably not true. There are many particles which litter the back of the limo after the head shot / head shots. One such particle can be seen on the back of the limo and is what Mrs. Kennedy goes out to retrieve.
Mantik referred to an Alvarez study of shooting melons wherein debris exiting to the rear can be seen for several frames.
This is nonsense and the good Dr. should know better. First of all Alvarez is not using Zapruder's camera, film, or film speed. I believe Alvarez used a higher film speed than 18 frames per second. I believe, much, much higher. The melon is on a ladder and that ladder is not in motion, while JFK is in a car which is in motion. Second, Dr. Mantik is not looking in the right spot. He should be looking at the rear of the presidential limousine, not staying with JFK's head. If he did he would see debris rain down and splatter the rear of the limousine. I believe it is in the Nix film that a piece of the president's head can be seen to roll off the limousine, it almost appears like a snowball rolling off the back of the limousine.
Material exiting the president's head posteriorly is captured in the Zappruder film and is seen on at least one other film, the Nix, and possibly the Muchmoore film as well. This also exits in the Moorman photograph too.
In a great display of courtesy and fairness Dr. Mantik asked the audience not to expect Robert Groden to refute point by point the issues he raised as Robert only just heard them. This is something that is usually lost in the debate. Far too many expect agreement with the conclusion they reach and if wrong to be shown to be wrong immediately, ignoring the time it took them to study and come up with their conclusions and thus denying that precious time to those who might find fault with the research in question.
Robert Groden then spoke. He told folks that it was 24 years ago, right here on this campus that the first assassination conference was held by the Committee to Investigate Assassinations Symposium that Bud Fensterwald put on. That was the first showing of the Zapruder on November 22, 1973.
Robert said some of the problems are not as mysterious as they seem, lense axis could explain some of the magnification problems. To him the skull fragment leaving the back of JFK's head seems quite apparent. He says you can see it clearer in the Nix film because there is a darker background because of a higher contrast. As to the halo Groden thought it would be more apparent on the North side of the street than the South side of the street because the sun is coming from the south side of the street an would visually illuminate it.
Robert pointed out that he is the only person he knows who has worked with the original.
Robert asked the HSCA to create an optical film shutter that would open up into the sprocket hole area so you could recapture those images. Two companies were apparently contacted.
Selected clips from Robert's "The Assassination films" video were shown.
Robert spoke of the fluid motion of the Zapruder film. There is no jerkiness, no inconsistencies, except where the splices occur. The first splice eliminates two frames, the second eliminates four.
Robert expressed a willingness to work with Dr. Mantik stating that many of the issues he raised can be explained.
They then went to Q & A. The frames that are missing can be compared to the Secret Service copy which is intact. Also, the FBI numbered the frames. Robert explained that the slide set at the Archives is misnumbered, it is correct up to one point and then there is a break where there are missing frames, and then they slide it up by one number. They are aware of this problem but have not taken the time to correct it. There may be a problem with the Zapruder family preventing the correcting of this too.
Robert was asked about the "black-dog man" image. He says you can see him in the Muchmore film from the wall up to his shoulders but the top of the picture frame cuts off his head. He is in the Nix film, in motion, but in deep shadow. He is also in several still photos, Willis, Moorman etc.
Yes, Zapruder told the FBI he set his camera at 24 frames per second.
Robert explained that 24 frames per second is the usual speed for sound, 18 for silent. 18 gets rid of the flicker for the human eye and brain. 24 is necessary for the sound to be in sync with the picture. Robert explained that Zapruder had a two stage shutter, if you press it down half way you have normal speed, further it goes into slow motion and shoots at a faster speed. Harold Weisberg always hypothesized that what was happening was that Zapruder, somewhere during the shooting, pressed down further and changed the speed. Now the exposure of that camera, the exposure of speed to frame is a 30th of a second no matter what speed you are shooting at. So it would not change the exposure speed.
Dr. Mantik referenced the "white spot" and how he had trouble centering that spot in the frames it is shown in. He asked if Groden had to do a lot of rotoscoping in other films. Dr. Mantik did not believe Robert had to do a lot of Grodenscoping in the Nix or Muchmore films. Robert said yes, he did. He said there are other anomalies, "white spots" in the ground behind the president in the Nix and Muchmore. They are pieces of photographic litter from Mary Moorman's Polaroid, and material from other photographers, or just ordinary litter.
Robert explained that for the Nix film he had to blow up the film to get in closer, pan to the right as Orville Nix was shooting ahead of the car and sometimes the car had to catch up to where he was shooting. Robert also corrected the tilt. Nix held the camera slightly sideways so it looked like the car was going uphill instead of downhill.
There are a lot of issues but a lot can be explained. Robert pointed out that during the making of the movie "JFK" Larry Howard used a Bell and Howell camera like Zapruder's and shot several of the assassination scene run throughs and a lot of the anomalies such as the apparent stretching of the space between the Stemmons Freeway sign occurred there as well.
Robert also explained there is a difference between focus and blur. Blur creates streaking, so that you are actually filming something here, and within the same frame depending on how fast you are moving you will also film it here, it is possible to start and stop fast enough within that 1/18th of a second or 1/24th of a second depending on fast the film was running to create that. And that also happened in Larry Howard's version as well.
Mantik stressed that his point was that the magnification changes should not change from one segment of the film to another.
Robert explained that there is an optical axis to a lense where light travels right through. It affects brightness and it affects magnification. The camera was not designed to shoot pictures in the sprocket hole area that occurs because the masking of the film plane is actually open at that point and stretches to the edge.
Robert Groden-"When you duplicate film, the Zapruder film is, of course, 8mm but originally it was 16mm wide, it was called double ram 8. You have one side, you shoot that, you turn it over and run the other side. It is processed at that lab, slit, and then spliced together into a 50ft. roll. The original film is 25 feet long and 16mm wide. When you duplicate an unslit film you have a sprocket mechanism that runs down one side only, on the other side you have mechanically opened up to duplicate that material. I have heard reports that one of the original duplicates did duplicate that information from the sprocket holes. In other words, they made three copies in Dallas, the first copy did not show that information, in other words, they used the Dealey Plaza sequence on the sprocket side. Then they switched it over doing another duplicate heading in the other direction which did duplicate the sprocket hole information. And then they did the third pass from that end again, from the assassination scene again and that did not duplicate the sprocket hole information. The Secret Service copy did not have it and the LIFE magazine duplicate copy, which is I think the third one, the one that is missing, don't forget that LIFE magazine negotiated to get one of the three original copies which they did get. And then the FBI copy-"
Dr. Mantik interrupted to say that the Review Board has stated that the LIFE magazine copy is also not a second generation copy.
Robert went on, "Well, LIFE magazine when the film was subpoenaed by Jim Garrison in New Orleans, took their first generation copy, it was the only one that they had, they physically cut out the missing frames, had a duplicate of the original film made which had those missing frames, well, no, they had the camera original, they made a duplicate of that, took the duplicate frames from the original Dallas duplicate, physically spliced them in, mylar spliced them in to the duplicate that they had made rather than leave the duplicate intact, which made absolutely no sense. But that's what they did and that's why you see the color change in the Garrison version. So LIFE magazine destroyed the only existing copy outside of government hands that existed."
Someone asked for the history of the film and how many copies were made.
Robert Groden-"When Zapruder took the film, he had a friend at WFAA, he went there, was interviewed live on television, they broke to go to Washington, when they came back Zapruder was gone. What had happened was the FBI had kicked him out and had taken him. He thought he could get the film processed there [at WFAA]. Now his film was Kodachrome. They [WFAA] only processed black and white film at the TV station. So they had to go to Kodak to get the film processed. They did not have the ability to duplicate it that's why they went to Jamieson. Jamieson "officially" made three copies. Those three copies are the ones that are known to have existed. The first one went to Zapruder, the second to the Secret Service, the third to the FBI, those are the original three duplicates. The original film and one original duplicate went to LIFE magazine.
"It can be assumed that the FBI and the Secret Service made additional copies on their own, which would be remarkably degenerated, visually. The copy that you saw here was from the Secret Service copy that the HSCA had. That is the only intact copy that has ever been seen by the public at all."
"I know for a fact that at least two more illicit copies were made at Jamieson that were not supposed to have existed. I saw one of them. The government never knew they existed. I have seen one of the two and have spoken to someone who has the other."
Someone from the audience asked if Zapruder ever knew this?
Robert Groden-"No. He had no idea. So there are 5 original copies, maybe more for all we know. Now the film was duplicated in the dark there and nobody could really tell they were being made but I have physically seen one of the copies."
Questioner- "What copies do we have at the archives?"
Robert Groden-"The original is supposed to be at the archives-"
Questioner-"You say "supposed to be"
Robert Groden-"Well, I'm saying that in deference to my friend, what is called the original, which I believe to be the original is in the archives."
Next was Mr. Thomas Somaluk giving an ARRB update.
Dr. Gary Aguilar asked about the status of documents being appealed, and about Posner saying he interviewed the autopsy pathologists. Dr. Aguilar interviewed Boswell and Boswell said he never talked to Posner. Gary has this on tape. It goes back to the Nov. 17th, 1993 hearing on the effectiveness of Public law 102-526 wherein Posner interrupted the testimony of Dr. Randy Robertson, I believe, without any admonition from Rep. Conyers for doing so.
Samoluk replied that he personally was not aware of that but that there is limited time and staff and money and they want to get some people who are still alive interviewed on several topics so that might take priority over other things.
The FBI now has no outstanding appeals. So Freeh and Tunheim met and whatever the issue was was worked out. The appeals were dropped.
Samoluk was asked how will the medical depositions be released. In one volume, perhaps? He didn't know. He said, probably as neat as possible. As to the cooperation of the autopsy doctors he wasn't in the room that day but he said, "I think in some instances they would rather have been doing something else that day," which got a big laugh, "but the Board was serious. My personal opinion is that the Review Board members, not the staff, so I am not patting myself and my colleagues on the staff on the back but I really think that the Review Board has pushed the envelope, I say that in a positive sense because there are some people who would say 'What is the Review Board doing deposing the autopsy doctors?' Well, I think it is in the parameters of the law but some other people might disagree. I think, is it going to answer everyone's questions? I don't think so, I don't think so. Is it an attempt to enrich the record? Yes. Were we successful? Well, that will be for others to judge."
Someone referenced that there has been 3.7 million pages added to the National Archives since the JFK Act was passed and wondered how much more might still come in. It's too hard to say, Mr. Tilley guessed another million, maybe.
Samoluk was asked about military agencies and the U.S. Information Agency. he said he believed there has been contact with the U.S. information Agency. One of the problems with the military was the repository in Suitland, Maryland where there were documents on microfiche, military teletypes, that they didn't know that they had. "I am assuming that there is just acres, and acres of records but because of our, the Review Board's military team, we were able to find those, and because they cover the relevant time period, and there have been allegations as to military readiness and to what was happening that day, they will become part of the collection."
He was asked about the NSA.
Mr. Samoluk-"The NSA, I was hoping would have been released by now and even this week I hope to get more information, there were sometimes this is just government bureaucracy that slows things down. For example, they had, I believe, 85 documents that the Board had voted on they sent them to us the way that they were supposed to be sent to the Archives and what we have to do is put a cover sheet on them. And there were some errors in the way they that sent the records back to us. And then they had some questions about what the Board had voted on, so there is a dialogue back and forth and it slows it down, but the NSA documents, I hope within a month, and I hesitate every time I say a date it comes back to bite me, but hopefully within that time frame."
He was asked if he knew specifically if he got any files from Division 5 of the FBI? He said he wasn't sure.
He was also asked about the Guy Bannister investigatory file. No, they don't have them.
Groden asked about television material and World Television News. Nothing really new to report there. But there are discussions with the networks.
Returning to the medical depositions, another person was suggested for the Board to talk to so that is the reason for the hold up. They say they want to keep the testimony as "pristine" as possible. Whatever that means?
Someone asked about the acronym NSCA that is seen a lot on many documents in regards to being classified and withdrawn. The question was, what is the NSCA?
Samoluk asked for the questioner to submit the specifics of the documents in question.
I volunteered to produce a letter I got from Steve Tilley, dated April 21, 1995, explaining exactly what the NSCA is.
This is the relevant paragraph from that letter:
Please be aware that NSCA is the office symbol of the Center for Legislative Archives, the National Archives organizational unit that is responsible for maintaining the records of the United States Congress, including Congressional Committees. This office performed the initial review of the house Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) prior to the official opening of the Collection. In accordance with the provisions of an agreement reached with the House Administration Committee, the Committee with the oversight of the HSCA records, the staff of NSCA was delegated the authority to withhold and coordinate the review of any documents that met any of the criteria for postponement as stated in Section 6 of the JFK Act.Left unexplained was why the withdrawl decisions are being made on Sunday, the day before the public was to have access to the collection.
Also, many of the documents that had these withdrawl notices have since been reviewed by the ARRB with new decisions made as to their availability. Some may now be released in full. One would have to check. Unfortunately this will prove difficult and time consuming as the JFK Assassination Records Collection web page has not been updated since November 1995 so getting the most accurate up to date information on the status of a particular document someone may be interested in will be dificult. The best resource, really the only one, is to check the Federal Register. I always xerox a copy of the pages in the Federal Register when document releases are announced. Be careful as even here the ARRB makes mistakes so pay attention to the corrections.
Malcolm Blunt mentioned that the Army Intelligence files are very interesting and there are a few scattered in the FBI files. He said there is no direct release of those files, however. Malcolm was talking about 112th intelligence.
Samoluk said that the Board is going to put agencies on record as to whether they found records the Board wants and if the records still exist or were destroyed and the agencies will be held accountable.
I asked if Samoluk knew when Congress will hold hearings on the taking of the Zapruder film. As yet, no he didn't. A lot depends on what the Zapruder's do legally.
Roger Feinman asked if the taking included copyright and other rights. Samoluk replied the taking means everything.
Robert Groden asked if the Board is going to "take" other films. Apparently, not but they are trying to acquire other photographic material.
Gary Aguilar asked where the original interviews might be of Tomlinson or O.P. Wright in regards to the discovery of what became CE 399.
I asked if there was an update on the Connick stand off. Samoluk replied that the original records are at issue here, not the grand jury records that subsequently appeared. There is / was a court hearing in July.
Roger Feinman asked something about the stenographic tape of Warren Commission hearings and Malcolm Blunt pointed out that they are there.
Also, about the William Manchester materials. That is still an ongoing issue.
Samoluk spoke of how Congress is looking at the Review Board as a model for releasing other still classified documents. Senator Moynihan has just issued a report on government secrecy.
Samoluk was asked about the letter Marina Porter sent to the Board and the reply she got back asking for her signature on IRS records so they could be released. Tom said he wrote the first letter back to her, and the two issues are mutually exclusive. "Marina has asked specifically for some records which the FBI claims don't exist. They are part of one theory articulated most recently in a book on the assassination. [Oswald Talked] And what we said was that the FBI said was that the meeting for which you say there is a record for which we should get, the FBI says the meeting never took place, so there isn't going to be any paper on it. So what I said, and what we have said, and whether it is this situation or others, if people can provide us with additional information about laying the ground work for a request to an agency we are open to that, but certainly if we can piece together through research by chronologically going through records to see if there is something missing and we have done that, but the request that we made of Mrs. Porter was not connected with what she thought we should be doing. And I should say in totality that the case in every instance is that the FBI says the record doesn't exist and I am not suggesting that we stop there just because the FBI says that, they wish we did, but we don't, and there are other records that we are pursuing from the FBI and other agencies that are relative to that time frame and what was going on in Dallas.
Mr. Samoluk-"Sometimes it's tough to prove a negative but we don't give up easily. If we did give up easily then when the FBI came in in the early going when it was the critical days where the Board had some very difficult issues to deal with, and the FBI would come over and they would do briefings, and the CIA would come over and they would do briefings, and for some reason it was always eight CIA people that came over to do a briefing on a particular issue, whether it was something to do with national security, or foreign relations, but they travel in large numbers. And the Board would always listen but we did not do what they wanted us to do in most instances. And that's why the FBI appealed. And that's why there have been long discussions about a lot of different records so we are making the efforts."
There was a question about the recorded LBJ-Hoover telephone conversation wherein Hoover suggests to President Johnson that Lee Harvey Oswald may have been impersonated in Mexico City. The Board is pursuing other records in regards to this.
Malcolm Blunt asked can we ask the FBI when did certain records cease to exist, specifically in regards to 65 serial files on Lee Harvey Oswald. FBI 65 serial files are espionage files. Samoluk asked that it be put in writing and then it can be routed to the specific staff person who deals with the FBI and their records.
Samoluk said something I found to be reassuring and that is that the Board will probably spend more time in Dallas. They have been there several times already. But I feel they should really, really concentrate on Dallas.
Someone asked about Arthur Schlesinger's diary and if that might be made available. Samoluk didn't know about this, or the specifics on this. Items on "courtesy deposit" at the JFK Library and other depositories cause problems in getting the material released. Another question, along the same lines was about Lem Billing's materials.
Robert Groden asked about photographs that Floyd Reibe took that are not in evidence. Because that touches upon the medical evidence Samoluk didn't want to address it. He said the medical stuff will all be released at once. They have pursued many individuals and there is more work ongoing in this area.
Someone said there is a CIA memo that John McCone met with LBJ 13 times between November 23 and December 10th and that records relating to these meetings were in McCone's safe.
I showed a copy of Senator Moynihan's report, "Report of The Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy". I urged all to get a copy and read it. This will be the new game in town on getting material released when the Board ceases to be. Senator Moynihan has a bill before both the House and the Senate on this. It does refer to the ARRB.
The last question was about how does the Board go about requesting documents from foreign government. Samoluk told about the regulations in the statute and also that Judge Tunheim, Dr. Kermit Hall, and Director Marwell went to Moscow and Belorussia and met with government officials about records.
There was an "Investigative leads panel" but it was a waste.
And finally, "The Call to Action" panel, always entertaining. More whining about money. They want to do a "major" conference in Dallas for the 35th anniversary of President Kennedy. Also, something in Memphis or Los Angeles for the anniversaries for the deaths of Dr. King and Robert Kennedy.
Phil Melanson turned it into an open mike night and invited one of John Judge's helpers, Stephanie Frazier to speak. I'm sorry but this young woman's remarks were extremely annoying. She told of how she got employed by John. That was fine. She explained that what she does in her normal life is to stop nuclear weapons testing. She said she has spent ten years in Los Vegas protesting the nuclear test site there. She also thinks she is influencing the U.N. and the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty. She said she spent last summer watching the diplomats talk in Geneva, Switzerland. Then she went on about the NASA probe Cassini which she wants to stop it from being launched 'cause it's powered by plutonium.
Then she had some "observations" on COPA and it's members. JFK's assassination doesn't have a personal effect on her life. She thinks people have to have been alive in 1963 and to have felt the shock of the assassination. Not true, not true at all! The young have always been interested in this. They know lies, they grew up with lies, LBJ and Vietnam, Nixon and Watergate, Ford pardoning Nixon, Reagan and Iran-contra. The young don't believe the Warren Commission report, and didn't prior to Oliver Stone's movie.
She thought the assassination had to be put into a broader context, than, and she paused trying to think of something, then said she frankly doesn't care about Lee Harvey Oswald's school records, and will never care. That doesn't matter to her and never will, only the implications of it, not the details, or at least not the level of details.
Well how do you understand the implications without the details?
She doesn't want the documents read to her, only what they mean, she wants them interpreted.
If you can't be bothered to have the patience to learn or understand when it's explained to you that this fact and this fact means this fact, then you deserve to be ignorant. The information is explained and it is put into context and if you don't understand something there is plenty of opportunities to ask questions of the presenter, except when their time to present and respond to questions is restricted. And who does that? COPA does.
Stephanie's remarks should not be seen as only pertianing to John Armstrong's presentation, to which they seemed directed, they were directed at all presentators. Nor, should my comment about time restrictions be seen to apply only in response to Stephanie's comment.
Then there was a guy, Frank, from New Jersey. I liked Frank. Frank was great.
Frank wondered how to reach the masses, because when he goes home to New Jersey no one will know he was at this conference. Damn good question. Why is it addressed to the conference attendees? Why not to the powers that be at COPA? Oh, that's right, they're poor, no money, not their fault.
There is a solution to the horrific inefficiency of COPA. CHANGE THE MANAGEMENT OF COPA! COPA NEEDS NEW LEADERSHIP! It can't be run any worse than it has been. It is not the fault of the members that enough money is not coming in. It's how it's being spent. It's John Judge's fault and John Judge's fault alone that there has been no newsletter for months. When there is no newsletter, that's a basic flaw in communication between the management and the members. How are people supposed to know what is going in, in the research community, with the ARRB, with new documents being released, reviewed, appealed by agencies. How are people even to know that COPA could use more money?
Why does COPA attack JFK-Lancer?
Why did COPA not embrace the web site "Fair Play" and use that a a source to communicate information?
Why is no one at COPA reviewing the documents that are being released or helping in their dissemination?
Why in the hell couldn't COPA adequately advertise it's own annual, national conference? And why have it on Father's Day weekend? There was less than a 100 people there.
All of the above are a flaw of management, not the membership. It is time for a change.
I would like to address the false story that I helped Harrison Livingston to crash the COPA awards dinner.
I was given a copy of a short article that appeared in The Washington Post on the Ray defense team requesting additional testing on the rifle. I went off to the Georgetown library and xeroxed several copies of it. I gave one to John Judge's helper, the redheaded guy, Walter. I suggested he might want to copy this too and hand it out. In one of the "A" "B" "C" discussion groups I also gave a copy of the article to the moderator. I kept the rest in my blue folder.
I was told by someone at Georgetown University prior to arriving that the dorm rooms were all booked. I thought it was too late for a dorm room and made arrangements with hotels. Surprisingly, many hotels were booked. I got a room in one hotel for two nights but had to leave and go across the street for the third day of the conference to a different hotel as the original hotel could not give three nights.
During the day of the awards dinner I noticed that I couldn't find my blue brochure. I had wanted to ask Dr. Pepper about the small news article. I think I lost it by leaving it in the original hotel room, perhaps it was mistakenly picked up at the conference, or it was stolen. In any event, I had my special color coded name badge, that kept falling apart, and I'm sure they had other ways of knowing who paid for the dinner.
When I show up with my two friends, John Judge's other helper, Stephanie let me in. I showed her my badge, told her I lost my blue folder with the dinner ticket, and she checked me off on a list she had. When we entered the main dinning hall, there's Harry Livingstone. I was surprised to see him as I had not noticed him at any of the earlier events.
The next day I hear stories that I gave my ticket to Livingstone. I would like to address that. I did no such thing. I have no knowledge of how Mr. Livingstone attended the dinner. I would think that if he did indeed crash the party that Mr. Judge would have the ability to bounce Mr. Livingstone. I can't believe that Mr. Livingstone just showed up, walked in without paying or anything, showing "a ticket" that was not cross checked with any list of paid registrants and ate his meal, staying for the awards dinner and speeches without any conference organizer noticing. Then again showing up the next day, again supposedly not paying, walking in unchallenged, setting up his videotaping machine and only then someone thinks something is wrong.
This is not the first time false stories were circulated about me with regard to COPA conferences and probably won't be the last.
John Judge responded to some criticism already in the reviews of the conference that have already appeared in Fair Play
Point #1, "COPA's national conferences have been held in Washington, DC for several years now, where our offices are based."
They don't have any offices at all, and never did. They shared a space with another group but have since lost that space.
Point #2, there is nothing wrong with having the conferences in Washington, D.C. but one of the reasons being exposure national media coverage doesn't quite work, the surprising and very much welcomed C-SPAN broadcast of the press conference notwithstanding.
Point #3, "This year, fearing that funding might end for the ARRB, we decided to hold the conference in the spring, allowing a possible lobbying response in Congress...".
This is a joke. Lobby Congress? On a weekend? On Father's Day weekend? And it isn't a question of funding, it was a statutory time limit that would have shut down the Review Board.
And exactly how would this lobbying occurr? There was no gathering of the registrants to go to Capitol Hill. There was no pre-arranged meeting with any Congressman or Congresswoman. If this was to be an individual effort, we were already doing that.
Point #4, "We had made final arrangements by the end of February, but we could not afford a mailing about the conference until April."
This is a typical example of COPA mismanagement. John has had the ability to send out information via email, fax, or regular mail to others who could easily pass on and place on the many web sites about the assassination of John F. Kennedy any news about a COPA conference. He could have done this without spending a dime. The word would have been out in February if that is indeed when final arrangements were made.
Yet, even when this mailing occurs people still think the conference is in the fall? Why would they think that John? Did you forget to announce the dates? This is a lame excuse to cover-up poor management.
Point #5, "As long as people look at COPA from the outside, taking a critical stance as "consumers" of a product, our limited resources will probably not be able to please them. COPA is an organization that depends on the input and talent of its members. The Working Panels that meet each year include ones on evidence that get good attendance, and others on organizational work that lack participation. No national organization can depend on the efforts of a single individual to do every aspect of the necessary work. I rely on people to help run the conferences every year who have a variety of expertise. If those interested in the assassinations want to have an organization that can lobby for their interests in the press and Congress, put on serious, semi-professional conferences, and produce press releases and publications that have an impact on the public, then working together in one national coalition is essential. No other organization or publication replicates the work that COPA is set up to accomplish. Our efforts aim at the general public and at opinion-makers and legislators, not just at the researchers. We can do nothing without the participation of our membership though, and financial support is crucial but not enough. We rely on the skills of our members to make things happen, including our webpage, our administrative work, our outreach and our conferences. We are glad to hear constructive criticism, and happier yet to involve volunteers in making things run smoothly at the conferences. With greater resources we could hire professional staff, but we attempt instead to keep the costs low and to entice people inside our organization to moderate panels, keep time, be cooperative and assist with technical problems at the events."
This is the most outrageous, arrogant baloney! The members of COPA have a right to criticize. If they are giving their money they should have a right and a say in how COPA functions without being pejoratively called outsiders or "consumers". This creates an "us" versus "them" mentality that is at the heart of the elitist attitude of the COPA management towards their own members. I point out the pronoun "our" as in "our resources", as though these resources never came from the members in the first place, and the pronoun "them", those who dare to criticize.
IF COPA is, an organization that depends on the input and talent of its members", then COPA should listen to them.
The members want more say in how COPA operates. They are apparently limited to "working panels". John describes them as, "The Working Panels that meet each year include ones on evidence that get good attendance, and others on organizational work that lack participation." There are no such things as "working panels". This is a fantasy. These are merely discussions that are extremely, loosley organized and occur naturally anyway when the researchers get together at these conferences. John wants to pretend that this is a formal part of COPA and a chance for the members to work together formally throughout the year and write reports. Even if that fantasy was a reality where would such reports go? Where would they be published? How could a member of COPA feel good about his/her/their work when there is nowhere to get their work acknowledged? There is no newsletter.
John, how can you insult the members saying they don't come to working panels on organization or fundraising when you appoint yourself the moderator of such groups and then don't bother to show up your own self?
"If those interested in the assassinations want to have an organization that can lobby for their interests in the press and Congress, put on serious, semi-professional conferences, and produce press releases and publications that have an impact on the public, then working together in one national coalition is essential."
I couldn't agree more John.
But your next point, "No other organization or publication replicates the work that COPA is set up to accomplish," is a total lie. There are several organizations doing a much better job, and several publications, and web pages doing a much better job.
I say again, the problem with COPA is not its members.
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