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I did not attend any of the working panels presentations. I know they don't exist. I've been down this road before. And I was not going to give COPA any money to attend them. So if anything happened at them I don't know about it.
I felt if any of the witnesses were going to say anything of real importance they were going to do so at the Centenary United Methodist Church or at the 7 p.m. "Who Killed the Dreamers" presentation. This is a transcript of that event.
John Judge - "...we are having a regional meeting here. We are having additional meetings here tomorrow in this same room, from 9 in the morning till 4 in the afternoon, to discuss the evidence in the various major cases, as well as internal discussions about the Coalition. And [now] we have quite a line-up of speakers, they are not all here yet, even, but they are starting to accrue. We have quite a bit to do this evening. The Coalition also has arranged to have its annual national meeting this year in Dallas. We have been having them in Washington, D.C. but this is the last year of the Records Review Board, so we will be at the Hyatt Regency at Reunion Square. It is right up above Dealey Plaza. And the actual meeting space is right up above the Amtrack station there. And it is going to be from the 20th to the 22nd of November. And we have early bird registration now for people who reserve at the hotel. So, if you want some information about that there is some out at the front desk.
"There is also a public meeting that you may be interested in of the Assassination Records Review Board, this is the board responsible for releasing the files relating to the JFK case under the JFK Act, and what this meeting is is a series of experts that they have invited in to talk to them about declassification. Right now nobody directly representing the research community is on that list, we are trying to get somebody on that list, but most of the people on that list are fairly conversant in classification and declassification questions. And they are pretty much to a person, at least somebody that has some connection to the issue, from the National Archives people, to others, except for one, who I don't know why he's there, but it's David Garrow.
Me - "He was at the first one."
John Judge - "No friend of the research community, so maybe that qualifies him. Anyway, that's a public meeting on April the 14th from 10 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon at the National Archives, at 7th and Pennsylvania in Washington, D.C.
Me - "Downtown, D.C.?" [I had not heard of this. This was on an email that got cut off.]
John Judge - "Downtown, yeah. They have released over 3 million records now [No, 3 million pieces of paper, maybe, not 3 million records] Most of the CIA and FBI records have been released. Some new records are being released now out of the military, and the Johnson library, and other places, there are additional agencies. We are unable to get the records that they have generated internally about compliance, either reports to Congress, or reports on compliance to other agencies. We have not succeeded in getting those released. But, we are expecting within the coming year to try to get as much of the historical record on JFK as loose as we can. And we are hoping to extend that to Martin Luther King and to Bobby Kennedy records.
"So tonights presentations will deal to the large part not with JFK but with Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, both. But these major political assassinations of the 1960's, which beyond the questions of the individuals who they killed and their positions in society had the social effect, I believe, of killing hope, by taking out individuals who represented a responsive leadership at that time in the country. And we have had little of that since. And so it was not only the individuals who were killed but a sense of hope in the population both for change and responsive government. From the time of the Warren Commission on there has been a lack of faith in the government.
"The Coalition on Political Assassinations is a coalition of three organizations, the Assassination Archive and Research Center in Washington, D.C., the Committee for an Open Archives in Washington, D.C. and the Citizens for Truth about the Kennedy Assassination in Los Angeles. And we have held a series of regional and annual meetings over the years and have also taped them. And this is being taped tonight, as was the event last night. So if you know people who could not attend who are interested in getting taped sessions...[call COPA] Also for those who don't know Dr. William Pepper, Ray's attorney, his book "Orders to Kill" has been updated and is out in a paperback edition with an introduction by Dexter King, and a new afterward by the author with new information about the case, running up until September [of 1997].
"And I also have to give regrets tonight for Bill Pepper who had originally agreed to attend but due to other plans was unable to be here tonight. But we have a line of other speakers who are coming, and some here already and some not."
audience - "Is there a tape of his meeting at the church on Friday?"
John Judge - "Yes, there is a tape of the meeting at the church. And that was co-sponsored by the Coalition and the Fellowship for Reconciliation. So we have a lineup of speakers who are familiar with these cases and I thought I might start with Jim Lesar, and I am putting him on the spot I see, who is the director of the Assassination Archives and Research Center in Washington, D.C. which is a repository of information about these various political assassinations, and Jim has also done a lot of personal work on the Martin Luther King murder, he was previously an attorney for James Earl Ray during some of his earlier appeals, and currently works on Freedom of Information Act cases for Ray and other parties trying to get the records loose.
"And so we are going to have the speakers talk for about 20 minutes each and probably have to save the questions till the end of the evening.
Jim Lesar - (jokingly) "And what am I supposed to speak about?"
John Judge - (jokingly) "Anything, whatever you like, something to do with Martin Luther King, I think."
Jim Lesar - "Ah, well, that gives me a clue. We have had a flurry of recent news stories on the assassination of Dr. King, partly because of the 30th anniversary. which is today, the day of his assassination, and partly because of other events, Ray's illness, and Gerald Posner's new book, "Killing the Truth". And some of you may have seen that Posner and Dan Rather teamed up once again for a "48 Hours" program a few days ago, which essentially concluded that Ray alone committed the assassination.
"I represented Ray from 1970 to 1975, and was responsible along with my co-counsul, Bernard Fensterwald and Robert Livingston in obtaining an evidentiary hearing for him that was held here in Memphis in October, 1974. It is the only time in the 30 plus years that have transpired since the King assassination that any evidence was taken in the case under traditional American legal standards, the hallmark of which is adversarial testing of evidence, the right to put on witnesses and cross examine witnesses. That was done in connection with Ray's petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Ray had begun, immediately after his guilty plea to try and set it (the guilty plea) aside.
"In fact, that plea is very little understood. The circumstances surrounding it are incredibly bizarre. Ray had, as you will recall, had been arrested in London, England, on June 8th, 1968. And he immediately wrote to two attorneys, Arthur Haynes, who had been the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, the city commissioner of Birmingham, Alabama, and F. Lee Bailey. Bailey had declined to represent Ray because he (Bailey) had some connection to the King family. Arthur Haynes was immediately approached by an author, William Bradford Huie, who offered to finance the Ray defense if Haynes would enter into a series of contractual agreements under which Ray; Huie agreed to pay Haynes if Ray would return to the United States and stand trial. As a result of that agreement, which I thought and still think represented a horrendous conflict of interest on the part of Ray's attorney Arthur Haynes.
"Ray waived his right to appeal the extradition ruling in London and was returned to the United States on July 19th, 1968. Where he was placed in solitary confinement which lasted for virtually all of the next 4 or 5 years. He was placed in a cell under lights 24 hours a day. Two guards were in the cell with him and recorded everything he did at 15 minute intervals.
"He began to tell his story to his attorneys who relayed the information to William Bradford Huie, or perhaps more accurately Huie would send in questions to Ray through his (Ray's) attorneys and Ray would write out the answers to the questions. Huie had in the meantime entered into contracts both for a book, initially to be entitled, "They Slew the Dreamer", published later under the title, "He Slew the Dreamer" and with LOOK magazine for a series of three articles. LOOK magazine at that time was the premier magazine in the United States with a circulation of some 6 or 7 million in direct paid subscriptions and a much larger indirect circulation.
"The trial was initially set for November 12th, 1968. As that date approached several things happened. One was that a conflict developed between Ray and his attorneys over whether or not he would take the witness stand in his own defense. Ray wanted to, his attorneys Arthur Haynes, senior and junior, did not want him to, and Huie did not want him to. Huie is the author who is paying for the defense, did not want him to. And as a result Huie flew James Earl Ray's brother Jerry Ray to Hartselle, Alabama at the beginning of November and offered him, or any member of his family $12,000 if they would get Jimmy not to take the witness stand. The reason for that was that if James Earl Ray, and this was an even more flagrant conflict of interest than the one that caused Haynes to waive Ray's extradition appeal, Huie didn't have a book if Ray took the witness stand because everything Ray knew would come out in the trial. And so Huie engaged in this desperation manoeuvre to try to keep Ray off the witness stand.
"Jerry Ray told Jimmy about it. He went to Jimmy and said, just a few days before the trial was to start, said, your lawyer is not representing you he is representing William Bradford Huie. And Jimmy said I know but there is not anything I can do about it, the trail is scheduled for November the 12th and the judge is not going to set it aside. After that Jerry Ray and his other brother John Ray contacted Percy Foreman of Houston, Texas and the day before the trail was to commence Foreman fly in and declared that he could break the contract and if Jimmy would fire Haynes. So Jimmy and Foreman wrote out a letter firing Haynes and on November the 12th, 1968 Foreman enters the case. He tells Ray he will not enter into any of these book contracts the way William Bradford Huie had done, and he was not to worry about his fee until after the trail
"However, three weeks later he meets, Foreman meets Huie in Texas and tells Huie, now let's get Haynes out of these contracts and get me in. Only Foreman insisted that the contracts be renegotiated so that instead of getting 42% of the proceeds that the Hayneses had been entitled to he (Foreman) was to get 60% of the proceeds. And that is what happened.
"And then Foreman after he got in the case didn't do anything except get the Memphis public defender, Hugh Stanton, jr., appointed to the case. Ray detested the public defender, he detested public defenders in general, feeling basically that they weren't very good lawyers and that they didn't do anything for their client, and he particularly disliked Stanton and threw him out of his jail cell when he tried to come to talk to him. Stanton basically didn't do anything in the case except talk about a guilty plea anyway.
"A new trial date was set for March of '69. And as that date approached some more bizarre things began to happen. Foreman began to put pressure on Ray to plead guilty, and the Shelby County District Attorney suddenly got a windfall when William Bradford Huie suddenly showed up and went before the grand jury to testify against the very man whose defense he was paying for. Huie had stayed out of Tennessee until that point to avoid that but suddenly on February 3rd, 1969 he shows up and testifies. So now Foreman is confronted with a severe conflict because the Shelby County D.A. sends him a little note a couple of days later saying in addition to the 464 inconsequential witnesses that we already said we would call at the trial we are adding five more and on that list is William Bradford Huie. So now the guy who is paying Foreman's fee, and who has testified against his client to the grand jury, may testify at the trial. And at this point Foreman ups the pressure on Ray to plead guilty.
Ray becomes convinced that he cannot trust Foreman, that Foreman will throw the trial. Judge Battle has already warned him that he is not going to allow him to change lawyers again. So he and Foreman have another conference; well, basically, Ray gives up, and says this is a rigged deal the only thing I can do is plead guilty and try to overturn it later.
"You can understand how he reached that decision. It's a horrendous error, a catastrophic error, cause once you plead guilty basically you are finished, there is virtually no hope that you can ever overturn it no matter how egregious the circumstances that led to it. But that was Ray's thinking. And so he agrees on March the 7th to plead guilty on the 10th of March.
"Over the weekend, Foreman gets word that Ray is muttering in his cell about firing him anyway. Foreman flies back into town and he and Ray negotiate the guilty plea all over again. And they sign two letter agreements dated March 9, 1969, and in one of them says in essence that I will plead guilty with no embarrassing circumstances to take place in court in exchange for your waiving your right to collect $165,000 in attorneys fees from me. And in the second letter, now Rays' thinking is I am going to get out of this, I have to enter the guilty plea, but then I have to attack the guilty plea.
"This is an extraordinarily corrupt deal, you got a prisoner who is negotiating with his own attorney on how he is going to enter a guilty plea and then get out of it. So Ray says well I am going to need some money to fire another attorney to overturn the guilty plea. So he and Foreman enter into a second agreement and in that agreement Foreman agrees to advance $500 dollars to Ray's brother, Jerry Ray, again conditional on you pleading guilty tomorrow in court with no unseemly conduct on your part to take place in court. And immediately after the trial Foreman hands over a check for $500 dollars to Jerry Ray so he can go out and hire a new attorney and overturn the guilty plea they just entered. That's how bad the circumstances were back in 1969. it has gotten worse all along. My time is up."
John Judge - "Well, if you can bear with yet another attorney I was going to ask the next speaker to be Wayne Chastain. He has been involved with researching and looking into this case for sometime. I know of his work going back to a period where one of our sources was Computers and Automation magazine, and how many of you date back to that period?, but the work that he has done locally has continued up to the current day and he has been working currently along with Dr. Pepper as a local attorney here on behalf of James Earl Ray. So I give you Wayne Chastain."
Wayne Chastain - [Wayne often gives extraneous information, digressing from his main point and almost always drops his volume when he does so, thus making it very hard to accurately transcribe what he said.]
"What may be interesting, going backwards in time to the time that I got into the case, I think, was trying to piece in the chronology, because, if I get a little technical stop me, for lawyers, defense lawyers, are always entitled to what is called discovery. I wasn't a lawyer back in '68-'69. I was a reporter, but we had this case in the 60's called Brady vs. Maryland . Under Brady vs. Maryland finally the culmination of a whole line of Supreme Court cases that says that if the prosecution has in its files, in its investigations, evidence that tends to exonerate or show innocence, and as late as 1995 they have defined that as "any evidence" that a defense lawyer can use to effectively impeach the testimony of a key prosecution witness, as late as 1995 the Supreme Court said you got to give it to them. Back in '68-'69, I started practicing law in 1974-'75, and I met Jim, and also Mr. Weisberg, Mr. Weisberg wasn't a lawyer but he indicated he knew a lot of things, and when I was finishing up night law school, about exculpatory evidence, exculpatory, the famous word meaning evidence that has been defined now in 1995, not only evidence tending to show innocence but evidence that you can use to impeach, and that's quite a stretch, impeach the credibility of a key prosecution witness. So, naturally lawyers in the late 60's started to do that. In Memphis it took a lot of guts to file a Brady motion. In fact one judge, in fact I really hat to say it but it was Judge Ben Wilson (?) who is sitting on the Supreme Court bench, a lawyer I am now associated with, a young eager lawyer, ...he filed one of the first Brady motions in Memphis, Tennessee and got chewed out by Judge Ben Wilson saying you can't file that, you're not entitled to that. And he said, your honor, I hate to tell you but this July 16th, there is this new law from the Supreme Court entitled Brady vs. Maryland and I am entitled to that. Well, he was lucky.....
"Mr. Foreman, James Earl Ray's lawyer in 1969, and I will have to look a the record, it has been sometime, maybe, Jim, you could help clarify this. Did Foreman ever file a Brady motion?
Jim, Lesar - "No."
Wayne Chastain - "No?
Jim Lesar - "He did no discovery at all."
Wayne Chastain - "They are saying now, with Tennessee still behind,...but back in those days, correct me if I'm wrong, but back in those days the Supreme Court standard with Brady was that if the prosecution has got it they have to turn it over whether the defense asked for it or not. And I remember when I was a newspaper man in San Antonio, Texas, there was a famous case in San Antonio, ...vs. Texas. A very ambitious D.A. in San Antonio, he was running for Governor, and he had suppressed... a Hispanic man without too much education had stabbed his wife, many, many times, and he couldn't speak English, and they got him for murder first, murder with malice, which is the same thing....[ because of the language problem they use an interpreter] well, the interpreter happened to be an investigator for the D.A.'s office. He did not tell them things that they had discovered and had medical proof that when Mr.... found his wife and stabbed her she was in the act of sexual intercourse with another man who ran. That case when all the way to the Supreme court and I think it was Justice Hugo Black, Black just chewed out this D.A. Anyway, that was the beginning of what became Brady vs. Maryland saying that if you've got evidence in the record to show innocence the D. A. is supposed to turn it over.
Well, Tennessee is broke and behind the times so they are like okay you're entitled to it but you have to ask for it first. Well, to ask for it you have to KNOW to ask. You don't know what's in the record. You don't know what to ask for in the record that might show your client is innocent
There were things still in the record that didn't come to the surface until Bill Pepper contracted with HBO to make this movie and we had a D.A. then in office, a Mr. John Pierrotti, who was just beginning in the District Attorney's office back in '68. he believed in the official mythology, James Earl Ray plead guilty, they were coming to Tennessee to make a movie, that would be good for Memphis, and so on. They thought it would be just a staged production showing James Earl Ray. So he took the whole D.A. file and turned it over to Pepper, including Mr. Billings I see back there, and they went through it and lo and behold they had a memo from Seargant J. C. Davis of the Memphis police department dated one month before James Earl Ray plead guilty, it's addressed to the Attorney General's office, 'I have an official source', he should have said two sources because he is relying on two men, 'I have a reliable source who is prepared to come forward and produce two witnesses that James Earl Ray wasn't even in the roominghouse at the time the shot was fired, secondly it alludes to two African-Americans who are prepared to say that their boss was most probably the shooter, and that police officers were coming in and out of the building at the time and two days prior to the shooting. That memo went to the District Attorney General's office. Also there was a responding memo where the chief investigator is telling the two top prosecutors, summarizing some of this evidence, and sent back a scrawl in his handwriting on the bottom of that memo is the chief investigator acknowledging receipt and telling J.C. Davis the fellow who received this information; in fact we called in, got a tape recording, one of those two sources is dead, one of them is still alive in Maine, I think, I think John [Billings] took his affidavit, Mr. Wright?, Robert Wright?[NO, James Alexander Wright, see. p. 194-195 of "Orders to Kill"], Mr. Wright says that he went over there with his boss Mr. O'Neil, well, let me back up, now Betty Spates was then a young attractive 17 year old woman who was sleeping with Jowers, she worked for Jowers as a waitress, her sister worked there, her brother was in trouble, she worked at the cafe, Wright came into the restaurant, and she talked to him, ...and he said well call me at the office, talking over the telephone, and I'm not sure of the sequence she said, 'You know, there are a lot of people in jail who don't do things, just like that white boy, James Earl Ray. You know he didn't kill Dr. King' Well, he went back and talked to her boss. She said on the telephone she heard a click, and asked if anyone else was on the phone, and they stopped, but they had that much on tape. They took it over to the District Attorney General's office. I have never been able to find out how [Detective J. C.] Davis heard about this. I guess O'Neill called Davis. Davis kept this in memo form.
John Billings - "No, they took it right down there that day. They thought it was that important. they gave the tape immediately..."
Wayne Chastain - "Okay, so the Davis memo preceded the memo that we had, that we assumed Carlisle signed or prepared, cause it disappeared. They go over there and according to Wright, he doesn't go into the office building, Neill does (doesn't?) and I don't know how long it was, and Neill comes out and Carlisle, the chief investigator tells him you better not talk about this again, you better forget all about it.
Now, that was in the file, one month before James Earl Ray plead guilty. (To Jim Lesar) Were you ever aware of that?"
Jim Lesar- "No, no. And it is particularly shocking as we had Carlisle on the stand at the evidentiary hearing."
Wayne Chastain - "So, where does that leave us? That is not all of the stuff that didn't get into the record, there is also an FBI interview with
Jim Lesar - "We never got any of the FBI stuff until, under the Freedom of Information Act, after the evidentiary hearing."
Wayne Chastain - "Now, this other memo in the file was an FBI interview with two men who worked on the railroad near Jim's Cafe. [On the day of the assassination] around 5:30 or 5:35, they came out on the street and saw a White Mustang in front of the restaurant, one of them forgot his jacket and went back in and the other one stayed there and studied it, fascinated by Mustangs, [and they walk off] meantime somebody comes out and gets into the Mustang and as they are walking to their hotel, the Mustang is not going that fast but his friend stepped out in front of it, they were staying at the hotel across the street, which I think is about 2 or 3 blocks down. So one of them saw the Mustang coming down the street so he pulls his other friend back. And this is 5:30 to 5:35 p.m. a white Mustang is leaving the scene. Okay, that is contrary to the conventional myth of a car driving away, wheels screeching. Okay with a Mustang leaving at 5:35, they get up to their hotel, and are watching TV when the shot was fired. That to me is exculpatory evidence.
Now, to give you an update on the case, they have removed Judge Brown, which you know if you were at the church last night, and I am being advised that the media is putting out that the case is over with?"
Jim Lesar - "Well, a week or two ago there were reports that Ray had abandoned his quest for a trial.'
Wayne Chastain"Well, the only option open to us is to file an extraordinary appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to try to set aside the Court of Appeals decision removing Brown. But all the Criminal Court of Appeals said was, they removed Brown, another judge has got to be appointed to hear these last two motions, the first motion is we want to continue the testing, and I don't have the time to get into that, we are confident that we have the expertise to continue the testing with a clean process that will produce a conclusive result. The Court of Criminal Appeals says well first, before this new judge gets appointed he first has to hear the District Attorney General's motion not to do anymore testing because there is enough evidence in the record now to show that future testing would be useless. but let me tell you its not over till it's over.
Me - "Can we ask questions?"
John Judge - "I want to wait until the end to ask questions" Translation- No. We were promised the ability to ask questions at the church, after everyone speaks, which is long after you forgot what you wanted to ask and around the time when the sun comes up.
"I am going to call on the next speaker, Wallace Milam, he is a member of the Coalition on Political Assassinations, also a long time researcher into the JFK case, and also the Martin Luther King case.
Wallace Milam - 'I have prepared some handouts, being a teacher by trade...
John Judge - "Is there a quiz on this?"
Wallace Milam - "There is no quiz on this, John. This has to do with the CBS telecast the other day. These are a series of quotes and things that I intended to deal with one by one, and maybe we will deal with that during some of the questions and answers. There are two pages here which I have prepared for you, maybe we can give these out, and they will go as far as they go.
"I was in Kennedy for a long time and now I guess I'm in King and Kennedy, I guess, also. Remind me to make some observations about Memphis and Dallas, about two cities reactions to having an assassination occur there. I wanted to talk to you about Gerald Posner and the book. I may be the only person here who has read substantial portions of this. I got it yesterday and I read it for 4 and a half hours last night and I made some notes, and I talked to him today, briefly, and I want to make some observations about Posner in general, and about Posner in this case in particular.
I have probably written more about Gerald Posner in terms of "Case Closed" than anyone else. I started putting together what I call the Posner follies soon after "Case Closed was... taking up particular subjects, and putting up refutations, putting things up on the internet and sending them out to people, and we are up to 70 or 80 pages now of errors. And it is what is going to have to be done here also.
"But there is something a little different about this book. First of all, let me tell you about my perceptions of Gerald Posner. He is not here tonight and shouldn't be here tonight (laughter)...and he wouldn't come to Dallas in '93, if you remember.
Jim Lesar - "We don't want to commemorate one assassination with another."
(laughter)
Wallace Milam - "First of all I question Gerald Posner's qualifications in both writing "Case Closed" and "Killing the Dream". There is too much of a coincidence to me that on the 30th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, Robert Loomis at Random House, and we know that Random House had already told one of our writers that they would never publish another conspiracy book on JFK. They told Walt Brown that. And Posner, well, I think Posner claimed that he went into writing "Case Closed" with an open mind and didn't know where he was going is incorrect. Random House knew where he was going.
"I question his motivations. We have here the 30th anniversary of the Martin Luther King assassination, it's Random House, Posner and Robert Loomis again. Its as if; so I think the first point is I think his motivation, I think he does know where he is going when he starts with his book, and he did tell everyone around Memphis that this was an open ended investigation, he thought he would probably find a conspiracy, etc., etc. These are the same things he said when he went into write "Case Closed".
"And I have an acquaintance here named Mark Perrusquia, who is a reporter for The Commercial Appeal and Mark and I were friends at the time that Posner contacted him [they aren't friends anymore?] and he called me and said what is Gerald Posner like, I told him what Gerald Posner was like in my opinion and after a little while Mark said, 'You know he is a very personable fellow.' I said, 'Indeed he is, they all are.' And he (Mark) said, 'You know he thinks he is going to find a conspiracy here'
And I said, 'Well, I'll make a deal here Mark, if Gerald Posner doesn't find a conspiracy in the case you can buy my dinner in a restaurant in Memphis, and if he does find a conspiracy I will buy you Memphis.' cause I did know where he was going, and sure enough.
"Now, his research method? Those of you from JFK, and there's some of it left over in this book, I have picked it up rather quickly, it's selected use of the record, especially those of you who are familiar with the case might want to look at his use of the... there is a lot of that in here. And he is prone to quote from those sources who support his point of view, it's an attorney's point of view, it's precisely what that is. So I would warn you to be careful if you read the book to make sure that all of the document is quoted and the spirit of the document, well, you will have to check it very closely.
I warned Pepper and as many people as I could what Posner will do, about his approach, I want your help, I will take everything you got, and then you will be the object of ridicule in his book. It happens, again, and again, and again. And John and Kenny, it's happened again. [Kenny, is Kenny Herman, an investigator for Dr. Pepper]
"Now, another thing I will say about Posner and his writing is that he will have no effect on public opinion, except for those people for whom he writes. And you know who Gerald Posner writes for. He writes for the mainstream media. He does have an effect on CBS. The old joke that we had around [the] Kennedy [research community] was that before Posner wrote "Case Closed" 90% percent of the American people believed there was a conspiracy and after he wrote "Case Closed" 9 out of 10 people believed there was a conspiracy. And it is going to be the same way here. Recent poll that CBS showed that 90% of the American people believed there was a conspiracy in the King case, and it will be that way. But it will have an effect on the media. They are looking for publishers, there is no question of that and that is who Posner is writing for. In the book, this is not definitive, this is four and a half hours, I knew what I wanted to look for in the book, Posner believes that there probably was a conspiracy, but he believes it was the [Ray] family, a kitchen conspiracy. The little conspiracy, James, maybe a brother or two
Jim Lesar - "And Carol [Ray's sister]
Wallace Milam - "Well, Carol gets mentioned as possibly the person he spoke to in London, the female with the Southern voice who called. At any rate, this is what he does not believe, he does not believe there is anything to Liberto and Jowers, he doesn't believe there is anything to Betty Spates and Bobbi Smith, he doesn't believe there is anything to Raul Pereira [ Pereira is a pseudonym folks! Let's get this straight! Dr. Pepper states on p. 373 of "Orders to Kill", both hardcover, and paperback, "His first name was Raul but I will use the pseudonym Pereira for his family name.] The last half of the book deals with that.
"And I am glad that he wrote this book. We didn't have CBS anyway, we didn't have ABC anyway. And he has drawn some lines here. He has drawn some battle lines. Now John, you and Kenny, and Bill, if you can you are going to have to answer him because he has thrown down the gauntlet. You are going to have to do it the way we did it in Kennedy, which is to take it line by line and page by page and dissect it. There is really no other way. And so that is the challenge right now.
(To someone) "Have you had the chance to read yours?
(someone) - "I have read it."
Wallace Milam - "Okay, because it is pretty terrible stuff, pretty strong stuff. He knew where to write and where no to write. For example to me the three greatest proofs of conspiracy in this case, and I will tell you that I do not believe that James Earl Ray is the assassin, I don't see as many conspiracies as a lot of other people do, or quite as large, but I do think that James Earl Ray is not the assassin. To me the three greatest proofs of conspiracy are, number one, the use of aliases, by far the strongest proof to me, number two are the dealings with "The Fatman" and "The Slenderman" in Toronto who tried to give envelopes to Ray, and did on one occasion give an envelope to Ray in late April and on May 2nd as Ray was trying to get out of Canada and trying to get to a foreign country.
"By the way it is also a considerable mistake that Posner made and other people do that Ray was trying to get to England. Ray was trying to get to Portugal. Ray never left the airport. Ray went to London alright, on his way to Lisbon, and incidentally there was a remarkable lack of any mention of Portugal anywhere in this book. And in the CBS documentary I kept waiting for someone to tell us about the aliases, nothing ever did, and Portugal was a word that was never used, and I wondered if it was not related to "Raoul Pereira" [a pseudonym damn it!] who lived in Lisbon and immigrated. So, the aliases and the Fatman, who tried to pass along an envelope, and the rifle purchases.
"And so I was interested, James Earl Ray, as many of you know, bought a rifle in Birmingham on the 29th of March at a place called Aeromarine Supply that he needed to exchange. He bought a .243 Gamemaster and called and wanted to exchange it for this Remington 30.06, which he did although it cost him some more money...
End Tape # 3 Side A Comfort Inn, Friday April 13, 1998 7:00 p.m.
Wallace Milam - "...and it was said he wanted to go hunting with his brother, or something like that, or brothers, he had said, so I was interested, so Posner had said the realizes the need to explain this, Posner didn't just get into town on the back of a load of wood or anything like that he's a very clever and confidant person. He realizes this require an explanation, and so he says there was "hardened grease" on the bolt of the gun and that James was having trouble operating it and that that was the reason he decided to exchange the rifle. And the source for that is very interesting, it's a Commercial Appeal article, where they got, well, we will have to try and find out I guess. The other thing about that rifle is, not only did someone suggest the exchange but it raises the question of why, why would there be an exchange, not only who was making this suggestion, was it because, as some people believe the rifle in play, if you will at the time was a 30.06, the rifle that was already in Memphis, that would be found, and James had bought "the wrong" rifle, since the word Gamemaster was applied, not only Remington. James apparently did not know a lot about guns.
I was also interested in seeing if he would report that James stopped and practiced with the gun on the way from Birmingham, in this convoluted way, as he finds his way to Memphis, and sure enough, he did report that James got out and fired it 12 or 15 practice rounds somewhere near Point, Mississippi. And I was interested in the source for that too and it's Gerold Frank.
(someone laughs, Jim Lesar?)
"In fact, Gerold Frank is the source for a good deal of his information on this. I suspect Pepper knows enough of the case to know, to have seen the documents relating to Frank and Cartha DeLoach, and the FBI's recruiting of him, the things that most of us know about. At any rate, something else that I was interested in, and something that has always troubled me, and that is the five digit prison number which was on the transistor radio. It seems to me that given even the state of computer knowledge in 1968 that once a 5 digit number is discovered on a transistor radio on the night of April 4th, and that was James Earl Ray's prison number in Jefferson City, Missouri that on the next day they should have certainly known who this was. I mean you find a five digit number. What is it?
"It was scratched onto a transistor radio, there was an attempt to scratch it out. James had made an effort to scratch it out. And to my astonishment Posner had reported, looking through the MURKIN documents the FBI had no noticed the number, which I find absolutely incredible. You see I have always been troubled by that 14 day lapse between the discovery of the radio and the discovery that Galt was Ray. Galt was the alias that Ray was using. And given the fact that the number was on the radio on the night of the assassination it is difficult for me to believe that it would take two weeks. I mean a five digit number is not a telephone number. And Posner has also suggested that it might be a personal code of some sort. Now who would leave a radio around without their personal code on it?
"Another allegation that is going to be made in this book is that Ray is a much more cunning criminal than we thought he was, he was really quite dexterous in his crimes and all of this sort of thing. And in that I have this image of James [driving around in his white Mustang asking people if they have any Grey Pupon?] falling out of the cab in Chicago, he was trying to hold up a cab and letting the driver drive it through a window, and finally running into the arms of a policeman, and beating a guy in the stomach in the poor house in St. Louis and running into the elevator and being captured, dexterity in criminal; don't you measure these things by results? And I guess from 1949 to 1960 James was in prison for what?, eight and a half years? You can measure success in all kinds of ways I guess but it seems to me that if you are in jail 8 and a half out of 11 years you are not doing something right.
"Another quote, directly from this program [the CBS "48 Hours"] 'I am absolutely certain that James Earl Ray is a racist. He refused to transfer to an honor farm,' of course he got this straight from McMillan, George McMillan, 'because blacks were out there.' Now, first you think about this, and you think, well, maybe that's true. Tell me, were there no blacks inside the Missouri State Prison? Was he not with Blacks inside the Missouri State Penitentiary everyday? Of course he was. He wasn't in solitary. And that's something we tend to overlook At first it sounds good but then you start analyzing it.
"And something else he also makes the point, the very first one, I was waiting for someone to jump on this, when James was growing up he worked at a tannery for awhile with a German man who apparently had some Nazi views. At least by the time Gerold Frank get around to telling it, and [someone], and some of the other earlier writers tell it, he definitely had some Nazi views. And so now, finally, with Posner it does come true. He says that James wanted to go to Germany in the military because he admired Hitler and things German. And I started to think about that for a moment, and I was thinking, the last place in the world that would have been very sympathetic to Nazi views in 1947, '48, '49, '50 would have been Germany. Don't you think? [In the immediate aftermath of World War II? And to be admiring Nazis, in Germany, in an American G.I. uniform? It's insane!] In the five, six, seven year aftermath of Hitler?
That would be one of the last places.
"Some other things you are going to find here, some fudging on the renting of the room, on the choice of rooms, and why he chose 5B. I can't resist a couple of these things right here, the D.A. here, John Campbell was on the program, on the CBS program with Posner the other night, and it was a quote, direct, "Ray's fingerprints were all over the rifle. (laughter) There were either none on the rifle, if you follow Linvile and Holbroke or there was a total of one palmprint and two fingerprints, if you believe Vince Scalizi on that, and something else that I like that is just a little ego trip for Campbell, I think, he said the strap for the binoculars was found in the room, there was a radio in the bottom and it had Ray's prison number on it, so they had a number and a name, that went with the radio, and I just noticed, this is an ego thing, that went with the radio, WE were looking for James Earl Ray. Now, Campbell was going through puberty, probably in 1968, don't you think? How old do you think he is? he just injected himself into this investigation, "We knew we were looking for James Earl Ray."
"Now I started going through the CBS thing the other night, and this is what we must do here, there is no other way, and don't think that you are going to; he paints with a very broad brush sometimes, but Gerald Posner is good at what he does, and if you are going to refute him you have to take him on line by line and you have to be good at what you do also, that's what we did in Kennedy. They nominated that book for a Pulitzer Prize, "Case Closed" and we just kept sending in material to the committees, of errors, and some errors that were not only factual but I would say were of a moral, well, he just misrepresented things, interviews that were not done, and it will be done again, and we must do it again.
And I thank you for your time, maybe we will get together for questions and answers and talk about some of those quotes from the program. Thanks again."
John Judge - "Well, with all due respect to James Earl Ray, one might say he's probably as good a crook as Oswald is a shot."
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