A DARKER, DEEPER SCENE EMERGES
Who gave the orders for this kill
These forces surely share the blame,
For oh so long they had their fill
Of he who gave human rights fame.
Together they strove to end his work,
The culmination of his enemies’ goal.
Their evil cast on which to embark,
To reunite his body and soul.
Not required, they fled the scene,
So fearful, they disappeared.
Not to be heard, rarely to be seen,
Finally, through us, truthful heard.
In late July 1993, I had widened the focus of my investigation. I met with Steve Tompkins, the former Commercial Appeal investigative reporter who had spent eighteen months researching a front-page piece on the role of army intelligence in surveying and infiltrating black organizations and civil rights groups. It had been published on March 21, 1993. Army intelligence had spied on Dr. King’s family for three generations. The article noted that there was an extraordinary fear in official circles about what would happen if Dr. King was allowed to lead masses of American poor into Washington that spring. It stated that army intelligence was “… desperately searching for a way to stop him….” The article also noted in passing, and without comment, that a Special Forces Alpha 184 sniper team was in Memphis on the day of the killing.
I wanted to learn whether Tompkins knew anything about the King killing, and if so, whether he could open up some doors for me. Since Dr. King had been under army surveillance, I wondered if the killing had been seen and even photographed. Tompkins had gone to work for the Governor’s Economic Development Department. He had confirmed the presence in Memphis that day of a number of army intelligence operatives. I needed to know their roles and, if possible, who they were. He would not give me their names, but he did offer an observation that surprised and chilled me. He had stumbled on certain information, which he was unable to print because of the lack of corroboration.
He had come to believe that after talking with a former Special Forces soldier now living in Latin America, in addition to surveilling Dr. King on April 4, the army in Memphis was implicated in the assassination. The nervous ex-soldier had showed up with an AK-47 rifle, which he kept near throughout the interview. This man was the only member of the army unit whom Tompkins was able to interview. He believed that another member had been shot in the back of the head in New Orleans. The ex-soldier told Tompkins that he decided to leave the country after his New Orleans comrade was killed. He said it appeared that a “clean-up” operation was under way and that he had better get out.
This important information greatly complicated the picture. It was imperative that I investigate it as far I could. Tompkins warned me that, if publicly questioned, he would deny telling me the information. As we parted, he said he was relieved to be away from the Special Forces, stating, “Most of these people are the dregs of humanity, real slime. They’d kill you, your mother, or your kids as soon as look at you. You have to be very careful.”
Tompkins said these people would want to be paid for their time and want the money in cash before the meeting. They would not volunteer information but always answered his questions truthfully.
A couple of the Special Forces “grunts” (non-commissioned officers) would likely cooperate. In addition to covert operations relating to domestic turbulence in 1967, they had been involved in gunrunning activities into New Orleans. The operations were coordinated by a master sergeant, and the sales were made to Carlos Marcello’s operation and delivered to barges in a cove bordering property owned by Marcello. A man named “Zippy” or “Zip” Chimento handled these transactions for Marcello. The soldiers were given the name and phone number of Joe Coppola, who was connected with the Louisiana Highway Patrol, in case they had any trouble transporting the guns by truck. When I checked, I learned that Zip Chimento was, in fact, a confidant and associate of Marcello, and Joe Coppola was the commissioner of the Highway Patrol.
During this time, much to Steve Tompkins’s surprise, he had received a telegram from the Special Forces soldier he had previously interviewed, who I will call Warren and who now lived in Latin America. The message was simply that “… [he] now knew who Dr. William Pepper was” and that he was prepared to answer any questions I would put to him through Tompkins. Under no circumstances would he meet directly with me. The date he set for the meeting, outside of the United States, was the last weekend in March. Tompkins was willing to go as a consultant and put my questions to Warren, who he said had never lied to him, although, on occasion, he would refuse to discuss a matter or claim that he did not know.
Based on what Tompkins had told me about Warren, I knew that he and his partner, whom I will call Murphy, had vital information. Tompkins said that though I would have the names and personal details about Warren, Murphy, and perhaps others, one of the conditions would be that I agree not to name them. Without that understanding, there could be no cooperation. If I broke my word on this issue, he thought it likely that both of us would be killed. I agreed to the condition, which did not apply to participants who had since died. Tompkins would give a statement, and his reports would be written and detailed.
On the morning of November 9, 1993, I met with Steve in his office in the Tennessee State Capitol Building. He had prepared a chronology of events for me, which I was eager to analyze and discuss. He had printed it out before he left the office the previous night. He looked everywhere but couldn’t find it. Since he had left it on top of a letter he had written on behalf of his secretary, he was convinced that his office had been entered and the file taken. I had recently had a similar experience in Birmingham when my address/appointment book had disappeared on the one occasion I registered in my own name. It has never turned up. It was an ominous indication that a closer look was being taken at my activities.
The role of the army and the other cooperating government agencies in the assassination of Dr. King has been one of our nation’s deepest, darkest secrets. I have only been able to uncover it by piecing together the accounts of Warren and Murphy with those of other participants, people who were in strategic positions with access to information, and analyzing relevant army intelligence documents, files, and other official records that have never been made public.
In 1963, the 101st Airborne was deployed at the racial riots in Oxford, Mississippi. Major General Creighton V. Abrams, the on-scene commander, wrote a highly critical assessment of how army intelligence had performed: “We in the army should launch a major intelligence project, without delay, to identify personalities, both black and white, and develop analyses of various civil rights situations in which they become involved.” His report received serious attention from the army intelligence machine in place in 1967 and 1968.
In 1967, Military Intelligence formed part of the US Army Intelligence Command (USAINTC) at a military compound based at Fort Holabird, Maryland. By 1968 the Investigative Records Repository (IRR) was housed in a huge two-story steel room, containing more than seven million brown-jacketed dossiers on American citizens and organizations. They included files on allegedly subversive individuals, who, according to army intelligence, were “persons considered to constitute a threat to the security and defense of the United States.” There were files on the entire King family.
USAINTC took control of seven of the eight existing counterintelligence or US Army Military Intelligence Groups (MIGs) in the Continental United States (CONUS) and Germany. The eighth MIG—the 902nd—was under the command of the army’s assistant chief of staff of intelligence, who from December 1966 until July 1968 was Major General William P. Yarborough, the founder of the units known as the Green Berets. By 1967, the MIGs employed 798 army officers and 1,532 civilians including 67 black undercover agents. Of this total force, 1,576 were directly involved in domestic intelligence gathering, and of these “spies,” some 260 were civilians.
The MIG officers were responsible for eye-to-eye surveillance operations which included audio and visual recordings of people and events designated as targets. Dr. King was a target and throughout the last year of his life was under surveillance by one or another MIG team. Closely related to the USAINTC structure at the time was the separate intelligence office under ACSI Yarborough.
In addition to controlling the 902nd MIG, he supervised the Counterintelligence Analysis Board (CIAB). This analyzed a wide range of MIG-produced intelligence and forwarded reports directly to the ACSI. The 902nd MIG was a highly secretive organization, carrying out some of the most sensitive assignments. Warren had always refused to discuss the 902nd, saying anyone interested in the “90 Deuce” should dig a deep hole.
Intelligence gathering was also done in 1966 by the Twentieth Special Forces Group (SFG), headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, as part of the Alabama National Guard. The Twentieth SFG provided small, specialized teams for “behind the fence” covert operations, made up of reservists from Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Louisiana, which also came to provide an organizational cover for some of the most sinister and talented “retired” Special Forces operatives. The Ku Klux Klan had a special firearm and other military skills at a secret camp near Cullman, Alabama, in return for intelligence on local black leaders.
The US Strike Command (CINCSTRIKE) was the overall coordination command for responding to urban riots in 1967 and 1968. It included liaison officers from the CIS, FBI, and other non-military state and federal agencies. Its headquarters were at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. ACSI and USAINTC commanders were primary leaders in developing CINCSTRIKE strategy for mobilizing forces required for defensive action inside CONUS.
The United States Army Security Agency (ASA) carried out all “non-eye-to-eye” or electronic intelligence surveillance (ELINT), employing expert wiretappers, eavesdroppers, and safecrackers. Telephone monitoring wiretapping was used against Dr. King when he stayed at the Rivermont Hotel on March 18 and 28 and the Lorraine Motel on April 3 and 4, 1968. The Psychological Operations section (Psy Ops) was used for highly sensitive and technical photographic surveillance and reports.
The CIA, whose director at the time was Richard Helms, and the FBI, led by J. Edgar Hoover, worked alongside this multifaceted army structure, which had vastly superior manpower resources, particularly black operatives that the CIA and certainly the FBI were lacking. The National Security Agency (NSA) and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) contributed the task force under the umbrella of the coordination intelligence body—the United States Intelligence Board (USIB) chaired by Richard Helms.
Warren and Murphy had been active in covert Special Operation Group (SOG) missions in Vietnam. They were hardened, highly skilled veterans; Warren was a sniper. Both were from the Fifth SFG in Vietnam, and part of a Mobile Strike Force Team involved in cross-border covert operations in 1965 and 1966. They were reassigned in 1967 as reservists to the Twentieth SG/FG, with Camp Shelby, Mississippi, as their training base.
Throughout 1967 they were deployed in 902nd covert operations as members of as small specialized “Alpha team” units in a number of cities where violence was breaking out. They were issued with photographs (mug books) of black militants in each city. In some instances particular individuals were designated as targets to be taken out (killed) if an opportunity arose in the course of a disruption or riot.
During this time, army intelligence published the green and white mug books on black radicals, which contained photographs, family history, political philosophy, personal finances, and updated surveillance information in order to facilitate their identification by army commanders and intelligence personnel. The units were deployed when riots flared up in Tampa, Detroit, Washington, D.C., and on reconnaissance in Chicago.
The Memphis Mission
In successive sessions, Warren and Murphy set out the details they knew about the Memphis deployment. They were part of an eight-man “Operation Detachment Alpha 184 team,” a Special Forces field training team in specialized civilian disguise. The unit consisted of the following: captain (as CO), a second lieutenant, two staff sergeants, two buck sergeants, and two corporals. I learned that the colonel in charge of the 902nd, John Downie, had previously selected a team from the roster of the Twentieth SFG, provided at the request of the ACSI’s office and sent to him on October 23, 1967.
A two-man reconnaissance unit of the Alpha 184 reconnaissance team, which included Warren, entered Memphis on February 22 through the Railway Bus Terminal, completed reconnaissance on the downtown hotel area, and mapped egress routes to the north of the city. (The “hoax” automobile chase at the time of the assassination took place in the northern section of Memphis and concentrated attention on this area of the city.)
The team leader was apparently given the final orders for the deployment at 7:30 a.m. on March 29. Warren and Murphy stated that the team was specifically briefed before departing from Camp Shelby for Memphis at 4:30 a.m. on the morning of April 4, 1968. During the half-hour session the team was left with no doubt as to its mission. On the order, they were to shoot to kill—“body mass” (center, chest cavity)—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Reverend Andrew Young.
They were shown “target acquisition photos” of the two men and the Lorraine Motel. The team’s pep talk stressed how they were enemies of the United States who were determined to bring down the government. Warren said that no one on the team had any hesitancy about killing the two “sacks of shit.” Immediately after the briefing, the team left in cars from Camp Shelby for Memphis, carrying the following weapons in suitcases: standard .45 caliber firearms, M-16 sniper rifles with 8-power scopes (the closest civilian equivalent would be the Remington 30.06 700 series—James was instructed to buy a Remington 760), KA-BARs (military knives), “frags” (fragmentation grenades), and one or two LAWS (light anti-tank weapon rockets). It appeared they were prepared for all contingencies.
They were dressed as working “stiffs,” similar to those day laborers working down by the river near President’s Island. The team leader arranged for Warren and Murphy to meet with a senior MPD officer who they believed was attached to the MPD’s intelligence division and who told them that their presence was essential to save the city from burning down in the riot for which Dr. King’s forces were preparing.
Warren later identified Lieutenant Eli Arkin from a photograph as being the officer they met. He was also the MPD’s chief liaison with Special Agent William Lawrence, the local FBI field officer’s intelligence specialist.
Sometime after noon, Warren and Murphy met their contact down near the railroad tracks. Warren named the man, whom he called a “spook” (army slang for CIA). The contact took them to the roof of a tall building that dominated that downtown area and loomed over the map, pictures of cars used by the King group, and the “Memphis police TAC” radio frequencies. The roof was on top of the Illinois Central Railroad Building, which lay diagonally southwest of the Lorraine. They were in position by 1:00 p.m. and remained on their rooftop perch for over five hours as did (though they did not know it) the Psy Ops photographers who had been on the roof of Fire Station No. 2 photographing the activity at the Lorraine and the surrounding area. In their two-man sniper unit, Warren was the shooter and Murphy the “spotter” and radio man. Murphy’s job was to relay orders to Warren from the coordination central radio man as well as to pick out or “spot” the target through binoculars.
During the course of that afternoon, Warren reported that he had spoken over the radio with an MPD officer whose first name he believed was Sam, who was the head of the “city TAC.” (This had to be Inspector Sam Evans, head of the MPD tactical units.) Warren said that Sam provided details about the physical structure and layout of the Lorraine. He also told Warren that “friendlies were not wearing ties.” Warren took this to mean that there was an informant or informants inside the King group.
For the remainder of the afternoon, he and Murphy waited.
Finally, near what Warren termed the “TTH” (top of the hour—6:00 p.m.) King came on to the balcony, having spent nearly two hours in his brother AD’s room 201 and then returning to 306 around 5:30 p.m. Warren recognized his target, Andrew Young, putting on his coat, and took aim, holding him in his sights. Radio man Murphy waited to relay the order to fire, which they believed would take place if a sudden disturbance erupted. The order didn’t come, and as usual in such circumstances the seconds seemed like hours; just after TTH, a shot rang out.
It sounded like a military weapon, and Warren assumed that the other sniper unit had jumped the gun and fired too soon because the plan was always for a simultaneous shooting. He said he never knew where the other sniper unit had been placed, but they would also have been above the target and at least 300 yards from it. A less well-trained soldier hearing that shot might have fired, but Warren said he had to have the direct order before he would pull the trigger.
Murphy asked for instructions, and there was a long silence. Then the team leader came on and ordered the team to disengage in an orderly fashion and follow the egress routes assigned to them out of South Memphis where they were located. Warren and Murphy packed up and went down the same stairs they had climbed more than five hours earlier. They went across Riverside Drive and down to the river where a boat was waiting.
The team leader joined them and they quickly went some distance downstream to a prearranged point where cars were waiting. He ordered complete silence for the return trip. Only some of the team went out this way. Warren said his immediate impression that the other team had “screwed up” continued until later that evening when he heard that some “wacko civilian” had apparently done the shooting.
He said he believed that it was entirely possible that the Alpha 184 team mission could have been a backup operation to an officially deniable, though jointly coordinated, civilian scenario. Warren said that he had seen the team leader on only two other occasions after April 4, and he refused to talk to him about what had happened.
As non-commissioned officers, Warren and Murphy would only have been told what they needed to know in order to carry out their particular task on the day. Warren stressed that April 4 was the first time he had been in Memphis, and that he had not participated in any reconnaissance activity. Though their operation was a military one, so far as he knew there was some inter-service cooperation since they were coordinating with Tennessee National Guard units and “NAS”—the Millington Naval Air Station.
Warren had heard about one other time when a Twentieth SFG unit had almost “taken out” Dr. King. This was during the Selma march in 1965. Warren said the sniper, who was also a member of the Memphis Alpha 184 team, claimed that on that occasion he actually had the SCLC leader “center mass” in his sights awaiting the order to fire, which never came because Dr. King turned sharply away at the opportune moment and was then closely surrounded on the march.
Steve Tompkins told me that there was one soldier on both the Selma Twentieth SFG team and the April 4 Alpha 184 team in Memphis. His name was John D. Hill (JD), a buck sergeant who was murdered in 1979. On October 16, 1994, I made contact with Jack Terrell, who knew JD well. He was a former covert operative connected most prominently with the Iran-Contra affair. At various times, he reported directly to the National Security Council. His testimony before the Senate hearings incriminated Oliver North, who he believed was involved in drug and money laundering operations in order to finance the illegal intelligence operations against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Jack Terrell had been used by ABC as a highly credible source. I believed he had vital information that could confirm and provide independent verification about the military presence in Memphis around the time of the sanitation workers’ strike. Terrell was one of those bright, initially idealistic, and patriotic warriors who almost inevitably reach a point where they can no longer swallow the corruption, deceit, and sheer criminal activity that often characterize official but deniable covert operations. His story was more than I hoped for. Because of the compatibility of the details with those emerging from other sources, it swept away any lingering doubts I had about the plot to murder Dr. King and cover it up.
JD had shared with Terrell what he personally knew about the King assassination plan. When I initially raised the subject of JD’s involvement in the killing of Dr. King and asked Terrell whether JD had ever discussed the operation with him, he sighed, and was silent for a while. He said the subject had come up, but he was reluctant to open up this can of worms since it could lead to the two of us being killed. He uttered to me the familiar phrase, “You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”
I told him that by now I was getting the idea, but I had as a client an innocent man who had served nearly twenty-six years in prison and that even though his innocence was becoming ever more obvious, the state had spurned every face-saving opportunity to free him. Consequently, I had little choice but to solve the case conclusively and free him.
Terrell then said that in the mid-1970s, JD appeared to want to shed some baggage about his past. He told Terrell about an assassination mission he had trained for over a period of many months to be carried out on a moment’s notice. He was in training with a small unit selected for the mission because they were all members of a Mississippi unit, the Twentieth SFG. He said that JD was a member of the Twentieth SFG which Terrell came to learn that, though officially a Special Forces reserve unit, actually was used for a wide range of plausibly deniable covert, special, or “behind-the-fence” operations inside and outside of the United States. No record would be kept of their deployment for sensitive “behind-the-line” duty and operations. Hence, when investigative journalists inquired, they would find no offense record.
JD told Terrell that on April 4, the main body of the Alpha 184 team arrived in cars from Camp Shelby, which was their staging base and the training home for the Twentieth SFG reservists. He said that all weapons, material, and immediate orders for the Memphis mission were generated from the base, although the actual preparation for a triangulation shooting had been previously practiced at a site near Pocatello, Idaho. At an early stage, the scenario called for a triangular shot at a moving vehicle in an urban setting. At the time no official details were provided about the mission and the men believed it was to be directed at an Arab target.
JD said that he soon learned that the mission was to be executed in Memphis, Tennessee. He believed that some of the team had gone to the city earlier. JD identified those sites to Terrell: a rooftop, a water tower, and a third-story window, with the team expecting to have to fire upon and hit their targets (and there were more than one) when they were in a moving car entering or leaving the motel parking lot. The team knew that the King party was going to dinner that evening, and they didn’t believe for a minute that Dr. King would appear on the balcony in such an exposed position. They believed they were going to have to work for the kill.
The weapons that Terrell said JD told him were carried by the team were in line with the list provided by Warren. Terrell said it was obvious from the way JD spoke that something went wrong and that they had to leave unexpectedly and quickly. Some members of the team were flown out from West Memphis.
Terrell said he had always had reservations about JD’s death. The official account made no sense to him. JD was allegedly shot to death at point-blank range by his wife, sometime after midnight on January 12, 1979. She apparently fired five bullets from his .357 Magnum into a closely confined area of his chest. He was dead before he hit the floor. It had, said Terrell, all the signs of a professional killing. He had known JD’s wife and did not believe that she had the strength or the capability to handle the large firearm with the precision described.
Terrell believed that JD, a heavy drinker, might have begun to talk to others about the Memphis operation. Warren had said that he had left the country because he believed a clean-up process had begun within a year of the assassination and that if he returned to the United States he would be “immediately killed.” I obtained a copy of the court records relating to JD’s death and confirmed that there was no indictment for his murder. JD’s wife was released and lives today in another town in Mississippi.
I asked Terrell to check out some details and he reluctantly agreed. Just before we ended, he said, “This meeting never took place.” I agreed. “You have to be very careful,” he said, “They’ll drop you where you stand.” Terrell faxed a note to me a couple of weeks later. It confirmed what he told me and provided further information. JD’s team was positioned on a Taylor Paper Company water tower. Terrell wrote that JD confirmed that something had gone wrong and the mission was aborted. They disengaged, were picked up, and driven out of South Memphis to West Memphis Arkansas airport where they were placed on a small aircraft and flown to Amory, Mississippi, after releasing their weapons and other gear to the logistics officer who remained behind. They apparently dispersed at that point, JD returning to his home in Columbus, where he learned Dr. King had been assassinated.
Warren said that he had heard “scuttlebutt” that the 111th MIG had a black agent inside Dr. King’s group. Using an intelligence source, I asked for a check to be completed on Marrell McCollough, who I had previously confirmed from two independent sources had gone to work for the CIA in the 1970s. The report bore fruit. McCollough was not who he appeared to be. He had been in the regular army between February 1964 and December 1966 and was a military policeman (an MP). On June 16, 1967, he was reactivated and hired as a military intelligence informant and attached to the 111th MIG headquartered at Camp McPherson, Georgia.
McCollough, therefore, had ultimate reporting responsibility to the 111th MIG, though he was deployed to the MPD as an undercover agent, and officially reported to MPD Lieutenant Arkin.
Warren, whom I had come to believe was credible and reliable, also said that a photograph of the actual shooting from the brush area existed and sometime after the event he had seen it. Warren provided the name and address of the now-retired officer who supposedly had a copy of the photo and agreed to approach him. The former Psy Ops officer, whom I call “Reynolds,” agreed to have contact, but initially he insisted on the same procedure that had been used with his Latin American buddies. My questions would be carried to him by Steve Tompkins. The meeting was set for early December 1994 in the coffee shop of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Chicago.
Reynolds was about five feet ten inches tall, 160 to 170 pounds, with gray, short cropped hair. He said that in Vietnam he had been assigned to the First SOG based in Can Tho and that he worked for the 525th Psychological Operations Battalion. Reynolds said that he and his partner (whom I will call “Norton”) were deployed to Memphis on April 3 as a part of a wider mission they believed was under the overall command of Colonel Downie of the 902nd MIG, for whom he had worked on a number of assignments. They carried the necessary camera equipment and were armed with standard issue .45 caliber automatics. Norton also carried a small revolver in a holster in the small of his back. They were ordered to be in position on April 4, and on that day they arrived before noon and went directly to Fire Station No. 2, where the captain, Carthel Weeden, gave them access to the flat roof. They took up their positions on the east side of the roof. From that vantage point they overlooked the Lorraine Motel and picked out any individuals in photos who might be identified as a communist or national security threat. They had an unobstructed view of the balcony in front of Dr. King’s room, 306. My colleagues and I long wondered why the army would want to take photographs of the events unfolding on that day.
I have come to believe that the main reason for the photographing was likely to enable Downie and the relevant army counterintelligence officers not only to be able to identify everyone in the vicinity of the crime scene but also, in particular, to have a clear picture of what they were doing immediately before, at the time of, and immediately after the assassination. This photographic intelligence would certainly give them a head start in being able to take whatever steps were necessary to suppress observations that could potentially jeopardize the operation.
On New Year’s Day 1996, Steve Tompkins received an unexpected telephone call. It was purportedly from Colonel John Downie of the 902nd military intelligence group. I had tried to locate him for three years, concluding that his little-known unit, based inside the office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, played the primary organizing and coordination role in the assassination. He was now living outside the United States, and said he had found my earlier book Orders to Kill remarkably accurate, though it gave him too much responsibility for the operation. He insisted he was only an officer in a chain of command following orders. He wanted to correct my impression of his role so the history of these events would be accurately recorded.
He called Steve again on January 28 and suggested they should meet in Southhampton, Bermuda, on March 9. He asked for a modest good faith sum, up front, to offset his expenses for as many meetings as I deemed necessary. In addition, he asked for one Krugerrand at the beginning of each meeting. This was the same procedure Warren had used.
Steve traveled alone to the meeting. The next morning there was a knock on his door. Downie introduced himself. He stood almost six feet tall, weighed around 185 pounds, and appeared to be in his mid-sixties. He was pleased that Steve had arrived alone and reiterated he would not meet me. He said I was not in danger since my earlier book had been buried and no one would believe my story. Surprisingly, he said he had met me in Vietnam when I was a journalist. He stated he had been legally dead for a number of years, and was living under a new identity.
He said he would provide all the details possible, but explained, in true military style, that he would have been outside the loop in some aspects of planning and implementation. Five meetings took place over the next eighteen months. The information this man provided gradually served to corroborate what was provided earlier by other military and government personnel.
Downie confirmed he played a key role in coordinating the task force consisting of the various military units in Memphis during the week of April 1, up to and including April 4. However, he contended that while he met Yarborough on a regular basis, his orders were passed through a trusted civilian associate. The emissary, whose name I had never heard before, was a retired army intelligence officer who had served at Fort Bragg under Yarborough. Though the operation came under the jurisdiction of the ACSI’s office it was handled indirectly through his trusted loyal colleague.
Downie said the Memphis operation seemed to have been put in motion following a meeting that took place about a week after the riot in Detroit that he attended with Yarborough and others. Dr. King’s popularity with urban blacks, his opposition to the Vietnam War, and his determination to bring impoverished masses to the nation’s capital all helped seal his fate. Downie confirmed Warren and Murphy’s account of the Memphis mission, even such details as “friendlies not wearing ties.” He said the 902nd began to plan the killing of black community leaders as early as 1963 and 1964 when it seemed cities might get out of hand. He said the unit was still in existence.
Downie provided details that revealed for the first time the relationship between the Marcello crime organization and the 902nd. They were jointly involved in an extensive gunrunning venture. Weapons stolen from army bases and armories were delivered to the Marcello organization, which arranged for their sale in Latin and South America and elsewhere. The proceeds were split equally, and the 902nd used this “black” money for covert operations. The operational link between the army and the mob was, apparently, a now deceased Twentieth SFG captain in New Orleans, who died in a suspicious car crash. I recalled Warren’s account of running guns from Camp Shelby to New Orleans where they were delivered to Marcello’s man Zip Chimento. I also recalled Glenda Grabow’s description of Raul and his associates picking up guns that were delivered by water and unloaded at Houston docks.
Downie also tied two other people to this activity. One was a senior Mossad agent working in South America who acted as a senior liaison to the US military and CIA. The second was an officer of the 111th MIG based at Fort McPherson in Georgia. Downie urged us to stay away from these individuals.
Eric S. Galt
As for James, Downie said that he was one of many minor crooks with an army history who were used as “patsies” in various operations. Downie said he, too, had seen photographs of the shooter taken at the time of the killing. It was not James. He said that though James would not have been aware of it, he had been assisted and guided in Canada. He said that there was an identities expert used by both Yarborough and Helms at the time James was provided with the Galt identity. James had not known the source. He always tried to protect the person who gave him the Galt name, believing it was someone who was trying to help.
He began to use it in late July 1967, having just entered Canada. This was around the time of the Detroit riots and heightened army concern over Dr. King. At one point during my investigation of the involvement of the army, a source placed a photograph in front of me. It was a full frontal head shot of Eric St. Vincent Galt—the man whose identity James had assumed and used for most of the time between July 18, 1967, and April 4, 1968. I was told not to ask any questions because it had come from and was part of an NSA file. I learned that Galt, the executive warehouse operator at Union Carbide’s factory in Toronto, had top secret security clearance. Galt had worked for Union Carbide, Inc. of the United States since the early 1980s. The company was engaged in high-security research projects controlled by its US parent. I learned that in August 1967, shortly after James assumed the Galt identity, the real Eric Galt met with Colonel John Downie’s aide. They met again in September.
Somehow James had acquired the name of a highly placed Canadian operative of US army intelligence. He began using the name on July 18, 1967, around the time the real Eric Galt was meeting with Downie’s aide. Though James likely obtained the other aliases by himself, there was little likelihood that he had accidentally chosen the Galt identity. His manipulation now appeared to involve not only elements of organized crime but also the specific, senior level, highly covert military intelligence group, the 902nd MIG, whose involvement could be traced back at least to July 18, 1967, when he began to use the Galt identity.
At the time, Galt appeared to me to be a critical link, facilitating the use of James Earl Ray as a scapegoat by this covert part of army intelligence and using the task force structure involving the Twentieth SFG, the FBI, and the other associated and collaborating members of the government and intelligence community involved with the assassination of Dr. King. Providing the scapegoat with an identity with Top Secret clearance was a means of securing and protecting him from problems before he was needed. Any routine police check would come up against a protected file, and the result would be that the government agency (in this instance the NSA and the army through the ACSI’s office) could control the situation and instruct any law enforcement authorities to let the scapegoat go.
It was a highly classified secret that the NSA became involved in the effort to locate James after the assassination. It has never been revealed in any official investigation. Frank Raven, the NSA’s officer, received the watch lists from the rest of the law enforcement and intelligence community and acted upon them. He received a direct order to place Ray’s name, along with several aliases, on the watch list. Usually, the order came from the office of the Secretary of Defense, Clark M. Clifford, who has no recollection of issuing it. Raven said that he tried to object to the order on constitutional grounds but was told that “… you couldn’t argue with it—it came from the highest level.”
It now appears that army intelligence was involved in the task force through the presence of the 111th MIG on the ground in Memphis and the 902nd MIG, which coordinated the operation. From at least July 1967, James acquired the identity of one of the 902nd’s assets with top-secret security clearance. This may have prompted the subsequent unconstitutional involvement of the NSA using the “watch list” to locate him. It appears likely or at least possible that the order which was routed through the Defense Secretary’s office found its way there from the office of the ACSI. An operation of mind-boggling complexity was emerging.
By summer 1997, John Downie had disappeared, perhaps concerned that word had gotten out about his contact with me via Steve Tompkins. This relatively brief communication provided me with further confirmation that the account of a military back-up presence was basically correct. It provided a tantalizing glimpse behind the Pentagon’s closed doors where the assassination of Dr. King was viewed as one event in a much larger context.
Steve Tompkins continued to meet with Warren during the period that Downie’s story began to unfold. On January 27, 1996, Warren confirmed that his target, Andrew Young, was in the Lorraine parking lot at the moment Dr. King was shot. On August 17, Warren turned over the remaining Twentieth SFG rosters he had. One name leapt from the Mississippi list. It was the man who Jack Terrell, best friend of Alpha 184 team member JD Hill (shot dead in 1979), had said was the briefing officer for the Memphis mission attached to the Mississippi contingent. Terrell had said no one was quite certain exactly who he worked for.
When I obtained the photograph of Raul, included in the spread of six, I asked Steve to make a trip and show it to Warren. Warren instantly picked him out. He identified him as the person he had seen with Marcello’s man Zip Chimento when they were picking up guns delivered from Camp Selby to New Orleans. Warren said Raul went by the name James R. Richmond and always insisted on using the initial “R.” This clearly placed Raul in the frame of the gunrunning operations conducted by the army and the Marcello organization.
At 6:01 p.m., the fatal moment when the shot rang out, Reynolds quickly snapped four or five photos following Dr. King as he fell to the balcony floor. Reynolds said Norton almost instinctively swung his camera from the parking lot to the left and, focusing on the brush area, caught the assassin (a white man), on film as he was lowering his rifle. He then took several shots of him as he was leaving the scene. Reynolds said that though Norton had caught the assassin clearly in his camera, he personally only saw the back of the shooter as he left the scene. They hand-delivered the pictures to Downie but Norton kept the negatives and made another set of prints, seen by both Reynolds and Warren. They both categorically stated that the sniper in the photograph was not James Earl Ray.
In February 1997, ABC News’s Turning Point program decided to do a documentary on the King assassination. It planned to focus on the King family, my investigation and quest for a trial, and James Earl Ray’s terminal illness. From the outset, we all cooperated. I persuaded Terrell to be interviewed. In the hour interview he told them what he had learned from his best friend J.D. Hill and about the presence of the Alpha 184 team in Memphis on April 4, 1968, and their mission. I had been informed that the leader of the eight-man team was dead. With the cooperation of the army, however, ABC News located him alive and living in Costa Rica. With no prior notice, they brought him, along with General Henry Cobb, who commanded the Twentieth Special Forces Group, into an interview with me. I was surprised and told them I had obviously been given wrong information about the team leader’s death.
Cobb and the team leader denied not only that the Alpha 184 was in Memphis, but that it even existed in 1968. They insisted that the Alabama contingent of the Twentieth SFG never trained at Camp Shelby and was never in the city of Memphis. Cobb insisted the unit could not have been involved in such an operation without his knowledge.
I asked a Birmingham private investigator to check out certain details about the team leader’s activities in the city and was provided with a copy of his criminal record. He had a conviction for negligent homicide and served one year in prison in Alabama before leaving for Costa Rica. Turning Point did not reveal this to viewers.
During the course of the program, the idea that the Alpha 184 team was in Memphis to control riots was advanced. This explanation had eventually been raised by Warren in his sessions with Steve Tompkins, who came to believe it. Though I gradually came to have a different view, it made no sense to me in the context of events at the time. This was before I came to see the riot as a possible excuse for opening fire, and it seemed to me to be well-established that riot control planning involved the use of numbers of officers on the ground, not a couple of snipers perched above the fray. Snipers are used to kill people, not control surging masses. It was also inconceivable to me that a riot could have been anticipated late that afternoon when the only activity was to be Dr. King and some of his group leaving the motel to go to dinner at Reverend Samuel “Billy” Kyles’s house. This was before I realized the significance of the eviction of the Invaders from the motel just before the killing. The idea that this armed militant group might react violently to this insulting, unexpected rejection was not unreasonable.
I provided ABC with other documentary evidence of the presence of the team in Memphis and the identity of the team leader. Since I had given my word, it would not be made public at that time, I could not allow the material to be used in the program or even have any reference made to it.
The documentary was aired on June 19, 1997. It included the interview with the team leader, myself, and General Cobb. It did not include the interview with Terrell or the corroborative information he provided to confirm the presence of the team in Memphis and its mission to kill Martin Luther King Jr. The program did, however, consider a number of other issues which pointed to a conspiracy and the involvement of the government.
Soon after the program, Terrell left the country. He told me later that he had been threatened and had no doubt the government had somehow obtained a copy of his interview. He was furious but offered to help me in any way he could.
Steve Tompkins told me that a thick defamation file was on General Cobb at the offices of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith. Steve had seen the file and suggested that I review it. I attempted to locate the file but was not successful, meeting denials that it existed.