CITIZINE REVIEWS
The CIA Makes Science
Fiction Unexciting #1
“The Assassination of
Martin Luther King Jr.”
by Abner Smith
(Microcosm Publshing)

Review by Thom White

Election year, Spring, 1968. The scene is set.

The Lorraine Motel stands across the street from Brewer’s Boarding House in Memphis, Tenn. In this motel is staying the itinerant Martin Luther King Jr. In early evening, one rifle shot is fired. The bullet enters King’s head, his companions come to the rescue. King is rushed by ambulance to a hospital, but declared dead. So who killed King?

One James Earl Ray pleads guilty to King’s murder. But according to Abner Smith, author of The CIA Makes Science Fiction Unexciting #1, it is unlikely Ray could have been the true assassin, and in fact, we still don’t know who killed MLK.

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The author first makes it clear that he wants to “portray the facts as they are known in an objective manner” and urges the reader to “draw your own conclusions and do your own homework.”

Smith emphasizes that examining the strange circumstances of King’s death is made difficult by the destruction of some evidence and by ‘classification’ of many relevant FBI documents. U.S. government decisions to effectively withhold information from Americans for some fifty years has created the primary “cloud of mystery” that hangs over the assassination.

And so, this treatise concentrates on known involvement by the FBI and CIA in the murder of King and the subsequent investigation / cover-up which nominated one James Earl Ray as the sharp-shooting assassin.

Martin Luther King Jr. and the FBI

With the approval of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the FBI had for years maintained surveillance (via wiretaps and paid informants) on the nationally-known desegregationist leader, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. (legal name Michael King, Jr, b. Jan. 1929). FBI agents had even code-named him snearingly “the fake messiah.”

Cartha DeLoach, head of COINTELPRO (the government’s “counterintelligence programs” run through the FBI), spoke of “removing the fake messiah” when King did not return the calls of FBI agents in early 1968. King was now voicing opposition the U.S military's presence in Vietnam, and was planning a great "March on Washington" and with his known ties to Communist Party USA members,

According to Abner Smith's zine, at a March 28 visit by King to Memphis, days before his assassination, FBI agents and undercover police posed as a militant group “The Invaders” and converted King’s appearance to support striking workers into a riot. Despite the bad publicity, King returned a week later to Memphis on April 4th, and was to speak in support of a janitors' strike.

April 4, 1968.

King had stayed at the new Holiday Inn on his previous visit to Memphis, but had taken flak from the press for staying in such an "establishment" location in the white part of town, while his supporters were out rioting. On this trip, he therefore stayed at the low-key Lorraine Motel.

A bit before 6:00 pm, Rev. King emerged on the balcony of the motel to greet well-wishers standing below. At 6:01 pm, “a single shot from a high-powered rifle tore into the right side of King’s face, forcing him backward.” King was soon unconscious and pronounced dead at 7:05 pm at St. Joseph’s Hospital.

Forty-year-old James Earl Ray was later arrested in London, extradited to the U.S., and tagged as King’s murderer. After the arrest, the FBI pushed Ray’s story as the “lone nut assassin.” Life magazine published a cover story on Ray a month after the murder “containing a considerable [number] of lies about his childhood and family.”

The official story was that Ray fired the fatal shot from a bathroom window at Brewer’s Boarding House (because he was a crazy racist convicted criminal who hated "what Martin Luther King stood for," and had had a bad childhood). He then fled the scene in a white Mustang, but hurriedly dropped an important bundle that contained a 30.06 Remington rifle with Ray's fingerprints on it, boxed in its original packaging (this the FBI claimed was the murder weapon), ammunition, and a portable prison radio (with Ray’s prisoner ID number on it).

After his capture in 1968, James Earl Ray plead guilty (because of an agreement between his attorney and the prosecution), but immediately recanted, claiming innocence to the charge of firing the shot that killed King. Ray claimed that a mysterious character, “Raoul” had set him up as a "patsy" to the assassination, and may have been the one who dropped the incriminating bundle with the hunting rifle and radio identifying Ray.

James Earl Ray had escaped from prison in 1967 and soon befriended “Raoul,” who gave the prison-breaker false identification papers and cash payments in exchange for Ray’s services. After going to Canada for a stay, Ray began travelling the U.S. under false names, buying and delivering firearms in illegal schemes devised by Raoul.

According Ray’s story, while in Birmingham, Ala., at the beginning on April, Raoul told him to purchase a white Mustang and a Remington 30.06 Gamemaster rifle, and to bring the rifle to Memphis “to show to potential clients.” Ray arrived in Memphis on April 3, but stayed at a hotel in another part of town. On April 4, upon Raoul’s urging, Ray moved to Brewer’s Boarding House (which happened to be across the street from the Lorraine Motel where King Jr. was staying).

At about 5:00 pm, Raoul told Ray he should “go to a movie” while Raoul met privately with clients. According to the pamphlet, “Ray didn’t know what do to and eventually went to fix the spare tire he had discovered was flat.”

Ray’s side of the story, quoting at length from the Abner Smith's zine:

On his way back to Brewer’s, he found the area full of policemen so he immediately fled the city being a wanted criminal on illegal business. While he was driving, he heard on the radio that King had been shot and that police were looking for a white man in a white Mustang. He realized how much this description sounded like [himself] and headed for Atlanta where he had left some belongings on his last visit. He abandoned the car in an Atlanta parking lot and took a bus to Detroit. From there he took a train to Toronto hoping that he’d find a way to leave North America for good.

He researched papers in the Toronto area and applied for a passport under the name Ramon George Sneyd. On May 6, 1968, Ray flew to London. He attempted to join a renegade army unit that would send him to Nigeria. As he boarded a plane to Brussels, he was arrested as an international suspect in the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. and was extradited to the US for conspiracy charges.

Where's Raoul?

The official U.S. commission investigating King’s murder found Ray’s “Raoul” character did not exist. But the author of this text sees the potential that Raoul may have been Jules Ron “Rollie” Kimble. Kimble told reporters in a 1989 BBC interview that “he knew Ray and had been involved in the conspiracy to kill King,” and added that he had already told this to the FBI investigating committee. He continued saying that Ray “did not pull the trigger and was only a patsy.” Kimble is serving a life sentence in Oklahoma for two murders he says were "political."

“Kimble was ... in New Orleans at the same time that Ray claimed to have received another payment from [Raoul].” Kimble says he helped get Ray from Atlanta to Montreal in 1967 to meet with a “CIA identities specialist,” curiously named Raoul Maora. During the year after first meeting “Raoul,” while traveling around, Ray would use four aliases (notably Eric S. Galt), all names of Toronto residents.

Smith argues that King’s assassin likely lay behind bushes across the street from the Lorraine Motel to make the shot. Later, a Memphis reporter “discovered that there was not a clear view from the bathroom window where the shot supposedly originated to the balcony of the Lorraine. In fact, it was completely obscured by branches from 10-12 foot oak and willow trees in the courtyard... Just as the revelation was being discovered, the city made a decision to cut down the trees. No further investigation of this aspect of the case has been pursued.”

In sum, Abner Smith's zine is worth checking out.

More links:

An Investigation of the Assassination of
Martin Luther King Jr.
http://www.carpenoctem.tv/cons/mlk.html
-- Carpe Noctem (Mark & Kristi Fisher)

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