Also check out http://www.parascope.com/mx/luther1.htm



There are numerous
links between the FBI
and the assassination
of Martin Luther King.


6: The FBI and the
Death of MLK

The FBI had targeted King for surveillance, harassment and sabotage just as they had done to Malcolm X and countless other black activists during the civil rights struggle.

Most of this spying and subterfuge was carried out under COINTELPRO, the FBI's Counterintelligence Program. Legendary FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, America's least attractive drag queen, once described King as "the most dangerous man in America, and a moral degenerate."

A few months before the assassination, Hoover distributed an internal memo at the FBI calling for King's "removal from the national scene." In April, Hoover approved the plan which led to King's switch to the Motel Lorraine.

One documented COINTELPRO caper involved surveillance of King's alleged "sexual escapades." The tapes of these supposed escapades were later used in an attempt to blackmail King into committing suicide. Your tax dollars at work.

Cartha Deloach, the man in charge of the FBI's surveillance and harassment of King, was also put in charge of the investigation which indicted James Earl Ray and concluded that he acted as a lone nut.

The Memphis city official who ordered the relocation of the two black firemen and black police officer Edward Redditt on the day of the assassination was an ex-FBI agent and former associate of Hoover.

Frank Holloman, the Memphis Public Safety Director who had military guests on the afternoon of April 4, was a retired 25-year veteran of the FBI, who worked as head of the Memphis field office from 1959 to 1964. He had also served as J. Edgar Hoover's appointments secretary and was in charge of personnel in Hoover's office.

After the assassination, using taxpayer money, the FBI footed $30,000 in bar tabs for Charles Stephens. (Them's 1968 dollars, too.) Floating in a sea of booze, Stephens changed his original descriptions of the assassin from an anonymous black man to James Earl Ray.

Was the FBI directly involved in King's assassination? They certainly dedicated a lot of manpower towards surveilling and harassing the man. Entire books have been written about the FBI's obsession with King.

It is quite likely that the FBI was involved with the cover-up -- and possibly the execution -- of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. Suffice it to say that in 1978, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that there was a 95% probability that King was killed by a conspiracy. However, the House Select Committee also concluded that "James Ray fired one shot at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; the shot killed King."

After the House Select Committee released its Final Report in 1979, Committee Chairman Louis Stokes (D-Ohio) and Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey ordered that all of the committee's backup records, documents, unpublished transcripts, and investigative data be locked up for fifty years -- only to be released long after the witnesses and assassins are all dead.

In light of the masses of information which have developed regarding the King assassination, the "official" story just doesn't hold together. But exactly who pulled the trigger on the man who dreamed that one day his children would live in a nation where they would be judged by the content of their character, and not the color of their skin?

We may never know the answer to that question. And we can thank the FBI, at least in part, for that.

For more information on the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., see the bibliography included with this report.

(c) 1996 ParaScope, Inc.