The Assassination of Martin Luther King:

The ADL, Minutemen and Al Gore, Sr.

A name that pops up frequently in connection with a possible conspiracy to kill Rev. King in Memphis is that of Jules Ricco Kimble. He is said to have flown James Earl Ray to Canada and to have helped train him to kill King. These allegations have a certain level of credibility, as they help explain how Ray lived for five months after escaping the penitentiary, when no other records record any employment by Ray. (Sergeant and Edgington 6-8).

Kimble's ties to the Minutemen (Garrison 136) are interesting, in that the Minutemen are an organization I investigated in the mid-eighties in connection with research for my book The Great Old Record of the Grand Old Party. It seems clear to me now, based on that research, that the Minutemen were responsible for part of the rash of bombings then blamed on Lenin's bolsheviki. The Minutemen were trying to create the climate of fear and panic that would result in the unfair trials of a number of Southern and Eastern European immigrants going into and immediately after World War I.

The Minutemen and their various white racist colleagues have long had uncomfortable ties to the Democratic Party, as well. For example, Woodrow Wilson's Attorney General was closely associated with a very cooperative attitude toward the Minutemen, and this is, my research suggests (see my Great Old Record of the Grand Old Party; one source for that is Frank J. Donner's The Age of Surveillance) partly the result of financial contributions from the Minutemen and other white racists to the political campaigns of several Democrats, especially in the South.

Wilson's Attorney General allowed the Minutemen to "help" with "raids" that supposedly rounded up "draft dodgers" during World War I. The latter always had a disproportionately large number of Southern and Eastern European recent immigrants as their targets and prey. (Donner 33-59; 519-25).

Of course, in more recent decades, the Democratic Party was able to distance itself from southern racist funding, though not completely. The campaigns of Lyndon Johnson in Texas in 1948, of the Dixiecrats of the same year, of George Wallace in the '60s, and even of the various southern Senatorial candidate of the '70s--even during the Watergate era--reveal backing by white racists. Even reformer Jimmy Carter admitted in his poetry that he had an early obligation to white racists and their political machines in Georgia in getting his political career underway. (Carter, Always A Reckoning And Other Poems).

The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) was to find an uncomfortable level of white racist and organized crime implicated in the assassination of Martin Luther King in Memphis by 1979. Later investigations in Arkansas in the early-to-mid-1980s by then-Attorney General revealed that some Democratic Party organizations in northern Arkansas seemed to have had obligations to white racist groups, including the "Sword and the Arm of the Lord." Those investigations suggested some Democratic Party organizers in that area may have had uncomfortably close ties to that organization.

Other conspiratorial overtones of the King assassination include the finding that the Anti-Defamation League, ostensibly a Jewish "civil rights" organization, had, in fact, surveilled the NAACP (Piper 250). On top of this, it was also learned the ADL had intensively surveilled Dr. Martin Luther King, going into his assassination. It had then given its findings to the FBI. (Piper 193). Solidly investigated articles that appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Examiner in 1993 revealed the ADL in fact engaged in surveillance, not just of anti-Semites, but of persons with moderate views on a number of issues, including civil rights. (Piper 193, 250).

An interesting link between some members of the ADL and Jewish mobster Meyer Lansky may best help explain such activities, including the activities against Rev. King. A further uncomfortable link to organized crime is the finding that apparent mafioso Frank Liberto of Memphis and his (apparently) mobster brother in New Orleans are strongly linked to the possible King assassination conspiracy. (Frontline website; Sergeant and Edginton 7; Schem 315-18).

Articles in Intellectual Digest in 1971, as well as brief news reports of eyewitness testimony pertaining to the King assassination published in Newsweek in 1970-73, strongly suggest the complicity of some Memphis Police Department individuals in the King assassination and strongly suggest major Southern Democratic politicians were implicated. Among the names then being bandied about was Albert Gore, sr., Senator from Tennessee and father of the current Democratic Party Presidential candidate. (See also Sergeant and Edgington, 6-7).

Additionally, according to former Louisville, Kentucky police officer Clifton Baird, FBI agents as well as Louisville police were planning an assassination of King as early as September of 1965. When King was finally killed in 1968, former FBI agent Arthur Murtaugh said a colleague of his in Atlanta leapt up and shouted "Goddamn, we got him! We finally got him!" (Sergeant and Edgington 7). HSCA found that powerful evidence suggested standing "bounties" on King's head for amounts up to half a milliion dollars sponsored by combinations of "businessmen" (that is, mafiosi with legitimate businesses as fronts), white racists, and fanatical anti-Communists in St. Louis, Memphis, New Orleans and Atlanta. (Sergeant and Edgington 5-8).

Reporter Bill Sartor set out to investigate the possible conspiracy and was completing a book, never published, on the subject, in Texas. He had found all of the above leads, and apparently more. Sartor died in Texas as he was completing its first draft. Two autopsies failed to reveal the cause of death. (Sergeant and Edgington 7; Frontline website).

It was also determined that Ray had numerous underworld contacts. But most impressive has been the finding that a group composed of individuals who are members of

ADL,

Minutemen/Arm of the Lord,

organized crime, including Meyer Lansky

Memphis Police Department/FBI

is very strongly suspected of being the culprits in the crime. That same group of individuals has, at one time or another, had powerful influence with the Democratic Party, at both the national and local levels. That influence includes financial contributions and organizing efforts, especially in the South and in Chicago.

Meyer Lansky and ADL members could be overlapping; similarly, Minutemen/Arm of the Lord members ands Memphis Police Department could also overlap (indeed, in 1918-20 under Democratic President Woodrow Wilson's Attorney General, co-membership in the FBI and the Minutemen was not unthinkable, as perhaps it would be today). (Donner 33-59).Mobsters Sam and Chuck Giancanna also assert that the Mob helped J. Edgar Hoover surveil and "deal with" King. (256).

If these leads are valid, the suggestion is thus powerful that Democrats, especially southern Democrats, were implicated in these activities. This is especially intriguing given that this occurred during the administration of Lyndon Johnson, widely suspected of being culpable in the JFK assassination, and clearly implicated in the murder of Sam Smithwick, a deputy sheriff in Texas. In 1952, Smithwick wrote a letter to Johnson's 1948 Senate primary opponent in Texas, Coke Stevenson, confessing his illegal actions for LBJ. (Caro 384-6).

Smithwick had been arrested and jailed for committing a murder at the behest of Johnson's political crony and "enforcer" Luis Salaz (who himself in 1979 wrote a memoir admitting his own complicity in the 1948 Johnson cheating). Before Stevenson could arrange to visit Smithwick in person--within 24 hours of the letter, in fact--Smithwick was found dead in his cell. (Caro 384-95). Few seriously believe the "official" explanation propounded by jailer Salaz's cronies that Smithwick "committed suicide." Johnson was in close communication with Salaz during this time, so his complicity in the murder is powerfully suggested. That, in turn, suggests a mentality on Johnson's part tolerant of murder--the same kind of murder that "took out" JFK.

One of the leading theories on LBJ's motive in the killing was, of course, that the "military-industrial complex" wanted to escalate the war in Vietnam instead of having US forces pull out by 1965, as various sources assert JFK was planning to do. The son of Arkansas police officer Roscoe White alleges his father was part of a conspiracy to kill JFK. (Arkansas Gazette ). White was mostly associated with northern Arkansas, stomping grounds of the Arm of the Lord white racist group--a group also said to have been popular with some small town Arkansas policemen.

But whether or not there was a JFK conspiracy, or who was involved in it, the suggestion is still powerful that one of Al Gore, jr's motives in seeking higher office may be to protect his family name and ensure his father's possible financial culpability in the King assassination isn't revealed. His father was at the time in Johnson's "hawk" circles--circles highly hostile to King, if not the Kennedys. Like Bush family political participation, some of the Gore family's motive would appear to be a possible cover-up to protect the family name--and avoid possible prosecutions or investigations.

--Max Standridge

Works Cited:

Arkansas Gazette. August 7, 1989. (Repr. from Chicago Tribune). "Son says father, as a policeman in Dallas, killed John F. Kennedy." See article and accompanying photo captioned: "Ricky White, 29. . . says his late father was one of three men who fired the fatal shots 26 years ago. . . ." (I have a handwritten note that this article appeared on August 7, 1990. The August 7 date is accurate, but the year is thus either '89 or '90, most likely '89.)

Caro, Robert A. Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson. New York: Knopf, 1990.

Carter, Jimmy. Always A Reckoning and Other Poems. New York: Random, 1995. The title poem is especially revealing in this regard.

Donner, Frank J. The Age of Surveillance. NY: Knopf, 1980. A. Mitchell Palmer, Wilson's Attorney General, made numerous alliances with the Minutemen. 33-59; 519-525.

Giancanna, Sam and Chuck. Double Cross. NY: Time-Warner, 1992.

Garrison, Jim. On the Trail of the Assassins. NY: Time-Warner, 1988, 1991.

Intellectual Digest, 1971. For detailed discussions, one would have to look elsewhere, but one will find, in the early editions (1971: the "small" version) mention of the complicity of "southern businessmen and politicians" in the King assassination. Other discussion in the Digest, (and elswhere, including late-night talk shows such as Charlie Rose) then and in more recent years, has brought up the possibility that some southern "liberals" were the product, not of conviction, but of blackmail, for such activities as being caught at white supremacist meetings. This point was brought up at least once, in part, in answer to claims in David Sarasohn's The Party of Reform: Democrats in the Progressive Era (Jackson, MS: UP, 1989), that Democrats were always "sincere" reformers.

Ostrovsky, Victor, and Claire Hoy. By Way of Deception. NY: St.Martin's, 1990. Especially interesting is the note that Mossad closely studied the JFK assassination and came rapidly to the conclusion that a strong possibility existed that Oswald fired only two of the three shots. 141-3.

Newsweek for 1970-3, contains numerous references to allegations of complicity of Southern pols in MLK killing; includes several Senators' and Congressmen's names. Also among the names bandied about for the 1968 period was Albert Gore, sr., as one of LBJ's "liberal allies in the South." If there is anything to the movie JFK's allegations, in which Al Gore, jr.'s former roommate, actor Tommy Lee Jones appears as Clay Shaw/Bertrand, Gore, sr., could be clearly implicated. But above all, Gore, sr., is implicated in the MLK conspiracy--possibly, in Garrison/Kostner's phrase "as an accessory after the fact."

Piper, Michael Collins. Final Judgment. Washington, DC: Wolfe, 1993.(Usage of his book as a source doesn't mean one "buys" his contradictory allegations/conclusions.)

Scheim, David E. Contract on America: The Mafia Murder of President Kennedy. NY: Shapolsky, 1988. Zebra 1989. (Similar to my statement on Piper.)

Sergeant, John and John Edgington. "Gaze of An Assassin? New Evidence Points To Conspiracy In Assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King". Spectrum, January 17-30, 1990. 1, 5-8. The (British) authors are co-producers of a film on the subject for BBC which was never aired widely in the US, despite strong efforts by persons at PBS.

See also: the Frontline website: www.consortiumnews.com

--which lists articles on the MLK assassination conspiracy. As a general rule, Frontline is understood to not investigate something unless there is "something to it."--mcs.

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