Orders to Kill Page 10

  ON OCTOBER 17, 1978, just before we had left Knoxville to interview Ray, Mark Lane had given me a copy of an affidavit issued by Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers and thus revealed to the American public some harsh truths about the war in Vietnam. The affidavit detailed a conversation Ellsberg had had four months earlier with Brady Tyson, then an aide to UN ambassador Andrew Young.

  On June 16, 1978, while at the United Nations to talk with members and staff of the UN-Special Assembly on Disarmament, Ellsberg became quite friendly with Tyson. As they left Tyson’s office one day, the subject of King’s assassination came up.

  In the affidavit Ellsberg stated, “I asked Tyson whether he thought there had been a conspiracy and who he thought might have done it. He said very flatly to me, ‘We know there was a conspiracy and we know who did it.’ … I asked him who it was, if he would feel free to say, and he said again in a way that was very surprising to me in its lack of equivocation or reservation, ‘It was a group of off-duty and retired FBI officers working under the personal direction of J. Edgar Hoover.’ He said further that this was a group working secretly and known to almost no one else in the FBI. This group Tyson said included ‘a sharpshooter,’ who had actually done the shooting.”

  Ellsberg was startled. He pressed Tyson to tell him his source. Reluctantly, Tyson said, “That has turned up in Walter Fauntroy’s [HSCA] investigation and he’s told us.” “Us,” Ellsberg emphasized, included Ambassador Young, another aide, Stoney Cooks, and Tyson himself.

  The affidavit continued: “I got the impression from things he subsequently said that Ambassador Young and his associates had actually gone over a good deal of the evidence directly and had not simply been told this in general terms.” He quoted Tyson as saying, “We are eighty percent sure that we know who they are. We’re eighty percent sure that we know the names of all the people who were involved, and … it’s all circumstantial but very detailed.”

  Tyson said he didn’t know what was going to be done because, “we don’t have courtroom proof of this, of the names.”

  Ellsberg was struck by Tyson’s lack of caution. “Tyson himself did not at any time caution me either to be silent about this or even so much as show discretion by what I did with it … I even inferred to some degree that he might want me to pass it along, using discretion, to people who in my judgment ought to know it. His [Tyson’s] actual position impressed me; his closeness to Young, to King, his concern for the subject, and the fact that he was an official of the U.S. government, the first friendly one I had seen in some seven years. A story that would have been a run-of-the-mill assertion in the mouths of the myriad of conspiracy theorists … had enormous weight coming from him.”

  Tyson left Ellsberg with the impression that they all hoped it would come out in the hearings. Tyson also said that when the HSCA was being formed Fauntroy informed Carl Albert, then Speaker of the House of Representatives, that he wanted to be on a committee to investigate Dr. King’s death or even, if possible, to head the committee. Albert said to him, “Walter, you don’t want that job.” To which Fauntroy replied, “But I do want it; why not?” Albert whispered, “Walter, they will kill you …, the FBI.”

  When the facts revealed to Ellsberg failed to come out in the 1978 summer hearings and the committee began to move in a different direction, Ellsberg decided to make his information known to James Earl Ray’s lawyer; hence the affidavit.

  After the Ray interview I spoke with Ellsberg, who confirmed the statement. Jim Lawson, who had a long-established relationship with Andy Young, Stoney Cooks, and Brady Tyson, agreed to seek confirmation from them. When he telephoned Stoney Cooks about the allegations, Cooks said, “Andy and I had hoped that the House Select Committee would release these matters and open them up.”

  “As I listened to him,” Lawson told me, “I realized that he was confirming Ellsberg’s affidavit. He clearly indicated that there were names not released, information related to the death that the public did not know and that was not consistent with the theory that James Earl Ray was the lone assassin.” Lawson had no doubt that this information had privately been relayed to Andy Young and his staff aides by Walter Fauntroy.

  When Jim Lawson subsequently asked Tyson about Ellsberg’s statements, Tyson replied that he didn’t remember all he had told Ellsberg but that he believed that he was an honest and significant witness. He even suggested that Ellsberg was “unimpeachable.”

  As we reviewed this series of events, Lawson also recalled that many many months earlier Dr. Joseph Lowery, Abernathy’s successor as president of the SCLC, had described to him a discussion with Fauntroy that appeared to confirm the Ellsberg account. At a subsequent meeting in Los Angeles, Lowery repeated the story with both Lawson and Mark Lane present. Later that fall, in a telephone conversation primarily concerned with my upcoming address at SCLC’s national convention, Lowery also confirmed to me that Lawson was telling the truth. He said that he still hoped that the HSCA would eventually uncover all the facts.

  I became convinced that there was enough basic substantiation for the Ellsberg affidavit to warrant submitting it to the HSCA. In retrospect, I suppose we couldn’t have expected the committee to confirm Ellsberg’s allegations, but we were curious as to how they would explain them away. So on the morning of October 27, Abernathy, Reverend Lawson, activist/comedian Dick Gregory, and I, joined Mark Lane for a private session in Walter Fauntroy’s office to present the new information to the committee leadership and senior staff. As we arrived, we saw to our surprise, an assemblage of reporters and photographers standing just outside the doorway of his office suite.

  We were never sure how the media had found out about the meeting. It wouldn’t serve the committee’s purpose to publicize it in any way. It was also contrary to counsel Robert Blakey’s style. He always preferred simply to disclose carefully prepared information. Although he never acknowledged it, we intuited that Mark Lane had tipped off the media. I felt this was unfortunate. The untimely public disclosure of information could close some doors that had partially opened for us.

  We were ushered into Fauntroy’s inner office. Chairman Stokes, Blakey, and two staff members were waiting for us. In his introductory statement Lane tore into the committee, its staff, and its leadership. He accused them of not following up leads and ignoring significant facts, and then he attacked Blakey personally and professionally. Blakey angrily objected and left the meeting, not returning until he was certain that Lane had finished.

  As the Ellsberg revelations were set out for the committee, I noticed Fauntroy squirming in his chair. He denied ever having expressed any of the opinions attributed to him by any of the people mentioned. Fauntroy said he couldn’t understand how Tyson and Cooks, nor surely Andy Young, could ever attribute the statements in question to him. He said that it was his job to investigate every fact and allegation brought before the committee, and that he was determined to do this to the best of his ability. He said that because of his admiration for Dr. King, and all the years they had served together in the struggle for civil rights, he could never participate in anything but a full and complete investigation.

  Lawson was to note later, however, that Fauntroy equivocated considerably in the way he dismissed Ellsberg’s contentions. He would glance sideways at Abernathy, only to look quickly away. He never once looked directly at Jim Lawson.

  Throughout the rest of the meeting, the staff and chairman insisted that there was nothing worth considering in the Ellsberg allegations. They tried to put our group on the defensive by asserting that our promise of new information was a ruse to call the press. However, there was no effort to discredit Ellsberg’s version of Tyson’s remarks, nor was there any attempt to refute Jim Lawson’s corroboration. Instead we simply met a stone wall.

  After the meeting, an argument erupted between Blakey and Lane. I stepped between them as Blakey was telling Lane that if he kept it up there was no question that he’d be taken care of once and for all. I wa
s shocked.

  We left Fauntroy’s offices and were met by a barrage of photographers and television journalists. Lane and Abernathy made brief statements. Abernathy, in his offhand manner, informed them that, yes, we had had a very productive meeting with the staff and leadership of the committee; we hoped that they would go on and complete their work; and we had given them certain information implicating the FBI in the killing of Dr. King. I was amazed that none of the press picked this up: there was virtually no response.

  The next morning, I left a copy of the Ellsberg affidavit at former Attorney General Ramsey Clark’s law office. Ramsey agreed to have a word with Brady Tyson. After he spoke to Tyson, it was evident that something had changed. He told me that Tyson hadn’t repudiated Ellsberg’s comments but indicated that he didn’t recall saying the specific things alleged. I would learn more about this Fauntroy-Tyson story later.

  FROM NEW YORK I went to Memphis to study the scene of the crime and talk with some of the people who were close to the tragic events.

  There was no doubt that Dr. King was standing on the second-story balcony in front of room 306 when he was shot. Mark Lane was skeptical about the MPD and the FBI official conclusion that the shot had been fired from the bathroom window on the second floor of the rooming house. Author/investigator Harold Weisberg also disputed this finding, saying that the shot most likely came from the area of the parking lot that bordered the fire station on one side and the rear yard of the rooming house on the other (see Chart 1).

  At the time of the shooting, a row of brush trees, a larger tree, and apparently other bushes provided a type of screen between the rooming house, the parking lot and the motel on the other side of the street. This backyard area sloped upward about five or six feet from an eight-foot retaining wall on Mulberry Street, and was actually higher than the balcony on which Dr. King was standing at the time he was shot, though this fact appeared to have been largely overlooked.

  I thought that an analysis of the trajectory of the shot might help, but at that time I couldn’t carry this out. There was also the problem of Dr. King’s posture at the time he was hit. Just prior to the shot he was observed to be leaning slightly on the rail, but there was disagreement as to whether he had actually straightened up before being hit.

  THE STATE’S CHIEF WITNESS in 1968 was Charlie Stephens. He and his common-law wife, Grace Walden, were both in their room (6-B, which adjoined the bathroom) at the time of the shooting. Stephens had provided the affidavit used for extradition, which had tentatively identified Ray’s profile as being that of a man he saw going down the front stairs after the shooting. When I talked with Walden, she said Charlie didn’t see anyone or anything. However, she said that when she was lying in bed around the time of the shot she herself saw a small man with “salt and pepper” hair wearing an open army jacket and a plaid sports shirt hurrying down the rear stairway leading to the back door. The description didn’t fit Ray in any way. Her story would vary significantly from time to time over the years (on one occasion she described the man as being black) except regarding one fact—that Charlie Stephens didn’t see anything.

  Wayne Chastain agreed. As a reporter for the Memphis Press Scimitar, Chastain had been one of the first people on the scene on April 4. He told me that minutes after the shooting he saw an excited Solomon Jones, who said the shot came from the bushes “over there,” pointing across Mulberry Street to the thick brush behind the rooming house. “Catch me later at the hospital,” Solomon said.

  Chastain then went around the front of the building and had a brief word with Judson “Bud” Ghormley, the deputy sheriff who was in charge of TACT 10, the emergency unit on break at the fire station when the shooting happened, and who apparently found the bundle in front of Canipe’s. He then entered the rooming house from the front and climbed to the second floor and went to the rear to try to get a view of the brush area below.

  When he stuck his head in the door of room 6-B, he saw Walden lying on a sofa off to the right and asked her if he could look out of her rear window. She asked what the commotion was all about, and he told her that Dr. King had been shot. She said, “Oh, that was what I heard, I thought it was a firecracker.” She took him into the kitchen area of the rundown suite, where the rear windows overlooked the Lorraine and the brush below. As he entered this part of the room he saw Charlie Stephens sitting at the kitchen table fiddling with a radio. He said Charlie may have mumbled a word or two but basically he and Charlie—who appeared to be in a stupor—didn’t speak.

  When he looked out the window Chastain could see the Lorraine balcony, but the combination of brush and trees below was so thick that he didn’t have a clear view of the motel parking area or driveway. As he turned to leave he noticed that Charlie had passed out with his head on the table.

  After leaving the rooming house that evening Chastain went to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where they had taken Dr. King. There, along with a battery of media people, he listened to Solomon Jones describe what he had seen. Jones maintained that he was standing by the car, having just told Dr. King that he would need a coat that evening, when the shot came. Jones ducked down and turned to look in the direction of the sound, and he saw a man in the bushes with a white sheet or hood over or around his face. Jones said at that time that this man rose up from the bushes, appeared to throw something to the side, walked to the wall, jumped down, and began to mingle with the crowd. He was wearing a jacket and plaid shirt and came within about twenty-five feet of Jones, who was shocked and frightened. As the man began to walk away, Jones got into his car and tried to follow him but was frustrated by the growing crowd of people and cars. In a short time the ambulance arrived.

  Chastain returned to the rooming house the next morning between 7:30 and 8:00 to see Bessie Brewer, the manager. She said that the FBI told her not to talk to anyone. Chastain was approached by an old “codger” he knew only as Major, who was drunk even at that hour, but he asked Chastain to come back to his room. He told Chastain that he saw who had done it. He said, “It was a nigger,” but that he would never testify against him. His room was in the southern section of the rooming house where the Brewers also lived and where the office was located. Stephens and Walden lived on the other side; a four-foot alleyway separated the two sections. Chastain didn’t take Major very seriously because his window looked out into the alley (although it also allowed one to look directly into room 5-B on the other side—the room rented by Ray).

  Around 11:00 a.m. Chastain’s editor sent him back to the rooming house to interview Charlie Stephens. Charlie had sobered up, and as they were talking the Major came up to them and told Charlie that he had told Chastain it was a nigger who did it. “Yeah, it was a nigger,” Charlie agreed. Chastain gave no credence to either man. Bessie Brewer said that they were both drunk and didn’t see anything.

  Some time later, Loyd Jowers, the owner of Jim’s Grill, told Chastain that he had refused to serve Stephens in the grill after 4:00 on the day of the killing because he was too drunk. He did, however, sell him two quarts of beer to take upstairs to his room.

  The day after the shooting, Grace Walden told Chastain the same story she told me ten years later about the small man with the salt-and-pepper hair whom she saw, from her bed, going down the back stairs. It was not clear to Chastain, however, that she could have seen anything from where her bed was located.

  Chastain was astounded when in the following months Stephens emerged as the state’s main witness against James Earl Ray. In light of Stephens’s condition, which must have been apparent to any police investigation, he couldn’t have testified to anything. Assistant District Attorney James Beasley’s representation at the guilty plea hearing of what Charlie Stephens would have testified, had there been a trial, made no sense to Chastain. Beasley had told this to the court:

  In the meantime, back upstairs at 422 ½ South Main, Charles Quitman Stephens, who occupied these two rooms adjacent to a bathroom here [indicating], Mr. Stephens, who earlier in the
afternoon had observed Mrs. Brewer as she talked to the Defendant … heard movements over in the apartment 5-B rented to the Defendant…. At approximately 6:00 p.m., Mr. Stephens heard the shot coming apparently through this wall from the bathroom [indicating]. He then got up, went through this room out into the corridor in time to see the left profile of the Defendant as he turned down this passageway….

  I would learn that Charlie Stephens was placed under close control by the MPD right after the murder; apparently he hoped to receive the reward being offered by the Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper and the city of Memphis. After Ray was brought back to the United States, Stephens was held in protective custody by the MPD, and Grace Walden was placed in a mental hospital. Bessie Brewer was removed as manager of the rooming house and left the scene. The rooming house itself was put under lock and key.

  Chastain also referred me to an interview of Stephens conducted by CBS correspondent Bill Stout shortly after the killing, which, curiously enough, didn’t air until 1976. Stout showed Stephens a picture of James Earl Ray that the authorities were circulating:

  BILL STOUT: Mr. Stephens, what do you think of that picture? Does that look like the man?

  CHARLES STEPHENS: Well—[clears throat]—Excuse me—from the glimpse that I—that I got of his profile, it doesn’t.

  STOUT: It doesn’t?