Orders to Kill Page 15

  This extraordinary statement, if true, meant that Ray was well and truly set up. Hanes told me that Canipe would have been a highly important witness for the defense.

  Hanes went on to tell me that when he had worked for the FBI, he had taken training in ballistics evidence. He said that he had examined the slug removed from Dr. King and that “there was certainly enough rifling left on the bullet to link it with a particular gun if the gun could have been found.”

  Under oath, in his attempt to set aside the guilty plea in Ray’s 1974 habeas corpus proceeding, Hanes testified that there was no question “that was a perfect evidence slug. If it had matched the rifle that was found in Canipe’s amusement shop, the FBI testimony—and of course we have seen dozens of times—the FBI testimony would have been in my judgment, that the gun, to the exclusion of all others, fired this shot. What the testimony was going to boil down to was that this was a 30.06 rifle, and this was a 30.06 slug, and we were prepared to prove how many other 30.06’s there were in the United States at the time, and in Memphis at the time, and in effect, completely investigate the firearms business.”

  Ray, of course, didn’t go to trial on November 12, 1968, but instead two days earlier dismissed Arthur Hanes and retained Percy Foreman. To this day, Ray maintains that that was a mistake.

  IN THE SUMMER OF 1979, Anna Ray insisted that I visit Knoxville lawyer Gene Stanley, a former assistant U.S. attorney for eastern Tennessee, who she learned had been attorney for Randy Rosenson, the man whose name was written on the government (L.E.A.A.) business card Ray had found. The L.E.A.A. stood for the Law Enforcement Administration, which at the time was sponsoring a number of pilot projects in selected cities. Anna had been tipped off by the manager of the Andrew Johnson Hotel in Knoxville. The manager had been approached by the HSCA, which was looking for Rosenson, who had previously stayed there while recovering from a car accident. The manager also told her that Stanley had previously represented Rosenson. Ray had always believed that there must be some connection between Raul and Rosenson, and in his search over the years for Raul, he tried unsuccessfully on several occasions to locate Rosenson, even having his brother Jerry and a Tennessee lawyer go to New Orleans to pursue leads.

  In July 1979, Anna, Mark Lane, and I met with Stanley in his Knoxville offices. Stanley appeared nervous, although he had voluntarily agreed to see us. He had represented Rosenson when the latter was involved in a car accident in 1977, and later on a drug charge. He next heard from Rosenson in October 1977, when he was arrested and detained in Richmond, Virginia, on an Ohio warrant connected to a drug charge filed in the congressional district of the HSCA chairman, Louis Stokes.

  At that time, Stanley said, HSCA attorney Robert Lehner and staff investigators flew to Richmond to interview Rosenson. Stanley represented him during the interrogation and during a further two days of questioning by HSCA investigators in Atlanta. Stanley told us that Rosenson was connected to organized crime and had formed his associations in Miami and New Orleans as a result of drug use. He was employed in smuggling drugs and, while ostensibly in the import-export business, brought in a variety of wild animals to sell. He owned a pet shop and was involved in other types of contraband smuggling. When Rosenson was questioned about specific organized crime figures, he indicated that he knew them well.

  The HSCA continued its interrogation in Atlanta on October 26. According to Stanley, this time Lehner wasn’t present and Chief Investigator Edward Evans and two other staff investigators conducted the extensive interrogation. Stanley maintained that the main line of questioning focused on Raul. He said he came away from the sessions with no doubt that the HSCA knew that there was a Raul, knew his identity, and believed that his operation was identical to the one Ray described.

  In informal conversations, the investigators told Stanley they had traced the man whom Ray referred to as Raul to Monterey, Mexico, claiming that he used the alias of “Raul de (or da) Gasso”. They said that he smuggled contraband, particularly heroin, along a Mexico-Montreal-New Orleans triangle. Rosenson was able, said Stanley, to corroborate names, dates, and places of his contacts with this person, even to the point of identifying him from a portfolio of photographs the investigators showed him, although he didn’t know him by the name they used.

  Stanley said he was mystified and greatly disappointed when the HSCA reported that, although it had found evidence that Randy Rosenson was in many of the same cities as James Earl Ray, it found no evidence that his former client had contact with Raul. He was disturbed that the committee even explicitly quoted Rosenson as saying that he knew nothing about “a Raul.”

  I was excited about the confirmation of Raul’s existence, but Anna Ray was upset. She said that Stanley had previously told her that the HSCA investigators had told him they believed Raul had been killed in a car accident in Mexico in or around 1972.

  DURING THIS TIME I acquired what might have been a hot tip or a piece of disinformation: a photocopy of a photograph of a building. I tried unsuccessfully to locate the source of this photocopy. In the top margin there was a handwritten note indicating that the building, which was within blocks of the scene of the crime, was owned by a relative of an organized crime figure and was where the rifle purchased by Ray was stored until April 4, 1968.

  IN THE DEFENSE FILE I came across the statements of two witnesses who seemed to provide Ray with an alibi and was astounded that no mention had ever been made of them. These statements were made by Ray Alvis Hendrix, a member of the Corps of Engineers working on a barge on the river; and William Zenie Reed, a photographic supplies salesman. The two men had been drinking together in Jim’s Grill on the afternoon of April 4. Hendrix and Reed were staying at the nearby Clark’s Hotel on Second Avenue. They left the bar sometime between 5:30 and 5:45. Hendrix realized that he left his jacket in the bar and went back in to retrieve it. Meanwhile, Reed, waiting outside, examined a Mustang parked in front of Jim’s Grill. Since he was considering buying a car and was interested in the model, he gave it a fairly close look. When Hendrix emerged, the two men walked north on South Main, reaching Vance Avenue a couple of blocks away. They were about to cross the street when a white Mustang, also going north on South Main, caught up with them and made a right turn on to Vance. If they hadn’t stopped, they could have been struck, though the car wasn’t moving very fast. Reed observed that it was being driven by a young dark-haired man. Just a short time later, after they had reached their hotel, they heard sirens. Reed stated that while he couldn’t be certain, the car turning on to Vance seemed to be the same car that he had been inspecting. Hendrix recalled that Reed had commented to that effect.

  The statements of Reed and Hendrix appear to corroborate Ray’s story that he parked his Mustang in front of the grill and that he drove it away prior to the shooting to see about having a tire repaired.

  IN THE AUTUMN OF 1979, I was able to meet with the Louisville, Kentucky, police officer, Clifton Baird, whose story I had come across in the HSCA report. His allegations were so credible that their dismissal by the HSCA was on its face incomprehensible. Everyone who had worked with Baird or had known him agreed that he was an honest, diligent cop who played strictly by the rules. The HSCA agreed.

  On September 18, 1965, Louisville police officer Arlie Blair accepted Baird’s offer to drive him home at the end of the 3–11 p.m. shift. As they had done on previous occasions, the two rode to Blair’s house, parked for a while in the driveway around midnight, and talked. Arlie Blair was unaware that, on some of these occasions, Baird had taped their conversations with a recorder that he placed in a rear speaker with the microphone under his seat. Baird had come to distrust Arlie. Fearful of any kind of setup, for some time he had regarded his growing collection of tapes as a kind of insurance.

  Blair said he belonged to an organization that wanted Martin Luther King dead and was willing to pay $500,000 to accomplish this. He wanted to know whether Baird would participate in such a conspiracy. Baird told him he wanted no part o
f it and advised his fellow patrolman to stay away from such activity. At the time he was approached, Baird was himself under intense investigation by the FBI and police officials in his home town of Owensboro, Kentucky, in connection with the operation of a “dynamite ring” in western Kentucky. Consequently, he believed that the FBI and certain fellow police officials might have been preparing to compel him to take part in the King assassination plot by holding the investigation over him. He was also concerned that they might be trying to set him up. The investigation of Baird was completed long before the HSCA was formed, having concluded that he had no involvement whatsoever in the “bombing conspiracy.” Sources close to the committee were quoted in a Scripps-Howard syndicated article published on March 28, 1977, as saying that Baird’s claims of attempted blackmail “would explain why a veteran but low ranking policeman would have been approached by the alleged King conspirators.”

  At afternoon roll call the day after he recorded Blair’s offer, he saw Blair talking to a group of men, some of whom he recognized as Louisville police officers and others as FBI agents who, over a period of some sixteen years or more, had developed a close relationship with members of the force. He identified the FBI agents he knew as special agents William Duncan (the FBI liaison with the Louisville Police Department) and Robert Peters. The HSCA has also reported that the Louisville special agent in charge, Bernard Brown, was present. Baird told me that was possible because he didn’t know Brown; there were other “men in suits” he didn’t recognize. As he watched, one of the agents was introduced to Blair, and the entire group went into a room and closed the door. Listening in from outside the room, Baird heard the offer discussed in heated tones. He also heard himself referred to as a “nigger lover.”

  Determined to get more information, Baird drove Arlie home the next evening, September 20, 1965. Once again, he tape recorded Blair’s account and the reference to the $500,000. The tape that was made on September 18 has somehow disappeared, so the recording of September 20 is the only account in existence. Baird told me that he kept a copy and provided the original to the HSCA.

  He testified before the HSCA in executive session on November 30, 1977. Special agent Duncan admitted that the discussion took place but maintained that it was a joke inspired by Louisville police sergeant William Baker, deceased at the time of the hearings, and that agents Peters and Brown would confirm his account. Contrary to Duncan’s prediction, Peters and Brown denied any knowledge of the offer, as did Blair, who, however, admitted that the voice on the Baird tape recording was his own. Blair attributed his failing memory to physical and mental deterioration due to alcoholism.

  The committee completed a thorough background check of Clifton Baird, concluding that he was highly credible. A technical evaluation of the tape verified that it was of a type used in 1965. Nevertheless, the HSCA refused to connect in any way the subject of Baird’s testimony—the offer made on September 18, 1965—with the assassination of Dr. King in 1968. The committee dismissed it as a joke or, in any event, unrelated to later events.

  In a three-hour interview with me at the Louisville airport on September 5, 1979, Baird said he has never doubted that those agents were coordinating an offer to kill Dr. King, who was a frequent visitor to Louisville (King’s brother A. D. lived there). He said they clearly used Arlie Blair in an attempt to involve him in what he called a “serious business.” Baird didn’t believe they wanted him to be the gunman—as he said, “they have access to professionals for that”—but possibly they wanted him to be a “patsy … like James Earl Ray probably was.”

  As for Sergeant Baker’s alleged joke, Baird said that it was incredible. Baker was assigned to Juvenile at that time and would have had little or no contact with those involved. He said he believed that Baker was named because “dead men make sorry witnesses.” He also wondered why, if it was just a joke, ranking officers of the Louisville police department and the local FBI office would be involved; and why Peters and Brown would deny it ever happened?

  During our interview, Baird recounted numerous incidents from the summer of 1965 through spring of 1968 when at odd times and places—the hospital, the police parking lot, and elsewhere—he would be confronted by four FBI agents he knew who would block his path just staring impassively at him, as though trying to “spook” him. He also found indications that his mail was being opened. He believed that he was being watched and warned to keep quiet. Then, after Dr. King was killed, the harassment stopped; the pressure was off.

  Baird also told me that there was an unprecedented wholesale transfer of all the Louisville FBI agents to other field offices just before the assassination. He remembers the move coming as a real surprise because the staff had remained unchanged for such a long time. He believed that when the assassination plans had been formulated Hoover found it desirable to move the agents who had been involved in the previous attempt out of Louisville. (It was bureau policy that no agent be transferred without Hoover’s personal approval.)

  Clifton Baird’s account of his experience left me with little doubt that there was a serious effort made in September 1965 to organize an assassination attempt on Dr. King in Louisville. Although it wasn’t clear who the sponsors were, federal agents were involved and they sought the assistance of their friends on the Louisville police force.

  The timing of this effort made sense. In 1965 Dr. King’s prestige was considerable. Despite the efforts of the bureau and its allies within the previous year, and to the manifest outrage of bureau chief J. Edgar Hoover, King had received the Nobel Prize and had successfully fought off every subversive effort to discredit him.

  As I left the Louisville airport that day, I couldn’t help but wonder when the decision to eliminate King was initially made and how many other scenarios had preceded the one carried out in Memphis on April 4, 1968. It occurred to me later that Clifton Baird’s story may have been the basis for the information received and provided by Daniel Ellsberg, since Brady Tyson had referred to “a group of off duty FBI agents” assigned the task of organizing the assassination of Dr. King.

  As this initial stage of my research drew to a close, sadly it was becoming ever more clear to me that the HSCA’s failure to look closely at a number of leads guaranteed that the major questions surrounding Dr. King’s murder had not been considered much less answered.

  15

  Disruption, Relocation and Continuation: 1978–1988

  IN 1975–1977 CONSULTING PROJECTS I undertook in a large New England city resulted in a massive reorganization of a school system rife with corruption and the closing of the largest residential juvenile justice facility in the area. Many of those who lost their jobs as a result were connected to, or had a relative who was connected to, the organization of Raymond Patriarca, the undisputed Mafia leader in New England. Consequently, I became a marked man. I received threatening phone calls and strange men dressed in business suits paraded up and down outside my rural home. All my consulting contracts were either canceled or not renewed. Fabricated charges appeared from nowhere, and investigations of me and the various consulting services being run down were mounted. When it came down to hard facts, however, there were none. The allegations eventually disappeared into thin air.

  Since I was increasingly engaged in the practice of international law, which frequently took me to Europe, my family and I moved to England in June of 1981. Except for telephone discussions and the gathering and consideration of documents, my work on the King case stalled for a time. Not until 1988 did I again begin to focus on the case more fully.

  In the spring of 1988 I was finally able to follow up a story summarized and dismissed by the HSCA in its final report as not being credible. Using the services of a reporter with law enforcement contacts (T. J.), I was able to trace Sam Giancana’s driver Myron “Paul Bucilli” Billet to a small apartment in Columbus, Ohio. Accompanied by my assistant, Jean Obray, I was greeted by an old man in his pajamas who suffered from emphysema so badly that he was hooked up to
an oxygen tank.

  Entering a gloomy sitting room/bedroom and following Myron as he shuffled along into the kitchen, we noticed a teddy bear propped up on a pillow on his bed.

  He said that he had been a “gofer” for the Chicago mob in the fifties and sixties. Sam Giancana, the Chicago boss, had taken a liking to him and given him the name Paul Bucilli. (Elsewhere, in personal notes and letters written eleven years earlier which he provided to me, he said the name was given to him by Ben “Bugsy” Siegel, whom he met in Los Angeles.) He would drive Sam to different places and accompany him on various trips, being available if needed as another pair of hands.

  In January 1968 Billet was working at the Whitemarsh country club outside of Chicago when Sam asked him to take off a few days and drive him to Apalachin, New York, for a meeting. (This town had been the site of a major meeting of organized crime leaders in 1957. It was accidentally discovered by a New York state policeman, conclusively establishing that there was a national organized crime syndicate despite J. Edgar Hoover’s previous vociferous denials of its existence.) Billet described in some detail the restaurant in town where they had driven after arriving, and the layout and location of their motel. According to Billet, those present were himself, Sam Giancana, Carlo Gambino, John Roselli, and three federal agents who he believed were from the FBI and CIA. The agents were known to the mob leaders since they had worked with them on previous gunrunning and other Cuban operations. The meeting was convened to review the working relationship between the criminal families and government agencies represented there. At one point one of the “feds” announced there was a contract on offer for the murder of Martin Luther King with a price of one million dollars. Giancana immediately responded, “No way.” He made it clear that so far as he was concerned his bunch wasn’t going to become involved with that assignment. The agents said it was no big issue, that other arrangements would be made. After that brief exchange, the meeting continued with other business, and the subject wasn’t broached again.