Orders to Kill-A Review

JFK Deep Politics Quarterly

"Orders To Kill" -- A Book Review

by Terence P. Ripmaster, Ph.D
(Orders to Kill . Pepper, William F. New York: Carrol & Graf, 1995)

William F. Pepper is an English barrister as well as an attorney in America. His long years of interpretive and tenacious research have given us an effectively detailed study of the events associated with the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968. It will dispel any lingering thoughts that James Earl Ray acted alone that day in Memphis, Tennessee and could even, if taken seriously, result in Ray's release from a 99-year prison sentence.
Pepper begins with a harsh assessment of how the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) handled their investigation of Dr. King's murder, which resulted in the Committee's confirmation that Ray was the lone gunman. However, they did suggest, ever so timidly, that there was a probable conspiracy behind King's assassination. Almost all of their evidence and documentation was then locked up and classified. Through his valiant efforts through the Freedom of Information Act, Pepper has succeeded in freeing up some of these files.
It is no wonder that the government would prefer this information be kept hidden away, as Pepper has presented abundant and apparently verifiable evidence that there was some sort of FBI plot behind the King assassination. Coupled with the FBI's vendetta (and most readers are familiar with Hoover's hatred of MLK), Pepper goes so far as to name names in the Central intelligence Agency, which also had Dr. King under close surveillance through the Operation CHAOS program. (This program was run out of the Office of Security, which enjoyed cooperation with Hoover's other FBI domestic surveillance operations during the 60s.)
The story, as it evolves, is convoluted in every sense of the word. The governments case went like this: James Earl Ray, a drifter with a prior criminal record, rented a room in a cheap boarding house opposite the Lorraine Motel (where Dr. King and his aides were staying) and with a Remington 760 Game master rifle, hit King with one fatal shot. After this, Ray tossed a bag on the street, complete with extra bullets and personal items and took off in a white Ford Mustang. He headed for Canada, took a flight to London, then to Portugal, then back to London and was finally apprehended there on June 8, 1968, two months after King's murder.
He was extradited to the United States and placed in a cell from July 19 until March 10, 1969. For ten months, Ray was watched 24 hours a day and every word of his to the outside world was monitored. As in the case of Lee Harvey Oswald, he had been convicted in the media and could not have received a fair trial.
It must also be recalled that Ray, from the time he allegedly rented the room in Memphis until his arrest in London, used a series of aliases such as Eric Galt, John Willard, Ramon George Sneyd and Paul Bridgeman. Much to his credit , Pepper tracked down each of these names until we find that an "Eric Galt" did exist--and worked on US defense contracts--at Union Carbide in Toronto (where Ray fled after the assassination). Galt had a top secret security clearance.
Then there is the complex story of James Earl Ray's various attorneys. Initially, one Arthur Hanes and his son Arthur Hanes Jr., flew to London to represent Ray. When he arrived back in America, Ray changed lawyers, hiring Percy Forman. Forman was taken ill and a judge appointed Hugh Stanton Sr. as co-counsel. After Ray's conviction (he pleaded guilty) Mark Lane and Jim Lesar became his attorneys until the early 1980s. Pepper is Ray's present counsel.
Orders to Kill explains how writers who were "friendly" to the FBI were selected to publish the first books about Ray. They were Gerald Frank (An American Death ) and William Bradford Huie (He Slew the Dreamer) . Early critics of the lone assassin theory were JFK luminaries Harold Weisberg (Frame Up ) and Mark Lane (Code Name Zorro ).
Ray was born in 1928, had served in the military in World War II, and was a petty criminal who served four prison terms in the 1950s and 60s, escaping from prison in 1967. Pepper skillfully follows almost every step of Ray's life until the day he is incarcerated for King's murder. The trail takes us to New Orleans, where we meet some people associated with figures which assassination researchers are familiar with. There is Myron Millet, an associate of Mob leader Sam Giancana and Joe Chimeno, an operative for Carlos Marcello, and of course, the mysterious "Raul". Other characters playing a role in Pepper's narrative include Oliver Patter-son, an FBI and HSCA source and Frank Liberto, owner of a Memphis produce company.
From J. Edgar Hoover to a list of other names in Pepper's book, there were enough people who despised Martin Luther King to form an army of assassins. But who finally did it? Pepper is convinced (and quite convincing) that James Earl Ray was not the gunman. Many details are presented about a shot from the brushy area nearer to the Lorraine Motel. The author also outlines ballistic data related to the slug taken from King and to the fingerprints on the rifle. None of it can point conclusively to Ray.
When a new hearing was finally convened on December 16, 1993, there was virtually no media coverage. As in the JFK and RFK assassination cases, it seems the media is still dedicated to holding onto the official story.
Pepper presents the following analysis: "There could no longer be any doubt that the chief prosecution witness had been drunk and unable to observe anything... Somehow he [Dr. King] had been mysteriously moved from a secluded ground-level courtyard room to a highly exposed balcony room...As a result of observations...it appears conclusive that the fatal shot was fired from the brush area and not from the bathroom [at the rooming house] There were increasing indications that members of the Liberto family at least in Memphis and New Orleans were implicated in the killing (pp.230-231).
These remarks appear near the middle of the book. Pepper then traces these persons and events to their final conclusions and flatly asserts that Ray was not the killer, but rather that an elaborate conspiracy existed to assassinate MLK.
If he wasn't the killer, who was James Earl Ray? Why did he use the name of Eric Galt, an actual person with a government security clearance? Where was Ray at the exact moment that King was murdered? Was he a patsy, as Pepper claims? Indeed there are points in the book where Pepper seems unable to remove himself from the narrative and his research. He is convinced that there has been a friendly and quite comfortable accommodation between US intelligence agencies and crooks. This is not a new concept to JFK researchers and is hard to doubt given our present understanding of the FBI and CIA's domestic and foreign policy operations of the 1960s.
We now know that Martin Luther King had a resolve to join the civil rights struggle with some of the forces of the anti-War movement and there's abundant evidence in this book that this move had government agency personnel in a spin as to what to do about King's efforts. I would agree with Pepper that it is more than likely that these agencies went into action in order to eliminate Dr. King. Exactly how it was done may never be known. Ray is still alive, of course, as are others who may have been involved in the plot. Orders to Kill takes us a lot closer to understanding this case and moves us a few steps closer to a solution. Without a doubt, a must-read!

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Updated February 28, 1997