"Killing Reagan" - A Review

"Killing​ ​Reagan"​ ​Again​ ​-​ ​A​ ​review​ ​by​ ​Bill​ ​Kelly. 

Bill​ ​O'Reilly' ​and​ ​Martin​ ​Dugard ​in​ ​their​ ​book​ ​"Killing​ ​Reagan,"​ ​​ ​as​ ​with​ ​"Killing Kennedy,"​ ​offer​ ​a​ ​lot​ ​of​ ​interesting​ ​facts​ ​but​ ​in​ ​the​ ​end,​ ​they​ ​get​ ​it​ ​wrong,​ ​or​ ​just​ ​don't get​ ​it,​ ​and​ ​neither​ ​will​ ​their​ ​plethora​ ​of​  readers,​ ​unless​ ​they​ ​read​ ​more​ ​about​ ​it. 

In the late 1970s, when​ ​he​ ​was​ ​a​ ​young​ ​intrepid​ ​reporter​ ​in​ ​Texas​, O'Reilly​ ​was​ ​on​ ​the right​ ​track​ ​when​ ​he​ ​was​ ​following​ ​up​ ​on​ ​new​ ​leads​ ​provided​ ​by​ ​the​ ​House​ ​Select Committee​ ​on​ ​Assassinations​ ​(HSCA),​ ​seeking out ​interviews​ ​with​ ​the​ ​accused presidential​ ​assassin's​ ​best​ ​friend​ ​George​ ​deMohrenschildt​ ​and​ ​his CIA​ ​contact​ ​G. Walton​ ​Moore.​ ​O'Reilly​ ​then​ ​asked​ ​key​ ​hard​ ​hitting​ ​questions,​ ​some​ ​of​ ​which​ ​we​ ​are 

still​ ​asking​ ​today,​ ​but​ ​he's​ ​no​ ​longer​ ​asking​ ​them. 

​O'Reilly​ ​spoiled​ ​it​ ​in​"Killing​ ​Kennedy"​ ​by​ ​inserting​ ​himself​ ​in​ ​the​ ​story​ ​by falsely​ claming​ ​to​ ​have​ ​been​ ​knocking​ ​on​ ​deMohrenschiltz's​ ​Florida​ ​door​ ​while​ ​the man​ ​with​ ​answers​ ​killed​ ​himself​ ​in Hemmingwayesque​ ​fashion,​ ​when​ ​O'Reilly​ ​was​ ​not within​ ​ear​ ​shot​ ​but​ ​actually​ ​in​ ​another​ ​state​ ​all​ ​together. 

But​ ​that's​ ​okay​ ​because​ ​O'Reilly​ ​doesn't​ ​believe​ ​there​ ​was​ ​a​ ​conspiracy​ ​anyway,​ ​and now​ ​thinks​ ​a​ ​deranged​ ​loner​ ​was​ ​responsible​ ​for​ ​killing​ ​JFK​ ​all​ ​by​ ​his​ ​lonesome​ ​self, and​ ​we​ ​should​ ​all​ ​go​ ​home​ ​and​ ​read​ ​about​ ​it​ ​in​ ​his​ ​best​-selling​ ​book. 

O'Reilly​ ​and​ ​his​ ​sidekick​ ​Martin​ ​Dugard​ ​take​ ​a​ ​similarly​ ​safe​ ​approach​ ​in​ ​"Killing​ ​Reagan," and​ ​paint​ ​John​ ​Warnock Hinckley Jr.​ ​with​ ​same​ ​brush​ ​and​ ​same​ ​colors​ ​as​ ​they​ ​portray​ ​the​ ​Patsy​ ​in "Killing​ ​Kennedy,"​ ​a​ ​troubled​ ​young man ​who​ ​played​ ​with​ ​guns​ ​and​ ​acted​ ​out​ ​his fantasies​ ​on​ ​a​ ​President.  

I​ ​haven't​ ​read​ ​"Killing​ ​Lincoln"​ ​but​ I ​see​ ​a​ ​disturbing​ ​trend​ ​that​ ​says,​ ​as​ ​Allen​ ​Dulles​ ​tried to​ ​sell​ ​the​ ​Warren​ ​Commission​ ​at​ ​their​ ​first​ ​meeting,​ ​that​ ​John​ ​Wilks​ ​Booth​ ​practically acted​ ​alone​ ​and​ ​not​ ​bother​ ​to​ ​mention​ ​the​ ​half dozen Confederates​ ​who​ ​were​ ​hung​ ​for​ ​the​ ​crime he committed alone. 

There's​ ​a​ ​lot​ ​of​ ​interesting​ ​tidbits​ ​in​ ​this​ ​book​ ​that​ ​I​ ​didn't​ ​know,​ ​even​ ​after​ ​researching and​ ​writing​ ​a​ ​major​ ​feature​ ​article​ ​(with​ ​John​ ​Judge​ ​[​http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2016/08/hinckley-company.html ​]​ ​I​ ​didn't​ ​know​ ​Hinckley​ ​wanted​ ​to kill​ ​Nixon,​ ​Jimmy​ ​Carter​ ​and​ ​Ted​ ​Kennedy,​ ​but​ ​was​ ​thwarted​ ​at​ ​every​ ​turn​ ​by coincidence​ ​and​ ​happenstance. 

The​ ​one​ ​time​ ​security​ ​did​ ​stop​ ​Hinckley,​ ​at​ ​Nashville​ ​airport,​ ​where​ ​the​ ​x-ray​ ​machine picked​ ​up​ ​guns​ ​in​ ​his​ ​suitcase,​ ​and​ ​they​ ​hit​ ​him​ ​with​ ​a​ ​$50​ ​fine​ ​and​ ​$12.50​ ​court​ ​costs, but​ ​he​ ​stayed​ ​off​ ​the​ ​Secret​ ​Service​ ​radar​ ​because​ ​they​ ​failed​ ​to​ ​note​ ​that​ ​at​ ​the​ ​same time​ ​President​ ​Carter​ ​was​ ​a​ ​few​ ​miles​ ​away​ ​at​ ​the​ ​Grand​ ​Old​ ​Opry.​ ​They​ ​just​ ​didn't put​ ​two​ ​and​ ​two​ ​together​ ​and​ ​connect​ ​the incidents​ ​being​ ​linked,​ ​and​ ​it​ ​wouldn't​ ​have​ ​been​ ​a​ ​crime​ ​if​ ​Hinckley​ ​didn't​ ​conceal​ ​them, after​ ​all​ ​this​ ​is​ ​Tennessee. 

After​ ​mentioning​ ​that​ ​Hinckley​ ​was​ ​born​ ​in​ ​an​ ​obsolete​ ​mental​ ​hospital,​ ​and​ ​his​ ​father worked​ ​for​ ​World​ ​Vision,​ ​a​ ​suspected​ ​CIA​ ​front,​ ​​​O'Reilly​ ​and​ ​Dugard​ ​fail​ ​to​ ​mention​ ​a few​ ​other​ ​salient​ ​facts,​ ​like​ ​Hinckley​ ​Senior's​ ​oil​ ​company​ ​was​ ​connected​ ​too,​ ​and​ ​it​ ​was a​ ​company​ ​psychiatrist​ ​Dr.​ ​John​ ​Hooper​ ​who​ ​treated​ ​John​ ​when​ ​his​ ​psychosis​ ​became apparent. 

They​ ​also​ ​fail​ ​to​ ​mention​ ​that​ ​Hinckley​ ​bought​ ​his​ ​weapons​ ​at​ ​a​ ​Dallas​ ​gun shop​ ​just down​ ​the​ ​street​ ​from​ ​Dealey​ ​Plaza​ ​without​ ​even​ ​an​ ​ID,​ ​just​ ​as​ ​Oswald​ ​could​ ​have​ ​done, but​ ​didn't. 

They​ ​do​ ​get​ ​into​ ​the​ ​psychotic​ ​effect​ ​certain​ ​films​ ​had​ ​on​ ​Hinckley,​ ​especially​ ​Taxi​ ​Driver, that​ ​O'Reilly​ ​and​ ​Dugard​ ​say​​:​ ​"Screenwriter​ ​Paul​ ​Schrader​ ​based​ ​the​ ​character​ ​of​ ​Bickle on​ ​Arthur​ ​Bremer​ ​-​ ​the​ ​would-be​ ​assassin​ ​of​ ​presidential​ ​candidate​ ​George​ ​Wallace​ ​in 1992.​ ​Bremer​ ​shot​ ​Wallace​ ​to​ ​become​ ​famous​ ​and​ ​impress​ ​a​ ​girlfriend​ ​who​ ​had​ ​just broken​ ​up​ ​with​ ​him.​ ​He​ ​had​ ​originally​ ​intended​ ​to​ ​kill​ ​President​ ​Nixon​ ​but​ ​botched several​ ​attempts."  

O'Reilly​ ​also​ ​mentions​ ​in​ ​a​ ​footnote​ ​that,​ ​"Bremer​ ​was​ ​sentenced​ ​to​ ​53​ ​years​ ​in​ ​prison but​ ​was​ ​released​ ​after​ ​35.​ ​He​ ​is​ ​now​ ​a​ ​free​ ​man,"​ ​much​ ​as​ ​Hinkley​ ​is​ ​or​ ​soon​ ​will​ ​be. 

As​ ​O'Reilly​ ​pointedly​ ​describes,​ ​in​ ​the​ ​summer​ ​of​ ​1976​ ​Hinkley​ ​sat​ ​in​ ​the​ ​Egyptian Theater​ ​in​ ​Hollywood,​ ​"Just​ ​fifteen​ ​miles​ ​from​ ​the​ ​home​ ​of​ ​Ronald​ ​and​ ​Nancy​ ​Reagan, John​ ​Hinkley​ ​sits​ ​alone​ ​in​ ​this​ ​aging​ ​movie​ ​palace​ ​watching​ ​a​ ​new​ ​film​ ​Taxi​ ​Driver.​ ​It's​ ​a picture​ ​Hinkley​ ​will​ ​see​ ​more​ ​than​ ​fifteen​ ​times.​ ​The​ ​twenty​ ​one​ ​year​ ​old​ ​drifter,​ ​who continues​ ​to​ ​put​ ​on​ ​weight,​ ​wears​ ​an​ ​army​ ​surplus​ ​jacket​ ​and​ ​combat​ ​boots,​ ​just​ ​like the​ ​film's​ ​main​ ​character,​ ​Travis​ ​Bickle,...​who​ ​is​ ​played​ ​with​ ​frightening​ ​intensity​ ​by Robert​ ​De​ ​Nero."  

Now​ ​that's​ ​interesting​ ​that​ ​Taxi​ ​Driver​ ​is​ ​based​ ​on​ ​Bremer​ ​because​ ​Dallas​ ​radio broadcaster​ ​and​ ​founding​ ​member​ ​of​ ​David​ ​Phillips​ ​Association​ ​of​ ​Former​ ​Intelligence Officers​ ​Gordon​ ​McLendon​ ​reportedly​ ​had​ ​a​ ​major​ ​and​ ​influential​ ​interest​ ​in​ ​Columbia Pictures,​ ​the​ ​Hollywood​ ​company​ ​that​ ​made​ ​Taxi​ ​Driver.​

​And​ ​the​ ​Navy​ at the time ​was​ ​studying​ ​the effects​ ​repeated​ ​viewings​ ​of​ ​a​ ​violent​ ​film​ ​has​ ​on​ ​soldiers​ ​and​ ​potential​ ​assassins,​ ​as the​ ​London​ ​Sunday​ ​Times​ ​reported, and I mention in the Hinckley & Company article.

The two pre-assassination attempt incidents that certainly deserve mention are the December 1981 Libyan hit team threat to kill President Reagan [https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1338&dat=19811204&id=mUFYAAAAIBAJ&sjid=U_kDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6706,1841255&hl=en ] and the Castro Plot to Murder Reagan that the Scripps-Howard News Service reported two weeks before Hinckley burst onto the scene, that attempts to blame the murder of Reagan on Castro even before it happens. [http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/11/castro-plot-to-murder-reagan.html], both of which are relevant to what happened and are not mentioned in “Killing Reagan.”

Nor​ ​do​ ​they​ ​bother​ ​to​ ​mention​ ​that​ on the morning of March 30, 1981, while​ ​Hinckley​ ​sat ​in​ ​his​ ​hotel​ ​room​ ​reading​ ​the President's​ ​daily​ ​schedule​ ​in​ ​the​ ​Washington​ ​Post, his​ ​brother​ Scott ​had​ ​a​ ​luncheon​ ​date with​ ​one​ ​of​ ​the​ ​sons​ ​of​ ​Vice​ ​President​ ​Bush,​ ​a​ ​fact​ ​that​ ​the​ ​mainstream​ ​media​ ​called​ ​a "bizarre"​ ​coincidence. 

As​ ​Ron​ ​Reagan​ ​said​ ​to​ ​Joey​ ​Bishop​ ​on​ ​TV​ ​the​ ​day​ ​after​ ​RFK​ ​was​ ​killed​ ​-​ ​though​ ​not​ ​by Sirhan B. Sirhan,​ ​as​ ​O'Reilly​ ​would​ ​have​ ​us​ ​believe​ ​-​ ​"The​ ​actions​ ​of​ ​the​ ​enemy​ ​led​ ​to​ ​and precipitated​ ​the​ ​tragedy​ ​of​ ​last​ ​night,"​ ​which​ ​O'Reilly​ ​translates​ ​to​ ​mean​ ​-​ ​"Because​ ​he (Reagan) believed​ ​it​ ​was​ ​agents​ ​of​ ​the​ ​USSR​ ​who​ ​killed​ ​RFK​ ​as​ ​well​ ​as​ ​his​ ​brother​ ​JFK​ ​in​ ​1963."​ ​

The enemy, according to O’Reilly and Dugard say -​ ​"The​ ​enemy​ ​sits​ ​in​ ​Moscow,"​ ​and​ ​they​ ​might​ ​add​ ​–​ ​Havana, as the

The handlers and controllers of the assassins are the enemy, not the Patsies like Oswald, Sirhan, Ray, Chapman, Bremer and Hinckley, and those who promote the cover-stories like O’Reilly and Dugard, are cohorts of the enemy, and like Bremer, are living free to spew their venom among us.

Also see: Andrew Kreig’s Justice Integrity Project report:

http://www.justice-integrity.org/faq/804-why-bill-o-reilly-s-lie-about-jfk-s-murder-might-matter-to-you

MLK in Camden - The Secret Story Uncovered

            Camden, N. J.  - The history of the civil rights movement in America and biographies of Martin Luther King, Jr.  will have to be rewritten as new details emerge of MLK's time in Camden, N.J.

The two years King spent here while attending Crozer Theological Seminary go largely unrecognized in his biographies, but new evidence is continually being discovered that indicates something very special happened here, an event that radicalized King, sparked a fire in his heart and convinced him to devote his ministry to civil rights.

While King's studies at Crozier, across the Delaware River in Chester, Pa., are well documented, his residency in Camden had escaped general recognition, until recently, as Patrick Duff has discovered the story behind that event, one piece at a time.

In reading back issues of newspapers Duff came across an article "The Bar that Started  A Crusade,"  that related how in 1950 Martin Luther King had filed charges against a Maple Shade, N.J. bar owner for refusing to serve him and three friends.

Researching the issue further Duff found other news articles that indicated that was the first time King had taken such legal action, and the event may have played a more significant role in King's life than previously believed, and his hunch has been born out as more details emerge.

Although the roadside bar called Mary's Place where the incident occurred, was purchased by the N.J. Department of Transportation and had been torn down, Duff went to the Maple Shade city hall and got a copy of the original complaint, signed by King and three companions - fellow Crozer student Walter McCall, social worker Doris Wilson and Pearl Smith, a Philadelphia policewomen.

What jumped out at Duff was the address King gave as his residence - 753 Walnut Street, Camden, the same address as McCall.

The owner of the now boarded up row house recalled King living there when she was a young girl, saying King and McCall rented a back room from her father and they were very congenial guests.

Duff then went to the Maple Shade city council with a proposal to make the clover leaf location of Mary's Place a public park, and place an historic marker on the spot highlighting its significance. He also convinced a Morristown architecture firm to design the park pro-bono.

In Camden the owner of the house agreed to allow it to be preserved as a museum, and Duff obtained strong local allies in Father Michael Doyle, whose parish includes the house, and Rutgers University Camden Law School. Such a museum and center devoted to King and civil rights they agreed, could lead to the redevelopment of the whole neighborhood.

But shortly after a fund was established to restore the house as it was in 1950 when King lived there, the state notified Duff that they did not consider the site of Mary's Cafe or the house in Camden to be historically significant, and to top it off - the owner of the house received a letter from Camden City officials ordering her to demolish the building.

Undeterred, Duff went back to the archives and discovered two articles in the Philadelphia Tribune, the city's venerable black newspaper. They had covered the Maple Shade incident in detail and provided the key details that certify the event as a life changing crossroads for King, and many of the others involved.

THE INCIDENT AT MARY'S PLACE CAFE

In June 1950 Crozer seminary students Walter McCall and Michael King - he had yet to become Martin Luther, were on  summer leave from Crozer and working as associates of Ira Reid, the first tenured black faculty member at Haverford College on the Main Line in Philadelphia. King had known Reid as one of his professors in Georgia, and had previously taken a seminar with Reid, at Haverford on developing interview techniques and oral history as part of a program to document the lives of Baptist preachers.

It was a Sunday afternoon when King and McCall and their dates Smith and Wilson, went for a drive, destination unknown, but later in the day, on the way home, they pulled off the highway that is now known as Route 73 and stopped at a roadside cafe Mary's Place.

While the identity of Mary has yet to be ascertained, the cafe and liquor license were then owned by one Ernest Nickles, a big, imposing German immigrant.

King and his companions entered and sat down at a table or booth, and noticed a few people at the bar, including three Philadelphia college kids and possibly a black guy.

After being ignored for a while, King got up and approached the bar, asking for service.

Nickles refused to serve them and when it appeared that King and company were not leaving until they were served, Nickles went into the back room and emerged with a gun, saying, "I'd kill for less than this," and then opened the door and fired the gun in the air.

That was enough for King and his companions to leave, but they went directly to the police station where they filed charges against Nickles.

The police went to the bar, took the weapon from Nickles, apparently got statements from the customers, and arrested Nickles on two charges.

ATHE CASE IN COURT

King and McCall then apparently contacted the head of the Burlington County NAACP, who referred them to Robert Burke Johnson, a lawyer with the NAACP in Camden. The pastor of Zion Baptist church in Camden Lloyd Burros also put them in contact with Dr. Ulysses Wiggins, the head of the local branches of the NAACP. Originally from Georgia, Wiggins was a respected black professional who offered legal assistance. So the NAACP attorney Robert Burke Johnson, an assistant prosecutor, represented King and the other complaintants at the preliminary hearing and trial in Maple Shade Municipal Court before Judge Percy Charlton.

The first Tribune article appears to have been based on statements King and McCall gave to Dr. Wiggins.

According to the second Philadelphia Tribune account, Nickles' attorney W. Thomas McCann, of Morristown, explained to the court that Nickles thought King wanted take-out liquor, which he was unable to sell at that hour on Sunday by law, but as the Tribune article puts it, he was unable to explain Nickles shooting the gun, though Nickles did say that was how he called his dog.

The judge held Nickles on $500 bail.

Nickles later went on to operate “Ernie’s Bar” near Riverside, New Jersey, and his attorney W. Thomas McCann became a very prominent Burlington County lawyer, who later wrote about the incident and it is mentioned in his obituary.

Walter McCall became a popular pastor in North Carolina, while Robert Johnson was appointed to the Camden School Board and insisted that segregation of Camden elementary schools come to an end, and it did, and he did it. There is now a Johnson Elementary school in Camden named after him.

Dr. Wiggins became a very prominent person in Camden, and Wiggins Park on the Camden waterfront is named after him.

Martin Luther King Boulevard that runs through downtown Camden ends at Wiggins Park, not far from Johnson Elementary School, so there is a crossroads in Camden that already reflects the contributions they made to Camden and out society.

MLK’s Camden home is historically significant, despite the opinions of the state of New Jersey bureaucrats and Camden housing officials, and it should be preserved and restored and become the centerpiece of a new, revived neighborhood.

The site of Mary’s Café in Maple Shade should be converted into a public park with some benches and an historic plaque that will reflect the story of what happened there.

And the biographies of Martin Luther King and the story of the civil rights movement in America should be updated to reflect this history, as we are still coming to know it.

William Kelly

BillKelly3@gmail.com

Philadelphia Tribune June 1950

City Policewomen Charges N.J. Inn Keeper with Bias

Maple Shade, N.J. - A Philadelphia police women, together with a social worker, and two college students, lodged complaints against a cafe proprietor of this borough early Monday morning for violation of the state's civil rights act when he allegedly refused to serve them and became abusive. The man, Ernest Nickles, proprietor of Mary's Cafe on Rt. S-41 and Main St., was also charged with brandishing a gun and using obscene language.

Mrs. Pearl Smith, the police women, of 735 N. 40th St. Philadelphia, and Miss Doris Wilson, same address, a Philadelphia child care worker, in company of Michael King, Atlanta, Ga., and Walter McCall of South Carolina, students of Crozer Theological Seminary, Chester, Pa., entered the place, they said, and asked to be served, According to statements made to Dr. Ulysses Wiggins, President of the state conference of Branches of the NAACP, they were ordered out by Nickles.

When they did not leave, the man allegedly ran in the back and obtained a gun which he fired in the air out the front door, saying, "I would kill for less than this.”

The group said several white patrons in the place attempted to calm the man and asked that the negroes be served. According to the police woman and her companions, these people volunteered to appear against Nickles should they press charges.

Leaving the establishment complaints were filed at police headquarters. The police were said to have obtained the gun from the man when he was taken to the police station. At a hearing held Monday morning Nickles appeared with his attorney, a Mr. McCall of Morristown who asked for a continuation of the hearing. Thursday evening was set by Municipal Judge Percy Charlton.

Robert Burke Johnson of the legal staff, of the NAACP, was contacted by Boyd Eatmon president of the Burlington County Branch. Not familiar with the legal procedure in New Jersey, the offended visitors, all highly reputable persons, were put in contact with Dr. Wiggins by the Rev. Lloyd A. Burros, pastor of the Zion Baptist Church, Camden.  Rev. Burros was called by the men, both of whom were his schoolmates at Crozer Seminary. King and McCall are in this section to assist Dr. Ira DeA. Reid with summer work at Haverford College.

Philadelphia Tribune June 20, 1950 (Page 1)

N.J. Inn Keeper Held After Four Charged Refusal

Maple Shade, N.J. ,- Municipal Court Magistrate Percy Carlton held Ernest Nichols, in $500 bail, on two counts at a hearing Thursday night, in complaints filed against him by Walter McCall, Crozer Theological Seminary student, and three other Negroes who were allegedly refused service last Sunday night, in Nickle’s cafe on Rt. S-41 and Main here.

The other complainants were Mrs. Pearl Smith, Philadelphia policewomen, Miss Doris Wilson, a Philadelphia social worker, and Michael King, another theological seminary student at Crozer seminary, Chester, Pa.

W. Thomas McCann, Morristown attorney who represented the cafe owner, was unable to convince the magistrate of the innocence of his client, although Nickles stated he served Negroes in his place of business. The attorney urged that the public be given both sides of the story.

He said his client testified in court that the four Negroes wanted to purchase “package liquor to carry out,” which he was not permitted to sell at that late hour. The “misunderstanding” arose over that, the attorney explained. Just why Nickles would fire a gun, as he was alleged to have done, could not be satisfactorily explained to the court.

Three white witnesses, who were patrons in the place at the time of the trouble, volunteered to testify in behalf of the complainants, and appeared at the trial. 

The police-women and her companions contacted the president of the New Jersey Conference of branches of NAACP, and were represented at Thursday night’s hearing by Attorney Robert Burk Johnson, legal aid of the association. Johnson is an assistant prosecutor of the Court of Common Pleas in the county of Camden.

Dr. Ulysses S. Wiggins heads the N.J. NAACP, branches.

NJ Links to MLK's "I Have A Dream" Speech

                                            Clarence Jones and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Local New Jersey Links to MLK's “I Have a Dream” Speech


By William Kelly (billkelly3@gmail.com 609-425-6297)


Maple Shade, Cape May and Longport, New Jersey don't have the same connotations to the American Civil Rights movement as Memphis, Selma and Birmingham, but events took place there that had a major impact on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the moving speech he gave at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington fifty years ago.


The first incident occurred in sleep Maple Shade, a primarily residential Camden County community intersected by a number of major highways.


On June 10, 1950, a quiet Sunday afternoon, Martin Luther King, Jr., a student at Crozier Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, was driving around with his fellow student Walter R. McCall, and their dates, Pearl Smith and Doris Wilson after attending religious services. They pulled into Mary's Cafe on Main Street, just off the jug handle on Rt. 73, parked, went inside and sat down at a table.


There were a few local customers sitting at the bar, including a black man, but after reviewing the menu for quite some time, no one waited on them. After awhile, King got up and approached the bartender, Ernest Nichols - a big, German, who insulted King. After King and his companions complained about not being served, Nichols took out a gun from behind the bar, opened the door and shot the gun into the air.


King and his friends got the message and left, but before they left town they filed a formal complaint with the local police, and Nichols was later arrested and there was an official court hearing in which Nichols was fined $50 on a weapons charge.


Although not a well known incident in the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it is listed in the chronology of his life, and it is cited as the one event that radicalized him to make civil rights a political issue.


After King became recognized as a leader in the civil rights movement, in June 1958 he was asked to address a convention of Philadelphia area Quakers meeting in Cape May, New Jersey, where King gave a not well known but important speech in which he articulated the idea that the civil rights movement was not just for blacks but for all people, and that to be successful, violence would be counter-productive and non-violent civil disobedience must be practiced.


At Cape May King said the civil rights movement was part of a “worldwide revolt against slavery and the oppression of colonialism and imperialism.”


The third significant incident that contributed to the inspiration of the “I Have A Dream” speech too place in the early 1950s in Longport, New Jersey, an upscale beach resort on the south end of Absecon Island, which includes Atlantic City. Among the rich residents was the Lippincott family, original Quakers who owned the Chalfonte-Haddon Hall (Now Resorts) on the boardwalk in Atlantic City and other Philadelphia and South Jersey area businesses.


The Lippincotts employed some domestic servants, whose young son Clarence Jones, had looked forward to spending a summer at the Jersey Shore, and as soon as he got there he began exploring the neighborhood on his bicycle.


When he encountered some other local youths however, they harrassed him, and he was shocked at what they called him “nigger,” “honkey,” “monkey” and “boogaloo,” things he had never heard before.


Having been educated in a private school by Catholic nuns and raised in the home of the upper crust Lippincott family, young Jones had never heard such language and was understandably repulsed.


Jones later recounted that, when his mother found him crying, and he told her what happened, she made him look in the mirror asked what he saw – telling him “you are the most beautiful thining Go;s creation,” and from then on such taunting no longer affected him as much as it did that day in Longport.


The nuns, Jones said, taught him well, and after graduating from Columbia and obtaining his law degree and license, Jones moved to California, where he intended to become a prominent and prosperous attorney for the rich and famous.


Then one day in 1960 a visitor arrived at his front door – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was scheduled to give a sermon at Jones' church that evening. King asked Jones to go back east with him and work on the civil rights movement, as a young lawyer was needed. Jones declined, saying his wife was pregnant and he had to take care of his new family. King understood, but later that night King devoted part of his sermon on the responsibility of black professionals to stand up and take the lead in the movement that was then primarily young black radicals, liberal white college kids and old black ladies like Rosa Parks.


Also berated by his wife, Jones reconsidered and joined King's legal team, eventually becoming one of his most trusted aides. Jones helped compose parts of the “I Had a Dream” speech, ensured it was copyrighted and tells the story in his book, “Behind the Dream – the Making of the Speech that Transformed a Nation.”


Jones can also be heard interviewed on NPR radio program - .
http://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132905796.dream-speech-writer-jones-reflects-on-king-jr


So MLK at Mary's Cafe in Maple Shade, his Cape May speech and Clarence Jones' bike ride in Longport, New Jersey may not rank with such major civil rights events as those that happened in Selma, Birmingham and Memphis, but what transpired in New Jersey at those times and places changed the minds of men and effectively brought about major changes in the civil rights of all people.

"Smooth Criminal' - Castro's Soup

JFK secretly freed rapists, drug dealers and Mafia hitmen to kill Castro and curb threat of Communism, claims explosive new book 

Revelations made by journalist Bill Deane in new book 'Smooth Criminal'

It tells story of alleged CIA spy and 'one-man crime wave' Dave Riley

Claims criminals allowed on 'crime sprees' in US when not working for CIA

Deane: 'Riley was typical recruit: Intelligent, ambitious and without morals'

While JFK did not order the programme, Deane says he was 'aware' of it

By MATT BLAKE

PUBLISHED: 07:25 EST, 15 February 2013 | UPDATED: 09:04 EST, 15 February 2013

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2279155/JFK-secretly-freed-rapists-drug-dealers-Mafia-hitmen-kill-Castro-curb-Communist-threat-claims-explosive-new-book.html - ixzz2L4sIJSkQ

President John F. Kennedy secretly endorsed the release of hardened criminals to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro to curb the Communist threat, a new book has claimed.

At the height of tensions between America and neighbouring Communist Cuba in the early 1960s, JFK was implicit in the freeing of rapists, drug dealers, and Mafia hitmen through CIA in a bid to recruit 'untraceable' spies willing to risk their lives on dangerous missions rather than go back to jail, a new book sensationally claims.

Desperate to remove Castro from power, the president resorted to using dangerous criminals as operatives - rather than CIA agents - to 'do America's dirty work' as they couldn't be linked back to his administration, it is claimed.

In one failed plot, an ex con was smuggled into Cuba in 1962 to pose as a waiter in Castro's favourite restaurant where he would drop poison tablets into the revolutionary leader's soup.

The explosive claims come in a new book by veteran American Journalist and author William Deane, who claims specially-recruited criminals became 'untouchable' and were allowed to embark on 'crime sprees' in the US without fear of prosecution.

Deane, former assignment editor at American news networks ABC and CBS, says he uncovered the programme - which he believes is still in operation today - after following the 'trail of destruction' left by one such operative.

Though JFK did not order the setting up of the top secret programme, Deane says that as president Kennedy would have 'been aware' of it.

'For over 50 years, the CIA and American government has been systematically releasing dangerous criminals back into society to work for them on secret missions overseas,' said Deane, whose new book Smooth Criminal details the life of alleged CIA operative and 'one-man American crime wave' Dave Riley.

'The programme started during the Kennedy administration at the start of the 1960s as a clandestine means of dealing with the Communist threat of Castro, and was given the seal of approval by JFK - who was still smarting following the political embarrassment of the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961.

'Criminals were ideal operatives as they were ruthless and willing to risk their lives during missions rather than be sent back to prison. They also couldn't be officially connected with the CIA so it didn't matter if they were captured - there was no risk of America's shady policies being exposed.

'Riley was a typical recruit. Highly intelligent, ambitious and with no morals. The CIA sent him on many missions abroad, including to Cuba to assassinate Castro,' added Deane.

'Between missions he was allowed to do what he liked - which generally consisted of embezzlement, fraud, gunrunning and drug dealing - without fear of being arrested or prosecuted.'

Warning: Deane claims the CIA continues to recruit hardened criminals to 'do America's dirty work' with impunity

Deane claims to have first encountered Riley back in 1961 while working as a DJ at a radio station in Miami, Florida.

Riley, then in his early 20s and with ambitions of being the 'next Frank Sinatra', had connections with the Mafia and used his connections to 'persuade' the radio station to play his records.

Though they lost touch, Deane next heard of Riley in April 1962 when working as a cub reporter for a Miami TV station - after hearing he had hijacked a plane to Cuba.

According to news reports, on Friday, April 13, 1962, Riley and an accomplice had forced pilot Reginald Doan at gunpoint to fly them to the communist island, where they planned to defect, only for the Cuban authorities to imprison them before sending them back to Miami.

Deane says he was contacted by Riley prior to the Black Friday Skyjacking trial and during that meeting revealed that he was working for the CIA and had been sent to infiltrate Cuba as a spy.

'The skyjacking was just a smokescreen conjured up by the CIA after the mission went wrong.

'Riley confessed that he'd been recruited by the intelligence agency while in prison for extortion of a public official back in 1960, and had been sent to Cuba to carry out a number of assignments - including one to assassinate Castro.

'He had posed as a waiter at one of Castro's favourite restaurants and been supplied with Botulinum tablets - an untraceable poison - by the CIA to drop into his soup, but Castro must have got wind of the plan as he suddenly stopped eating there.'

Deane admits that at first he thought that Riley was a 'fantasist' and, after the criminal was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the skyjacking by the U.S. Supreme Court in November 1964, largely forgot about him.

It was only after his retirement from CBS in 2005, when he started writing Smooth Criminal, that Deane discovered that Riley might have been telling the truth about the criminal operatives programme all along.

Deane traced Riley's whereabouts from the time of the skyjacking trial onwards and found that far from serving his time in jail, he had apparently been back on the streets committing crimes within a matter of months.

The journalist uncovered over 40 newspaper reports of Riley's various crimes in archives and gained further corroboration of his seeming invulnerability to prosecution after tracking down several of his victims.

He added: 'Riley was a one-man crime wave who was allowed by the CIA, and indirectly the president, to consistently get away with his crimes in return for his occasional assistance.

'In the late 1960s and early '70s he went on undercover missions to Vietnam, Cambodia and other troubled South Asian countries, and back at home got away with embezzlement, fraud, gunrunning, drug dealing and sexual assault among other crimes.

'He has left a string of victims across the USA over the last 40 years, but the police and FBI have been powerless to act because he is protected by the CIA. The agency maintains a policy of complete secrecy and doesn't want to risk compromising operations by having one of their operatives involved in a public trial.

'One unfortunate woman who came across Riley was swindled out of $20,000 - her life savings - and the deeds to several properties, but the police and Feds weren't allowed to warn her, and weren't allowed to stop him.'

Deane says that he has evidence of Riley living in New York in 2005, but after that the scene goes cold.

He claims requests for information from the FBI, CIA, Treasury and other government agencies were ignored and suspects Riley, now in his 70s, is either dead or has been placed into a Federal Witness Protection scheme to put him out of reach.

Deane says he doesn't disapprove of America's criminal operatives programme per se, but has written Smooth Criminal to warn the American public about the programme in case they become victims of 'untouchables' such as Riley.

He added: 'America has lots of enemies and security has to be maintained if we are to prevent another 9/11 so I am not against a programme that helps protect the nation.

'What I do object to is the CIA's insistence on complete secrecy. The rationale that a few Americans have to suffer for the sake of 315 million is not acceptable.

'It's sad and pathetic that totally innocent Americans have lost virtually everything, including their homes and businesses, while the Feds stood by and did nothing but protect their released criminals.

'The CIA should be capable of controlling freed criminals without exposing their clandestine operations, and if they can't, should discretely warn potential victims to keep away from these people.'

"Dead Wrong" Right On

Dead Wrong  Right On 

Dead Wrong – Straight Facts on the Country’s Most Controversial Cover-Ups

(Skyhorse Publising, 2012) by Richard Belzer and David Wayne, Afterward by Jesse Ventura.

"I met Murder on the way –

He had a mask like Castlereagh:

Very smooth he looked, yet grim;

Seven bloodhounds followed him.

All were fat; and well they might

Be in admirable plight,

For one by one, and two by two,

He tossed them human hearts to chew."

-         The Masque of Anarchy. From: "Studies In Murder" by Edmund Lester Pearson.

Although it includes JFK and some other high profile crimes, Richard Belzer and David Wayne’s new book “Dead Wrong” is mainly about the killing of some of the other human hearts, the ones thrown by the wayside for the official bloodhounds to chew on while Kennedy’s real killers go free.

Richard Belzer, best known as a standup comic and popular TV actor (“Homicide” & “Law & Order –SVU”), has teamed up with researcher and writer David Wayne to produce a convincing file by file case study of a ten of America’s most newsworthy crimes and cover-ups – all of which we now know a great deal about, but none of which has received any semblance of justice.

With an afterward by Jesse Ventura, this book reminds me somewhat of the great coincidence that occurred when Dick Russell met up with Jesse Ventura at a below the Mexican border small town cafe, which led to them becoming fast friends and teaming up to produce a series of TV shows and conspiracy books by the same publisher - Skyhorse.

Here we have Belzer, the celebrity actor, who provides the style and the audience, working with David Wayne, a respected writer and researcher who compiles the necessary details that quickly convince you that something is indeed wrong here.

We can easily imagine Belzer, the TV homicide actor, as he walks us through the crime scenes using the forensic evidence compiled by David Wayne, a Chicago bred Stanford related journalist who gets his facts straight. It's laid out like a prosecutor's brief so just the information you need to know is included, along with sources so you can get more on the subject if you want to. 

As Wayne put it, “We included two types of entries; deaths that were alleged to be suicides or were originally ruled suicides, but have so many suspicious circumstances that they appear to have been murders and; deaths that were known to be murders but have so many irreconcilable issues that something is clearly amiss. In some cases, they were obvious: shooting one’s self in the head five times with a bolt-action rifle is a bit of a stretch to term a suicide – even in Texas. In others, the flawed official reasoning was more subtle but, upon examination, every bit as clear.” 

Wayne calls attention to the forensic studies of Texas A & M professor Cliff Spiegelman, who has called for re-opening the investigation into the JFK assassination due to “fundamentally flawed” evidence procedures.

In each case, everyone has a point where the evidence becomes so compelling it is eventually tipped in the favor of homicide or conspiracy.

Like Belzer, in the JFK case, I too am convinced that, based on the Warren Commission’s own account, it was physically impossible for Lee Harvey Oswald to have committed the assassination, since he was on the second floor at the time. While others have alternative versions of the events [See the evolution of the 2nd floor lunchroom story - JFK Assassination Debate - The Education Forum and  (Parker)   Reopen KENNEDY CASE! - Reopenkennedycase.net ], the official version of events is confirmed by the testimony of eyewitnesses Roy Truly and Marion Baker, who encountered Oswald in the second floor lunchroom less than a minute and a half after the last shot was fired. [ See: Why Oswald is Innocent of being the Sixth Floor Sniper].

The question then quickly becomes, since Oswald didn’t do it, who did?

The upcoming 50^th anniversary of the assassination of President Kenney will ensure that we get an appropriate review of those events, but the other cases included in this book are all significant and related in that the government refuses to recognize the truth or to pursue justice.

Not all the victims are popular celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, JFK, MLK and RFK, since Frank Olson, Henry Marshall and George Krutilek are not exactly household names, but they are “human hearts” and justice is supposed to serve everyone, regardless of status or wealth, and you can see how the criminal justice system – the bedrock on which our society rests, failed in each and every case.

Olson, the CIA scientist murdered in the course of an LSD experiment that went terribly astray, has been firmly documented in court and by Hank Albarelli [ H.P. Albarelli Jr.], while Marshall was a mid-level government administrator who got in LBJ’s way to the presidency and Krutilek was an accountant for a crook and con artist who apparently knew too much.

MM, JFK, MLK and RFK get the lion’s share of the book, but Belzer and Wayne also devote significant chapters to black activist Fred Hampton, Clinton administrator Vincent Foster and the most recent death of British biological warfare specialist Dr. David Kelly.

This list reminds me of Penn Jones’ attempt to keep track of the strange deaths that seemed to follow witnesses and suspects in the assassination of JFK. Jones, a small town Texas newspaper publisher, was the only one to go out of his way to visit Dealey Plaza at 12:30 PM on November 22, 1964, and thus begin the popular tradition to visit that place on that date since then.

Penn’s collection of obituaries of those connected with the assassination led someone to commission a London actuary that concluded the odds of so many witnesses dying within a certain amount of time was phenomenal. That stat was quoted at the end trailer of a major motion picture Executive Action, which portrayed the assassination as a covert intelligence operation. 

When the HSCA was established in 1976 to investigate the assassinations of President Kennedy and MLK, one of the researchers working for the committee was assigned to look into the strange deaths, but instead, proved how the London actuary was wrong.

So instead of researching each strange death individually, she merely questioned the math of the acturary, and instead of investigating each homicide the government concludes it was suicide or the suspected perpetrator (Oswald) is dead, or the mob did it and we’ll never know the truth.

At the time she issued her report, one of the HSCA Committee members asked her about some of the sudden deaths of witnesses they had ordered to testify – Sam Giancana, John Rosselli and others were murdered outright, and the “strange” and sudden deaths that occurred to others – George DeMohrenschildt, William Sullivan et al.

In response, she said that those deaths were part of another major investigation, separate from her inquiry into the allegations made by Penn Jones, the London actuary and the Executive Action trailer, which satisfied the Congressman at the time. Since the HSCA records have been released under the JFK Act however, it is quite clear that there was no other more thorough and complete investigation of those murders and strange deaths.

As I have previously pointed out [Related Unsolved Homicides / Jurisdictions], you don’t even have to include the “strange” deaths that were originally ruled suicide – Olsen, Marshall, Pitzer and others not included in this book, the government should at least make an effort to solve the open homicides (M. Meyer, S. Giancana, J. Rosselli, et al).

For awhile, a number of high profile cold cases from the 60s and early 70s (Medgar Evers assassination, Birmingham Church bombing, Philadelphia, Miss. Civil rights murders, etc.), were suddenly solved by the emergence of new evidence and witness as well as – more significantly – a new independent prosecutor who wasn’t afraid to bring the cases to justice.

Then the Emmett Till bill passed the house, which would have required the Dept. of Justice to create a special new unit dedicated to prosecute unsolved civil rights cases of the 60s and 70s, but as far as I can tell, the bill somehow got sidetracked in the Senate.

But the Emmett Till bill would have created the independent government unit that is necessary to investigate and solve the cold case murders of the 60s – including those of Sam Giancana, John Rosselli, JFK, MLK, RFK and those lesser known victims like J.D. Tippit and Emmett Till.

The government might be able to ignore the strange deaths, however bizarre they are, but the government does have a responsibility to properly investigate and prosecute these unresolved murders.

I was sitting on the Grassy Knoll one anniversary (2003) when Jesse Ventura gave a little speech and then came over and sat by me, giving us the opportunity to talk. Here he calls attention to the Jack Nicholson role in USMC film, “There is a famous movie quote that most people are familiar with where, during a trail, a Marine Corps Colonel is pressed on revealing the truth to a questioning attorney, until he gets to the point here the Colonel has finally had enough and he screams: ‘You can’t handle the truth!’”

“That’s a good metaphor for the place that we’re in right now because apparently – by order of our own government – our so-called leaders don’t seem to think that the American people are actually capable of handling the truth. Isn’t it ridiculous that documents related to the JFK assassination are still sealed by order of our own government? For what reason are they still sealed?  To protect us? To protect us from whom exactly? From them, apparently. Why are we being treated like babies who can’t handle the truth? I’ve traveled this land far and wide, and I’ve come to quite a different conclusion: Americans can handle the truth.”

“This book is a perfect example of how Americans have not been trusted with the truth; it profiles case after case where we have often been intentionally misled and even clearly lied to on the most basic points of important events that changed history. The fact that we have been lied to about the JFK assassination is so obvious that it’s outrageous. The government cover-up was – and still is- so transparent that it’s ridiculous.”

“As we approach the fiftieth anniversary of the JFK assassination, it would seem well time that we, as Americans, come to terms with some very simple truths. I will offer a couple, just to get us started. Beyond the slightest doubt, John F. Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy involving many individuals. That isn’t some theory – that’s the only way it could have happened. Here’s another one. Beyond a doubt, the American government in the years following the JFK assassination has intentionally clouded the issue with intentional obfuscations of the true facts of the matter.”

“So why are we still being lied to about these cases? They seem to be missing a basic point about Democracy – they are our employees. They’re employed by us – We, the People. How dare they withhold the truth from us! Can you imagine if any employee in an office intentionally withheld pertinent information from her or his boss? With what justification? Because she or he didn’t think that their boss could handle it? That employee would rightfully be thrown out of hat office on their ear, and that’s what should happen to a lot of people in Washington too. Somehow things have been twisted backwards, and we need to get them back the way the founders of our country originally intended.”

But remember something very important here. Our elected officials are officially servants of The People. Technically, there’re our employees, That’s the way this government was set up by its founders. I’d say that the time has now come when We, The People, need to oversee our employees quite a bit more carefully. We need to demand the truth.”

“There is one thing that is more powerful than all the armies in the world and that is an idea whose time has come. Mahatma Gandhi once said, ‘The truth is far more powerful than any weapon of mass destruction.’”

“In my opinion, it should be a peaceful revolution, and one which starts and continues from a very simple and basic foundation – demanding the truth from our elected representatives.”

“Some Americans are so demoralized that they may think that the truth doesn’t even really matter anymore. I respectfully disagree. I think that we, as Americans, have an obligation to the great foundations of this Democracy, as well as a debt to those who have literally laid down their lives to protect it. As the pages of this book have revealed, we have not been told the truth. So now it’s up to us to demand it. We can start with the JFK Assassination. We want all the records released and we want them NOW. Our elected officials need to be reminded of who their real employers are. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. American can handle the truth. And frankly, it’s time that we are allowed that opportunity.”

“Commit yourself to the process of reclaiming our Democracy. We outnumber them and we have the power of truth and history on our side. We can turn this great Republic of ours back into the Democracy it was intended to be. It won’t be easy – but it can be done. And we have to do it, because no one else will.”

Two FBI Agents Come Clean on JFK Assassination

Two FBI Agents Come Clean on JFK Assassination 

THE FBI & the Assassination of President Kennedy

Unlike the Secret Service, whose director Chief Rowley thought it unwise to reprimand any of the Secret Service agents over lapses during the assassination, many FBI agents were reprimanded for a variety of reasons.

Now, nearly a half-century later, we have the reports and confessions of a number of agents who not only recognize there were plots and a conspiracy behind what happened at Dealey Plaza, but offer modus operandi and legitimate suspects who were known at the time, but officially covered up.

“From An Office with A High Powered Rifle” – A Report To The Public From An FBI Agent Involved In The Official JFK Assassination Investigation (Trinday, 2012), is former FBI agent Don Adams’ story of his personal investigation of Joseph A. Milteer, a right-wing fanatic who was caught on an informant’s tape saying President Kennedy would be killed “from an office with a high powered rife,” a threat that was kept from Milteer when he was ordered to locate and interrogate Milteer.

Just as FBI agents were kept from informing other agencies of information they collected on those who would become 9/11 hijackers, Don Adams was shocked to learn, after the JFK Act forced the release of many assassination records, that he was kept in the dark at the time he was investigating the assassination. It was only years later that he learned that the man whose case he was assigned had been recorded on tape predicting the murder and how it would be accomplished by a Florida police informant, that his suspect was photographed in Dallas on the day of the assassination, and he later bragged that he was there.

Despite the fact that an FBI document falsely claims that Milteer was at home in George at the time of the assassination, Adams knows he wasn’t because Adams was at Milteer’s house that day looking for him. When Milteer finally arrived at his girlfriend’s home a week later, Adams took him into custody, but was continually frustrated by other FBI agent’s attempts to cover their ass. Adams wasn’t even aware of the extent of the cover-up until he was shown some of the record released under the JFK Act.

When finally shown the transcript of the police informant’s conversation with Milteer, Adams was shocked to read that Milteer not only said the assassination would be accomplished “from an office with a high powered rifle,” but that “they will pick up somebody within hours afterwards…just to throw the public off.”

While working for the FBI in Ohio, Adams became familiar with Leo “Lips” Moceri, who Chauncey Holt, a self-professed tramp, con artists and syndicate accountant first mentioned as being in Dallas at the time of the assassination. While Moceri later disappeared, Adams says that in 1976 he located Moceri’s car in hotel parking lot, and he is sure Moceri is dead because his clothes and golf clubs were covered with blood.

I can identify with Don Adams, and his frustrations, as we are both sons of police detectives. I can understand his desire to make it in the FBI on his own without the benefit of his father’s friendship with Cartha DeLoach, a high ranking FBI official whose name is cc’d on nearly every FBI document related to the assassination.

Like my father, a Camden, NJ detective, Adams had the highest regard for the FBI and was proud he was an agent, serving “Truth, Justice and the American Way,” until he was convinced otherwise by the real evidence, and sadly learned that justice was never served, at least in the case of JFK.

My father had a similar high regard and opinion of the FBI, until a new agent was assigned to the Camden office and he was asked to show him the lay of the land. My dad later told me that after giving the new agent a tour of the high crime areas of the city, he took him out to Garden State Race Track where he pointed out a few organized crime characters and bookies. A few weeks later, one of the bookies complained that the new FBI guy was shaking him down for hundreds of dollars a week, thus changing my dad’s opinion of the FBI.

Those involved in such organized crime operations know who the bad cops are, the ones that will take a bribe, and they call them the “right coppers,” as opposed to the “wrong coppers,” or good cops who won’t take a bribe. Don Adams was a good FBI agent and to the criminals, a “wrong copper,” but he didn’t know who the bad FBI agents were when was working with them, and only later, belatedly figured them out.

High on Adams’ list today is J. Edgar Hoover himself, of whom he says, “If one looks clearly at the entire window concerning the assassination and asks what one major player could influence the investigation, the answer would have to be J. Edgar Hoover. I do not make that powerful statement lightly. Nonetheless, I have come to believe that it was the actions of the director of the FBI that facilitated the cover-up.”

After serving in the backwaters of Georgia, where he was handed the Milteer case, until it was covered up, Don Adams was assigned to the Dallas FBI office, where he had the opportunity to meet some of the other agents involved in the “investigation” of the president’s murder, including J. Gordon Shanklin and Robert Gemberling.

Their names are well known to JFK assassination researchers since Shanklin was in charge of the Dallas FBI office and he assigned Gemberling to investigate all the leads that came in after the assassination. After they both retired, Gemberling took exception to an interview Adams gave to a local Ohio newspaper, going on the record against the lone gunman theory promoted by Gemberling. Both men exchanged long letters. Then Adams attempted to straighten out some of the misconceptions Gemberling flouted in an article in the (Nov. 2003) issue of Grapevine, the official publication of retired FBI agents. But the editor would not publish Adam’s rebuttal.

“I knew that nothing would change his beliefs,” Adams writes, “not even evidence that should have at least made him question the veracity of his investigation. I have come to believe that Gemberling could not be dissuaded because he was following LBJ and FBI Director Hoover’s directive that Oswald had to be the shooter. Gemberling wrote of the outstanding work done by the FBI agents in this investigation and how proud he was of their work. But that work was tainted by corruption from above….There are too many witness statements from too many different people that contradicts the official findings.”

While the editors of the official FBI publication wouldn’t publish Don Adams rebuttal of the official findings and conclusions, Kris Millegan, publisher at TrinDay has no such reservations. Millegan gets personally involved in each book he publishes, and notes that, “There is much to learn from Adams’ story: connivance, deceit, and distraction by federal officials both before and after the assassination to deflect inquiry from its natural course and affect its outcome. And there is something there.” 

There certainly is something there. Adams himself concludes, “As the 50^th anniversary of this great tragedy approaches, it is time to begin again. Americans and people around the world have the right to know as much of the truth as can be learned.” 

M. WESLEY SWEARINGEN

M. Wesley Swearingen, a 25 year veteran of the FBI had to self-publish his own book, “To Kill A President” – Finally – An Ex-FBI Agent rips aside the Veil of secrecy that Killed JFK.

Swearingen, who faithfully served the bureau for a quarter of a century, eventually “came clean” and in an earlier book, “FBI SECRETS – An Agent’s Expose,” (South End Press, Boston) reported on FBI “corruption and wrongdoing,” including “black bag jobs” - breaking and entering private offices and residences to conduct illegal searchers, and COINTELPRO, the counter-intelligence program that targeted suspects J. Edgar Hoover thought subversive.

Swearingen served in the Chicago FBI office, where Guy Bannister had been the Special Agent In Charge before he ran Lee Harvey Oswald as an agent provocateur in New Orleans.

Chicago is where Swearingen worked closely with William F. Roemer, Jr., a big blow-hard whose book “Roemer: Man Against the Mob,” falsely portrays how he gave the Chicago mob a hard time, when he actually protected their operations, in league with the CIA, to plot the assassination of Fidel Castro and partake in the conspiracy that led to the death of JFK. 

When I read in Roemer’s book how he tapped the phones and the cocktail conversations of Sam Giancana, John Rosselli and the crooked cop Richard Cain and others, I realized he was full of it, and Swearingen confirms it.

Swearingen had an informant, an anti-Castro Cuban he calls “Ramon,” who was trained by the CIA at JM/WAVE who told him all about the Chicago mob’s connections to the Cubans, to the CIA and their plans for the Bay of Pigs and to kill Castro and Kennedy.

Cain was shot in the face with a shotgun by a masked gunman in Rose’s Sandwich Shop in Chicago on December 20, 1973, Giancana was killed, shot in the back of the head a few days before he was to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978, and Rosselli shortly after he testified, turned up in pieces stuffed in a 50 gallon oil drum floating in the Florida bay.

Among the characters in Swearingen’s book are Judith Campbell Exner, girlfriend of Frank Sinatra, JFK and Sam Giancana, who was questioned by the FBI in Swearingen’s apartment, Oliver “Buck” Revell, another FBI official who is also exposed as a blow-hard, and William Sullivan, Hoover’s assistant who was killed in 1978 in a hunting accident.

While there isn’t much documentary evidence to support his version of events, like Don Adams documents published in the appendix of his book, Swearingen’s story rings true, and fits all the facts of the case as I know them.

TrinDay & A Memoir of Injustice

A Memoir of Injustice (TrinDay, 2011)
by Jerry Ray as told to Tamara Carter, with an Afterward by Judge Joe Brown.

From the moment Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed it was clear there was a war on, not a race war, a perspective encouraged at the time, but because the violence also consumed the lives of John and Robert Kennedy, it was a war over the hearts and minds and political lives of the America people.

It is a war that continues today, a violent one that uses murder and assassination as a tool in the chest of strategists who remain behind the scenes and immune from justice, and a war that is manifest in the refusal of the government to release the now historical investigative records of the Congressional investigation into the murder of Dr. King.

The assassination of MLK is not unique in the failure of the government to bring justice to an historic homicide, or release of the relevant government records, as that is also the case with the JFK and RFK assassinations. More specifically in the MLK case, the government failed to put the accused assassin on a fair or thorough trial, or to properly identify and locate the shadowy Latin smuggler “Raoul,” who holds the key to the true powers behind the assassination, thus requiring amateur sleuths, civilians, historians and the younger brother of the accused to do the job.

While there are dozens of other books that go into the details more thoroughly, Jerry Ray’s view of the proceedings is fascinating and reads like a Raymond Chandler novel, without pulling any punches, short, crisp and to the point.

The early part of the book, describing the dysfunctional and basically criminal nature of the Ray family, is a sad tale that sets the stage for how Ray could have been easily  persuaded to be part of the plot or, like Oswald, set up as the patsy and fall guy.

One might expect the brother of the accused to stick up for his kin, even after James Earl Ray died in prison, but Jerry’s story is engaging and believable, and thanks to T. Carter, is delivered in a style that serves a fine example of the proper way to draw out oral history from a closely engaged witness like Jerry Ray.

Jerry first learned the authorities were looking for his brother when he heard they were after a suspect named Eric Galt, which he knew was an alias James Ray had used. He immediately drove to St. Louis to talk to another brother who owned the Grapevine Tavern, a seedy, shot and beer joint on the hard side of town.

After James was caught in England, and the details began to emerge, Jerry learned that when the alleged getaway car was located, “Don Wilson, a 25 year-old agent with the Atlanta FBI office, was one of two agents who made the initial response. While the senior agent conferred with Atlanta police, Wilson opened the driver’s side door and two pieces of paper fell out. Thinking the papers were insignificant and that possibly he had messed up a crime scene, Wilson stashed the two pieces of paper inside his pocket. It was not until later that Wilson discover the great significance of the two pieces of paper: they had the name ‘Raoul’ written on them…”

From prison, James Earl Ray asked his brother to check out a guy “Randy Robenson,” whose name was on the back of a card “Raoul” had, a card from the Le Bunny Lounge on Canal Street in New Orleans.

A cab driver told Jerry the club was probably one of Carlos Marcello’s joints, and as Jerry relates: “At the time, Carlos Marcello was the biggest crime boss in the United States, his criminal empire claiming the entire Gulf region, even stretching into parts of the Caribbean. At the time, there was strong evidence that Marcello, who harbored bitter hatred for Robert F. and John F. Kennedy, had played a direct role in JFK’s assassination.”

As recounted by Jerry, “I walked inside, sat down at the bar and ordered a beer. To my surprise, Le Bunny Lounge was an average place. There were only a few other customers there, and they were sitting at tables away from the bar. The cocktail waitress was an attractive woman. We started talking back and forth. I asked her if she knew Randy Robenson. She stared my way and said, ‘Who’s asking?’ I didn’t beat around the bush, and replied, ‘Twenty Dollar Bill, that’s who.’…”

She knew a Randolph Robenson, a guy from Florida who came in with a Latin looking guy, good tippers.

Jerry thought it significant, “Jimmy and Raoul meeting at Le Bunny Lounge, owned by a New Orleans crime boss, an acquaintance of Percy Foreman, an attorney with ties to both the Kennedy and King assassination – the pieces were coming together, and a big picture was starting to take shape. It was not a pretty picture.”

Though Ray never acknowledged killing King, and it is questionable that his rifle that was left at the scene was the one used in the shooting, Percy Foreman, who became James Earl Ray’s lawyer, convinced Ray to plead guilty to avoid the death sentence, and also avoid a trial during which all the facts in the case would have emerged.

Some of those facts would come out during the 1978 House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) investigation and two subsequent civil trials, one led by Dr. William Pepper on behalf of the King family that resulted in the conviction of co-conspirators, thus proving conspiracy. The other case was COPA v. DOD – (Coalition on Political Assassinations and Department of Defense) that sought the release of Army Intelligence files on Dr. King in the last two months of his life, and though COPA lost the case on appeal, the DOD did release an after action summary of the reports, which clearly indicated they had maintained a very close surveillance of King and in fact, watched him being murdered.

William Pepper once said that he had identified “Raoul” and even talked with him on the phone, but since then, we haven’t heard much more about the shadowy Latin smuggler, or whether the other leads were properly followed and investigated. Pepper's suspect is described and his photograph printed in his book, An Act of State.

Memphis Judge Joe Brown, now of TV Court fame, presided over James Earl Ray's last court appeal before he died, and tested the alleged murder weapon against the bullet removed from Dr. King's body. Judge Brown claims the rifle ballistics don't match and it should be tested properly. Instead it sits in a case in the Civil Rights Museum at what was once the Loraine Hotel where King was killed. Judge Brown writes an appropriate afterword for this book.

The records on the Martin L. King assassination of the HSCA are still locked away, and were not included among the JFK Assassinations Records Act as they should have been, though they can and should be released by an act of Congress, if people will only ask them to do so.

Justice many never be served in this case, as Jerry Ray concludes, but history still can be, if the relevant government records are released to the public, as they should be.

TRINDAY – A few words about the publisher – TrinDay.

Not your traditional mainstream publisher, TrinDay is run out of Walterville, Oregon, by Kris Millegan, who asks, “Will we stand up and take back our country from the crooks, cronies and cabals?”

Millegan has found a nice niche, publishing radical and conspiratorial, though historically documented books that are too hot or controversial for other publishers to handle.

Some of the books, like “The Bilderberg Group” and “Shadow Masters” by Daniel Estulin, concern the larger strategic conspiracies behind big governments, big money and maintaining the drug-oil industrial scheme of things that we have no real control over.

“Dr. Mary’s Monkey,” “Me & Lee” and “The Last Circle” bring out first person stories much like Jerry Ray’s “Memoir of Injustice.”

“Dr. Mary’s Monkey” is Ed Haslam’s personal investigation into the death of a New Orleans cancer researcher, and her ties to those on the edge of the assassination of President Kennedy, which dovetails nicely with Judyth Vary Baker’s Harlequin style love affair with the accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. “The Last Circle” is Cheri Seymour’s story of Danny Casalarso’s fatal investigation into the “Octopus” and Promis software scandal.

Though there has been some dispute over the details, Baker certainly was employed at the same coffee company at the same time as Oswald, but with few questionable witnesses to them being together, their love life may be exaggerated. However, the overall story of what happened in New Orleans in the summer of ’63 is accurate and colorful enough, enlivened by documents, photos and maps that adorn practically every page.

More significant are other TrineDay books, like a revised and expanded versions of John Loftus’ classic “America’s Nazi Secret” and the late George Michael Evica’s under-appreciated “A Certain Arrogance” – subtitled “The sacrificing of Lee Harvey Oswald and the Cold War manipulations of religious groups by U.S. Intelligence.”

Then there’s Hank P. Albarelli Jr.’s “A Terrible Mistake,” about the MK/ULTRA death of CIA officer Dr. Frank Olson, Douglas Valentine’s book on the DEA “The Strength of the Pack,” and Lt. Col. Dan Marvin’s “Expendable Elite.”

In all, TrinDay continues to give us much to think about, and should change the way we think about politics and murder.

TrinDay P.O. Box 577, Waterville, OR, 97489
1-800-566-2012

[Bill Kelly is author of “300 Years at the Point” and “Birth of the Birdie.” His research on the JFK assassination is supported in part by a grant from the Fund For Constitutional Government Investigative Journalism Project. He can be reached at bkjfk3@yahoo.com]