Speaker 1: Welcome to the MLK Tapes, a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Tenderfoot TV. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast
Speaker 1: are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating
Speaker 1: in the podcast, and do not represent those of iHeartMedia,
Speaker 1: Tenderfoot TV, or their employees. Listener discretion is advised. I
Speaker 1: went back to Saigon for a break. I was at
Speaker 1: a party with some other journalists and friends, and the
Speaker 1: government was increasingly suspicious because I didn't go to any
Speaker 1: of the press free things, and I was out in
Speaker 1: the country all of the time, not really under anyone's control.
Speaker 1: So that's a party. A young Vietnamese woman approached me
Speaker 1: and tempted to set up a conversation and become social.
Speaker 1: I was just so angry at that point in time
Speaker 1: by what I was seeing that I told her what
Speaker 1: I was seeing. And the next morning I was called
Speaker 1: down to Commander Madison's office. He was CIA, obviously, and
Speaker 1: he said to me, I understand, we're a bit worried
Speaker 1: about you. You're ound in the country a lot, you've
Speaker 1: been injured, you probably have some severe pain. Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: it's time for you to go home. I called the
Speaker 1: Union Hall. I said a matter of life and death.
Speaker 1: I said, I think these people are planning to kill
Speaker 1: doctor King. The authorities would parade. Oh, we found a
Speaker 1: gun the James L. Ray bought in Birmingham that killed
Speaker 1: doctor King. Except it wasn't the gun that killed doctor King.
Speaker 1: James Lvy was a pawn or the official story from
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio intended for TV. The plan was to
Speaker 1: get King to the city because they wanted it handled
Speaker 1: in Memphis four day and named Catlet. And I've lived
Speaker 1: with it alone. Monsieur and the base care for me.
Speaker 1: The lawd told me to not the word. I've been
Speaker 1: willing to tell it all my life. I'm Bill Clayburg
Speaker 1: and this is the MLK tapes. At the top of
Speaker 1: the episode, we heard Bill Pepper telling how he was
Speaker 1: invited to leave Vietnam. Pepper did heed the warning, and
Speaker 1: he did leave, but he took with him photographs of
Speaker 1: horribly burned children that were published in Rampart's magazine, along
Speaker 1: with Pepper's accusatory article on the American conduct of the war,
Speaker 1: which is how we came to meet Martin Luther King.
Speaker 1: Throughout this podcast, we've come to know of Pepper's forty
Speaker 1: year investigation into the murder of his friend. In this episode,
Speaker 1: we will pull the camera back a little and take
Speaker 1: a look at his extraordinary life. Bill Pepper was the
Speaker 1: only child of a pair of Irish immigrants from County Monaghan.
Speaker 1: They settled in Yonkers, New York, where his father worked
Speaker 1: as a repairman on the city's trolley line. Bill went
Speaker 1: to public school and one day, when he was fifteen,
Speaker 1: he was pitching in a game and in the stands
Speaker 1: was a wrestling coach from the elite Trinity School in
Speaker 1: New York City. He was impressed by Bill's curveball, which
Speaker 1: for someone his age was a thing of beauty. So
Speaker 1: we approached Bill after the game, saying that he thought
Speaker 1: the Trinity could use a player like him. Of course,
Speaker 1: the Pepper family didn't have the money needed for a
Speaker 1: school like Trinity, but this man thought that something could
Speaker 1: be worked out. He introduced me to the headmaster and
Speaker 1: we talked, and I ended up pitching for Trinity and
Speaker 1: captaining the baseball team, the basketball team, and the cross
Speaker 1: country team at Trinity. Pepper was good at every sport,
Speaker 1: but where he really stood out was baseball, specifically his pitching.
Speaker 1: It wasn't overpowering stage, so I had to be able
Speaker 1: to move the ball around, change speeds. Pepper doesn't remember
Speaker 1: now his record at Trinity, but he won all his games,
Speaker 1: and that attracted the notice of the World Telegram and Son,
Speaker 1: an old New York daily, which each year gave an
Speaker 1: award for the best young baseball player in the Tri
Speaker 1: state area. Pepper won the award that year and it
Speaker 1: was presented in a small ceremony at home plate before
Speaker 1: the game at Yankee Stadium. And who would hand him
Speaker 1: the award the Yankee star player Mickey Mantle. Mickey gave
Speaker 1: me the award, and Mickey said to me at the
Speaker 1: stadium when he was given he said, Bill, I understand
Speaker 1: you're gonna be up here with us soon. I love
Speaker 1: not on your life. You got more talent in your
Speaker 1: little finger, got my whole body, so I've got to
Speaker 1: find a day job. And he looked at it was
Speaker 1: short of nut because all he heard was, you know,
Speaker 1: I threw one hitters, two hitters, no hitters. I had
Speaker 1: a batting average over five hundred most of the season.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it was being handed an award at Yankee Stadium,
Speaker 1: but somebody at Trinity apparently knew somebody out in Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: and one day Bill Pepper received an invitation to go
Speaker 1: out to Ebbott's field and pitch batting practice for the
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Dodgers. Bill remembers pitching to Don Newcombe, Pee Wee Reese,
Speaker 1: and Gil Hodges, among other legends. He called it a
Speaker 1: lesson in humility. They had it hard. There were another level.
Speaker 1: With his athletic abilities now out there for all to see,
Speaker 1: a scholarship for college was a near certainty. But where
Speaker 1: turns out that along with his physical prowess, Bill had smarts.
Speaker 1: So the scholarship that he accepted brought him to Columbia University,
Speaker 1: where he played baseball and basketball. Pepper loved basketball, and
Speaker 1: he had modeled his game after Boston Celtics star Bob Kuzi,
Speaker 1: who was the master of ball control. At that time
Speaker 1: in college basketball, there was no such thing as a
Speaker 1: shot clock. Teams could freeze the play and the entire
Speaker 1: game by keeping the ball away from opponents and not shooting.
Speaker 1: It was positively awful to watch. Like most teams, Columbia
Speaker 1: had his own plan for freezing the ball, and it
Speaker 1: required a lot of passing. But Bill had his own
Speaker 1: ideas on how to do this, I got into a disagreement,
Speaker 1: shall we say, with Lou Rossini, who was a coach
Speaker 1: at the time. I was an avid student of Bobby Kozis,
Speaker 1: and I learned how to freeze the ball myself. So
Speaker 1: I froze in one ball game. I froze a ball
Speaker 1: for a couple of minutes, and he got furious, pulled
Speaker 1: me out of the game and said, we don't play
Speaker 1: ball like that in the Ivy League. But the truth was,
Speaker 1: they did play ball like that in the Ivy League.
Speaker 1: Princeton in particular was famous for it. But Pepper didn't
Speaker 1: much like being talked to that way, so he left
Speaker 1: the basketball team. But come springtime he was back out
Speaker 1: on the pitcher's mount. Usually in baseball, the catcher calls
Speaker 1: the game, that is the your signals to the pitcher
Speaker 1: what pitch he used to throw. Pepper thought that was silly.
Speaker 1: He was the one who would throw the ball, so
Speaker 1: why shouldn't he be the one to say what it
Speaker 1: was going to be? So he turned to practice upside
Speaker 1: down at Columbia. I called all my games myself. I
Speaker 1: gave to catch a two signals what the pitcher was
Speaker 1: going to be, and wherever's going to go. The kind
Speaker 1: of success that Pepper was having didn't go unnoticed. He
Speaker 1: began to get feelers from scouts representing major league teams,
Speaker 1: but Pepper was good enough to know that he wasn't
Speaker 1: good enough, and the White Shocks did want to sign me.
Speaker 1: At one point, I realized if I took that I'd
Speaker 1: be down in the miners, probably in c or d
Speaker 1: for three four years and never make it. So I
Speaker 1: figured I'd better find out something else to do with
Speaker 1: my life. Pepper would go on to find many things
Speaker 1: to do with his life, but baseball was to open
Speaker 1: one more door. I continued to play baseball at Columbia,
Speaker 1: and in May of nineteen fifty nine, myself and one
Speaker 1: other player from the team were chosen to go to
Speaker 1: Cuba the Cuban sports festival that Fidel Casha was running,
Speaker 1: and so I played in Cuba in that festival. But
Speaker 1: I used to come to all the games. He's a great,
Speaker 1: great baseball fan, and of course a great picture. Fidel was,
Speaker 1: in my view, far better picture than I was. So
Speaker 1: I stayed in Cuba after the team left. I spoke
Speaker 1: the language, I spent some time with Fidell and minimum
Speaker 1: amount of time with che Guevara. He was not forthcoming
Speaker 1: outwards the way that Fidel in particular was, but he
Speaker 1: was a very serious guy and you had no doubt
Speaker 1: that he was committed to the revolution. The following year,
Speaker 1: Pepper went for graduate studies to the University of London.
Speaker 1: When they found out that he could play basketball, he
Speaker 1: was quickly put on the team. They then won most
Speaker 1: their games and all of the important ones until the end.
Speaker 1: We won the national championship. That year. We played in
Speaker 1: the internationals and didn't do very well. We didn't win,
Speaker 1: We lost in France. In London, Bill had occasion to
Speaker 1: hang out with journalist Clark Mullenhoff, who would tease Bill
Speaker 1: about coming from the most corrupt city in the country,
Speaker 1: his hometown of Yonkers. This surprise Pepper because he was
Speaker 1: just a kid when he lived there. So when he
Speaker 1: got home, he went to the editor of the local
Speaker 1: newspaper and asked if it were true. He said yes,
Speaker 1: he said, this is one of the most corrupt cities
Speaker 1: in the East Coast. Has been run by a boss,
Speaker 1: Tommy Brogan, for about fifty years at that point, and
Speaker 1: his alliance with organized crime is very clear. Pepper asked
Speaker 1: if there was anything that could be done. He said, well,
Speaker 1: it used to be a citizens union. If you want
Speaker 1: to look into it. Why. He gave me all the
Speaker 1: details and I did, and I restarted the Citizens Junior.
Speaker 1: At the time, Pepper was attending the University of Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: Law school and he was coming home on weekends to
Speaker 1: work on Yonker's public life. Eventually, the politics became so
Speaker 1: consuming that Pepper had to drop out of school, but
Speaker 1: the work paid off, at least for Yonkers. I worked
Speaker 1: on the Citizens JUNI and we eventually took control of
Speaker 1: the city of Yonkers, and I refused to run for office.
Speaker 1: I was able to put good people into office. I
Speaker 1: was twenty four years old when we did that. The
Speaker 1: successful fight against an entrenched political machine made people take notice.
Speaker 1: One of those was Robert Kennedy, who had decided to
Speaker 1: run for US Senate from the state of New York.
Speaker 1: Bob Kennedy came to me and asked me to run
Speaker 1: his Westchester County campaign, so I became his Citizens Chairman.
Speaker 1: I have to confess I didn't like the Bob Kennedy
Speaker 1: I knew in nineteen sixty four and was going to
Speaker 1: break with the campaign because he was arrogant. He ended
Speaker 1: up dealing with the local political machine that we had
Speaker 1: overturned to take control. So Pepper told the Kennedy people
Speaker 1: that he wanted to quit, but the campaign had a
Speaker 1: good thing in him and they knew it. So they
Speaker 1: sent in a heavy hitter, a man who had been
Speaker 1: very close to JFK when he was president. They sent
Speaker 1: Teddy Sorenson. They sent Teddy in to convince me to
Speaker 1: stay in the campaign. Then sixty four I handled Bobby's
Speaker 1: campaign in Westchester County. But I was getting at that
Speaker 1: point in sixty four sixty five increasingly aware of the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War and concerned about it. So Pepper decided to
Speaker 1: go to Vietnam. He took a leave of absence from
Speaker 1: his position teaching political science at Mercy College. He still
Speaker 1: didn't have the money, but when he described to a
Speaker 1: wealthy friend what he wanted to do, she offered to
Speaker 1: pay for the journey. She was also well connected, and
Speaker 1: on her say so, managed to get letters of endorsement
Speaker 1: from the very Catholic Cardinal Spellman and the equally conservative
Speaker 1: Dewitwallace of The Reader's Digest. Those letters provided the mona
Speaker 1: fines Pepper would need when he arrived in Nam, I
Speaker 1: got my credentials as a journalist that gave me access
Speaker 1: to the entire country by means of military C one
Speaker 1: thirty aircraft, and I would fly to various points of
Speaker 1: the country that I wanted to see. I saw more
Speaker 1: than I bargained for, farmers and rural people burned to
Speaker 1: the ground. I was seeing children badly injured by the
Speaker 1: napalm and the white phosphorus burning. And I was seeing
Speaker 1: total devastation among the civilian population who themselves were not
Speaker 1: involved in the war. I made a lot of tape recordings,
Speaker 1: took a lot of photographs. At one point, Pepper was
Speaker 1: in an army transport flying into the central Highlands town
Speaker 1: of Plakup when his plane was hit by groundfire and
Speaker 1: the pilots suddenly lost control of the aircraft. It made
Speaker 1: a crash landing, and Pepper sustained injuries to his back
Speaker 1: that had plagued him the rest of his life. Pepper
Speaker 1: was in pain and went back to Saigon for a break.
Speaker 1: And we will repeat here what he said at the
Speaker 1: top of the episode about how he had aroused questions
Speaker 1: about his loyalties the government was increasingly suspicious because I
Speaker 1: didn't go to any of the press frey things, and
Speaker 1: I was out in the country all of the time,
Speaker 1: not really under anyone's control. I was at a party
Speaker 1: with some other journalists and friends, and a young Vietnamese
Speaker 1: woman approached me and tempted to set up a conversation
Speaker 1: and become social. I was just so angry at that
Speaker 1: point in time by what I was seeing that I
Speaker 1: told her what I was seeing. And the next morning
Speaker 1: I was called down to Commander Madison's office. He was CIA, obviously,
Speaker 1: and he said to me, I understand we're a bit
Speaker 1: worried about you. You're ound in the country a lot,
Speaker 1: You've been injured, you probably have some severe pain. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's time for you to go home. Pepper agreed it
Speaker 1: was near time to go home, but he first wanted
Speaker 1: to see what was happening in a certain rural province.
Speaker 1: Could the military get him there by Chopper The answer
Speaker 1: was no, but they would agree to achieve. Pepper said
Speaker 1: he'd let them know. When I talked to some of
Speaker 1: my colleagues, they said, Bill, the last guy took good
Speaker 1: cheap from them, was found dead by the side of
Speaker 1: the road. So we suggest you read the handwriting on
Speaker 1: the wall and you get out of here, because they've
Speaker 1: obviously worried about you. And by worried about him, they
Speaker 1: didn't mean they were worried about his health. They were
Speaker 1: worried about what he was doing, who he was talking to,
Speaker 1: what he was taking pictures of. So Pepper decided to
Speaker 1: heed the warning, and he left Vietnam carrying a satchel
Speaker 1: with his trove of tape recordings and undeveloped film. But
Speaker 1: who in the US would care to do anything with them?
Speaker 1: Certainly not the Reader's Digest, and as it turned out,
Speaker 1: not Cardinal Spellman either. Pepper returned to his post at
Speaker 1: Mercy College and talked to the president of the college
Speaker 1: into sponsoring a debate on the war. I pressed for
Speaker 1: Mercy College to hold an event on Vietnam, and we
Speaker 1: scheduled at large debate eight that involved that anti war activist,
Speaker 1: myself and the ambassador to the United Nations from Vietnam.
Speaker 1: He came up from New York, and when it was
Speaker 1: my turn to speak, I just destroyed everything he said
Speaker 1: about legitimacy of the effort anti communist and efforts and
Speaker 1: all of that, and I just destroyed them. Very shortly thereafter,
Speaker 1: Cardinal Spellman called the president of the college and insisted
Speaker 1: that I be fired from my teaching post. She called
Speaker 1: me in and she was virtually in tears. Mercy College
Speaker 1: in those days was just beginning, and I built the
Speaker 1: political science department, and when I handled a Kennedy campaign,
Speaker 1: I brought the Kennedy sisters and the mother there, so
Speaker 1: they had a high regard for what I was about.
Speaker 1: She was in such a plight because she had been
Speaker 1: directly ordered by the cardinal to fire me, and she
Speaker 1: didn't want to do it. But she said, but Bill,
Speaker 1: they give us eighty percent of our budget. I said, Sister,
Speaker 1: her name was Atheldreda, said sister, Etheldreda, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: I'll just resign. After Pepper returned from Vietnam, he gave
Speaker 1: a few lectures and did a little writing on the
Speaker 1: war about the crimes he felt that were being committed.
Speaker 1: But nobody, even in the alternate or progressive media, wanted
Speaker 1: anything to do with the utter horror of what he
Speaker 1: had witnessed and recorded in Vietnam. The stories that were
Speaker 1: printed were ones that had come out of press briefings
Speaker 1: and had to do with strategic hamlets, body counts, and
Speaker 1: the ever hopeful light at the end of the tunnel. Finally,
Speaker 1: Warren Hankel of Ramparts came to me and I guess
Speaker 1: autumn of sixty six, and he asked me to do
Speaker 1: a piece for Ramparts magazine. I was closeted for two
Speaker 1: weeks at the Algonquin Hotel in New York and I
Speaker 1: wrote that piece, and I provided them with all of
Speaker 1: my photographs. The article that Bill Pepper wrote for Ramparts
Speaker 1: was titled The Children of Vietnam. It was virtually the
Speaker 1: first time that the horrors of the war had been
Speaker 1: put on display in the United States, and the horrors
Speaker 1: belonged to us because we were the ones who used
Speaker 1: the undiscriminating weapon that would bring fire from the sky.
Speaker 1: As reported by Pepper, the official US position was quote
Speaker 1: napalm is used against selected targets, such as caves and
Speaker 1: reinforced supply areas. Casualties are predominantly persons involved in Communist
Speaker 1: military operations. But as Pepper would document in his travels
Speaker 1: about Vietnam and his visitations to what hospitals were still functioning,
Speaker 1: these terrible things did not fall upon the unlucky few,
Speaker 1: but upon civilians in great numbers. Tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: children were either killed or horrifically scarred. As Pepper said
Speaker 1: in his article Napalm and its more horrible companion, white
Speaker 1: phosphors liquidized young flesh and carve it into grotesque forms.
Speaker 1: The little figures are afterwards often scarcely human in appearance,
Speaker 1: and one can not be confronted with the monstrous effects
Speaker 1: of the burning without being totally shaken. I never left
Speaker 1: the tiny victims without losing composure. The initial urge to
Speaker 1: reach out and soothe the hurt was restrained by the
Speaker 1: fear that ash like skin would crumble in my fingers.
Speaker 1: If he were not to be remembered for anything else,
Speaker 1: Bill Pepper should be remembered and honored for sending himself
Speaker 1: the Vietnam and coming home with the truth about what
Speaker 1: we were doing there. But the article on Vietnam began
Speaker 1: a whole new episode in Bill Pepper's life. It brought
Speaker 1: him into the presence of another man who was wrestling
Speaker 1: with his moral duty. So the Ramparts piece came out
Speaker 1: in January of nineteen sixty seven. That was what Martin
Speaker 1: King noticed as he wasn't going on a trip to photographs.
Speaker 1: I think caught his attention, and he read the article
Speaker 1: later and asked to meet with me. Pepper and King
Speaker 1: first met in Providence, Rhode Island, where King was speaking
Speaker 1: at the chapel of Brown University. Both men were continuing
Speaker 1: on to Boston, so King asked Pepper to ride with him.
Speaker 1: I rode to Boston with him. I showed him whatever
Speaker 1: additional material that I had at that time, and he wept.
Speaker 1: He literally wept in the car. He saw all of
Speaker 1: this horror that was being done by his government. He
Speaker 1: couldn't believe it. Because his article and photographs had finally
Speaker 1: been published in a national magazine, Bill Pepper suddenly became
Speaker 1: a voice for the anti war movement. And I don't
Speaker 1: remember that date, but I then agreed in April of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven to be a keynote speaker at a
Speaker 1: march that went from Central Park down to the United Nations.
Speaker 1: It was a huge marsh quarter of a million or
Speaker 1: so people. Pepper was also chosen to introduce Martin Luther
Speaker 1: King at that rally, no small honor. I was there
Speaker 1: that day. I don't remember Pepper's introduction but I do
Speaker 1: remember King's booming voice, stop the bombing, Let us save
Speaker 1: our national honor, stop the bombing, and stop the wall.
Speaker 1: After the rally in New York, Pepper was asked by
Speaker 1: King and others to become the executive director of the
Speaker 1: National Conference for New Politics. Pepper accepted the purpose of
Speaker 1: the NCNP was to be an umbrella group that will
Speaker 1: unite the many peace and justice groups into a formidable
Speaker 1: political force. Towards that end, a convention was proposed in
Speaker 1: Chicago on Labor Day weekend. Pepper spent his entire summer
Speaker 1: organizing that event. We built this convention and it took
Speaker 1: place in Chicago over Labor Day, and doctor King agreed
Speaker 1: to give the keynote address. We were very naive, very
Speaker 1: naive at that time. I was barely thirty years old,
Speaker 1: with rough and ready political experience in the from Yonkers
Speaker 1: in New York, but nothing significant beyond Yonkers. And when
Speaker 1: a Black Caucus was formed, we thought that was a
Speaker 1: good thing because all black delegates would unite, there would
Speaker 1: be a positive force. What we didn't realize was that
Speaker 1: the Johnson administration, working with Richard Daley, the Mayor of Chicago,
Speaker 1: would put together a very sophisticated disruptive team whose whole
Speaker 1: purpose was to break up the convention, and they seated,
Speaker 1: And we would learn later that many of the members
Speaker 1: or members of the Blackstone Rangers, a gang and Chicago
Speaker 1: who daily brought onto the scene greatly discouraged by what
Speaker 1: had happened in Chicago. Pepper would continue with his anti
Speaker 1: war activities, and so did King, but he also began
Speaker 1: to plan for Poor People's March on Washington to be
Speaker 1: held the following summer. King wanted economic justice to take
Speaker 1: its place alongside of civil rights, and the energy that
Speaker 1: was building around the sanitation workers strike in Memphis was
Speaker 1: the kind of force that King hoped to harness for
Speaker 1: his march. But Martin King was murdered, and for Bill Pepper,
Speaker 1: that was the day the music died. I heard on
Speaker 1: the radio that he had been assassinated. I went down
Speaker 1: to Memphis with Benjamin Spock. We went for the purpose
Speaker 1: of the memorial and also trying to keep the torch
Speaker 1: alive for a movement that was going to try to
Speaker 1: go on without him. Pepper and Spock followed the fallen
Speaker 1: King to Atlanta, where he would be buried. There he
Speaker 1: ran into Bobby Kennedy, on whose Senate campaign he had
Speaker 1: worked four years earlier. Bobby asked me and others to
Speaker 1: come up to this hotel to discuss his presidential campaign,
Speaker 1: and I said, no, I'm through his politics. So after
Speaker 1: turning a baseball into an IVY league, education, cleaning up
Speaker 1: the city of Yonkers, working for Bobby Kennedy, hanging out
Speaker 1: with Fidel Castro, sending himself to Vietnam, pissing off Cardinal Spellman,
Speaker 1: and working for Martin Luther King, Bill Pepper decided to
Speaker 1: leave politics, sit back, and devote himself to education. But
Speaker 1: even in that he couldn't keep from stirring the pot.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy three, he wrote a book on education
Speaker 1: titled The Self Managed Child that was published in hardcover
Speaker 1: by Harper and Rowe. In the book, Pepper joined the
Speaker 1: schooling debates at that time by warning about what he
Speaker 1: saw as education's most common mistake, it's suffocating feeling of
Speaker 1: self importance. And Pepper had some learning of his own
Speaker 1: to continue for. As you may remember, he had dropped
Speaker 1: out of law school at the University of Pennsylvania in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one to devote himself full time to the
Speaker 1: political fight in Yonkers. So in nineteen seventy five he
Speaker 1: went back to law school, this time at Boston College,
Speaker 1: where he graduated with honors a year later. So he
Speaker 1: had barely become a licensed attorney when he got the
Speaker 1: phone call from Ralph Abernathy asking if he would join
Speaker 1: him in meeting with James ol Ray, the convicted killer
Speaker 1: of his friend Martin Luther King. Pepper said he would,
Speaker 1: but only after he had read up on the case.
Speaker 1: When Pepper and n Abernathy traveled to Brushy Mountain State
Speaker 1: Prison in the summer of seventy eight, they were joined
Speaker 1: by Mark Lane, Ray's attorney at the time. Lane, in
Speaker 1: his book Rushed to Judgment, had been one of the
Speaker 1: very first to stand up and say that the murder
Speaker 1: of President Kennedy had been a high level conspiracy, and
Speaker 1: Lane was just as convinced that Ray had been set
Speaker 1: up to take the blame for the murder of King,
Speaker 1: and he appreciated the intelligence that Pepper had brought to
Speaker 1: his meeting with Ray. Soon Lane would call Pepper and
Speaker 1: ask for a favor. Mark Lane called me and asked
Speaker 1: me if I would represent Jerry Ray before the House
Speaker 1: Select Committee on assassinations, and Mark was James ol Ray's
Speaker 1: lawyer and just fighting a very difficult battle for James,
Speaker 1: and he also fell in to be Jerry's lawyer, and
Speaker 1: I asked him why he couldn't continue, and he said
Speaker 1: that Bob Blakey wouldn't allow him to represent both James
Speaker 1: and Jerry, and so Jerry needed separate counsel and he
Speaker 1: thought I would be an ideal guy to do that.
Speaker 1: At the time, the House Select Committee was plotting his
Speaker 1: way through its version of the murders of John Kennedy
Speaker 1: and Martin Luther King. When originally formed, its director was
Speaker 1: to be Dick Sprague, a tough criminal prosecutor out of Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: but Sprague made it clear that he wanted the committee
Speaker 1: to have access to all government files, including those of
Speaker 1: the FBI and the CIA. Suddenly there was an orchestrated
Speaker 1: smear campaign to get rid of Sprague, and it worked.
Speaker 1: Bob Blakey replaced Dick Sprague from Philadelphia because Sprague had
Speaker 1: made the point that he was going after all government documentation,
Speaker 1: including CIA documents, with respect to the killing of Martin King,
Speaker 1: and that was something that they were not going to allow.
Speaker 1: So they put Blakey in who came from Cornell. I
Speaker 1: believe at that time Blakey was much more compliant. Pepper
Speaker 1: thought about Lane's proposal to represent james brother Jerry, and
Speaker 1: after talking to a few colleagues, he decided to accept.
Speaker 1: So I agreed to represent Jerry Ray on the condition
Speaker 1: that I could bring Floe Kennedy, my black human rights lawyer.
Speaker 1: Many people may not remember Florence Kennedy. I think she
Speaker 1: was the first black graduate of Columbia University Law School.
Speaker 1: She was a remarkable woman, totally committed to human rights,
Speaker 1: and I worked with Flow on a number of matters.
Speaker 1: So I went down to Washington represented Jerry with Flow Kennedy.
Speaker 1: We represented Jerry, and it became very evident to us
Speaker 1: early on as they were only there for the purpose
Speaker 1: of incriminating James and trying to use Jerry without purpose.
Speaker 1: From their questions, one can deduce that the House Select
Speaker 1: Committee was attempting to connect Jerry Ray to the murder
Speaker 1: of Martin Luther King, either as a direct participant or
Speaker 1: as an accessory. There were series of questions seeking to
Speaker 1: connect Jerry with James's successful escape from Jefferson City Penitentiary.
Speaker 1: We have searched and only been able to come up
Speaker 1: with the recording of a small piece of Jerry Ray's
Speaker 1: testimony before the committee when he was represented by Bill
Speaker 1: Pepper and Flo Kennedy. We are going to play a
Speaker 1: slice from that recording, not for its procedural content, but
Speaker 1: so that we may hear the voices of both of
Speaker 1: these volunteer attorneys and what would be Bill Pepper's first
Speaker 1: public appearance in his forty year investigation of the murder
Speaker 1: of his friend Martin King. We are going to object
Speaker 1: to the inclusion of any of author McMillan's notes out
Speaker 1: of context. If the author's notes are to be admitted
Speaker 1: into the record of the proceedings of this committee, we
Speaker 1: will request that the entire vestige of his work to
Speaker 1: be admitted, that nothing be taken out of context, and
Speaker 1: we will request to see all of those notes ourselves.
Speaker 1: Not to do otherwise. To take an author or an
Speaker 1: investigator's partial research and to put it in is highly prejudicial,
Speaker 1: particularly in light of the total scope of mister McMillan's work. Sir,
Speaker 1: on the same point, I really am not trying to
Speaker 1: be tendentious, but it is extremely important to note that
Speaker 1: where you have a committee hearing which relies so heavily
Speaker 1: on hearsay people who no one has an opportunity to
Speaker 1: cross examine. There must be some effort on the part
Speaker 1: of this committee to establish the authenticity, the bias, the
Speaker 1: political conflict of interests that might obtain between a writer,
Speaker 1: a journalist, a witness. In this circumstance, we have no
Speaker 1: opportunity to confront this witness. We have no opportunity. And
Speaker 1: this is a part of the nature of this one survey.
Speaker 1: In this inquiry, besides trying to tie Jerry to the
Speaker 1: escape from prison by brother James, the committee set out
Speaker 1: to substantiate the charge that James had not gotten his
Speaker 1: money from some mysterious fellow named Raoul, but had instead
Speaker 1: gotten that move around money from a bank robbery. Around
Speaker 1: that same time, the page one column ward article in
Speaker 1: the New York Times by a journalist called Wendell Rawls
Speaker 1: Junior appeared, which set that whole hsc a scenario out
Speaker 1: how James got his money from the Alton, Illinois bank robbery.
Speaker 1: When the Times article came out about their special investigation
Speaker 1: into the Alton robbery, Bill Pepper was already on for
Speaker 1: representing Jerry Ray. So the day before he went down
Speaker 1: to Washington, he made a couple of phone calls well
Speaker 1: prior to my appearance before that committee. I called the
Speaker 1: president of the bank that was robbed, and I called
Speaker 1: the chief of police in Alton, and both of them
Speaker 1: indicated to me that the Ray brothers had never been
Speaker 1: suspects in that case, as they knew who the perpetrators were,
Speaker 1: they just didn't have enough evidence to prosecute them. And
Speaker 1: they said, not only had they not been contacted by
Speaker 1: law enforcement or House Select Committee investigators, but they also
Speaker 1: had not been contacted by Wendell Rowles Junior, or the
Speaker 1: New York Times or anyone from the New York Times.
Speaker 1: What follows is an interchange concerning the Alton bank robbery
Speaker 1: between James Spicer, counsel for the House Committee, and Bill Pepper,
Speaker 1: representing Jerry Ray. We don't have the recording, but we
Speaker 1: do have the transcript, and it goes like this, mister Spicer.
Speaker 1: One of the areas that is puzzling the American public
Speaker 1: concerning James ol Ray is how he funded himself during
Speaker 1: that period when he was a fugitive immediately following his
Speaker 1: escape from Jefferson City, State prison, And we would like
Speaker 1: to question Jerry Ray concerning the Bank of Alton robbery
Speaker 1: for the reason that there is strong suspicion that this
Speaker 1: robbery may have been the source of funding for James Olray. Pepper,
Speaker 1: mister Chairman. Point of clarification, on whose part is their
Speaker 1: strong suspicion? Spicer, based on evidence provided to this committee, Pepper,
Speaker 1: mister Chairman, on behalf of the witness and the committee
Speaker 1: search for truth? Is the Committee aware of the fact
Speaker 1: that the witness recently surrendered himself personally to the authorities
Speaker 1: in Alton, offered to waive the statute of limitations, offered
Speaker 1: to have himself available for prosecution at this time for
Speaker 1: that crime, and was informed that he was not then
Speaker 1: and never had been, a suspect in the Alton bank robbery.
Speaker 1: And as late as yesterday the Chief of Police in
Speaker 1: conversation with me, indicated that the witness, Jerry Ray, is
Speaker 1: not and never has been a suspect in the bank robbery.
Speaker 1: Is the Committee aware of that? Bill Pepper today is
Speaker 1: still angry about how the House Committee tried to dodge
Speaker 1: and bury his revelations about the robbery. So when that
Speaker 1: was raised at the hearing, I told him as about
Speaker 1: of a point of order, that what I had done
Speaker 1: and what I had uncovered, and that not only was
Speaker 1: the article false, but they're pointing to the Ray brothers
Speaker 1: as perpetrators of that crime was false, and that was
Speaker 1: convincing enough for them to immediately drop it. So they
Speaker 1: didn't proceed with it. But if you read the hc
Speaker 1: A report to this day, you will see that they
Speaker 1: still take that line at the This is where James
Speaker 1: got his money. When the House Select Committee was being
Speaker 1: formed and the idea was put forward that it should
Speaker 1: include not just the murder of John Kennedy but also
Speaker 1: that of Martin Luther King, certain people in the Memphis
Speaker 1: Police Department began to wonder if their secret intelligence files
Speaker 1: might be subpoenaed by the committee, so they decided to
Speaker 1: burn them. Mark Lane, raised attorney at the time, caught
Speaker 1: wind of it and the ACLU filed a petition to
Speaker 1: the court to stop the burning, but it was too late.
Speaker 1: Scores of boxes of files of the Intelligence Division of
Speaker 1: the Memphis Police were incinerated, but the Memphis Police need
Speaker 1: not have worried. The committee under Bob Blakey didn't want
Speaker 1: to look at government files When I asked Pepper, as
Speaker 1: someone who had seen the committee work firsthand, up close,
Speaker 1: what he thought, he didn't hesitate. They never did a
Speaker 1: thorough investigation, and they discredited information I was highly incredible
Speaker 1: and should have been a part of their report and
Speaker 1: their conclusions. They discredited Johnny McFerrin, for example, who overheard
Speaker 1: Loberto and in his place of business talking about shooting King.
Speaker 1: They also denied Liberto's connection with organized crime, the fact
Speaker 1: that the rooming house bathroom was empty and the door
Speaker 1: was opened minutes before the shooting, as evident in a
Speaker 1: taxi driver who would come to pick up Charlie Stevens.
Speaker 1: The fact that doctor King's room was changed from protected
Speaker 1: one two o two to an exposed balcony room three
Speaker 1: oh six, and failure to perform to form all black
Speaker 1: security unit which always protected doctor King in Memphis. All
Speaker 1: of these facts and more were ignored by the House
Speaker 1: Select Committee. It was not a serious investigation. It was
Speaker 1: investigation designed to cover up the truth that this kind
Speaker 1: of evidence. While a great deal of what the House
Speaker 1: Committee did and how they went about it was worthy
Speaker 1: of disdain, it didn't mean that everyone on the committee
Speaker 1: was in on a cover up, It's just that its
Speaker 1: ultimate conclusions seemed already baked into the cake. For example,
Speaker 1: when investigators from the Committee began to look into the
Speaker 1: stories about rays supposed hatred of blacks in general and
Speaker 1: King in particular, they discovered that most of these stories,
Speaker 1: which were thin to begin with, were either unreliable or exaggerated,
Speaker 1: so much so that the Committee had to conclude that
Speaker 1: Ray's given motive of hatred, which had been blindly accepted
Speaker 1: for ten years, was not in any way supported by
Speaker 1: the evidence. Did that make them wonder if Ray had
Speaker 1: really killed King? No, they just gave him a new motive,
Speaker 1: that he killed King to collect a reward, something for
Speaker 1: which there was no evidence at all. When the Committee
Speaker 1: was finished questioning rays attorney or Foreman, they came to
Speaker 1: the remarkable conclusion that nothing that Foreman said could be trusted.
Speaker 1: Did they then wonder, perhaps if Foreman was working for
Speaker 1: someone other than Ray when he pushed his way into
Speaker 1: the case. No, they just shrugged it off. When the
Speaker 1: Committee looked at Ray's exchange of one gun for another,
Speaker 1: they concluded correctly that the exchange almost certainly signaled the
Speaker 1: involvement of another person. Could that person have been the
Speaker 1: handler Raoul, As Ray said, it was no because they
Speaker 1: were set to find that Ray, acting alone, had killed King,
Speaker 1: So when evidence of another person appears, the next best
Speaker 1: thing was that maybe he had help from his brother
Speaker 1: that would keep it all in the family. Did they
Speaker 1: consider that the gun exchange might have been needed because
Speaker 1: the weapon was not to kill King, but merely needed
Speaker 1: to be the same caliber of the rifle that would
Speaker 1: kill King, so that Ray could then be tied to
Speaker 1: the murder. That was never considered. So even when they
Speaker 1: stumbled upon the truth, they couldn't see it for what
Speaker 1: it was because they were already married to the idea
Speaker 1: of Ray killing King. When the House Select Committee was formed,
Speaker 1: its stated purpose was to use the power and authority
Speaker 1: of the Congress to look into these crimes so that
Speaker 1: they could assure the American people that they had been
Speaker 1: properly investigated and that the citizens had been told the truth.
Speaker 1: So if that's the case, what is the need for
Speaker 1: executive sessions and secret files? Sessions and files that will
Speaker 1: only be opened after sixty years have passed since the murder.
Speaker 1: If then, because without a reliable inventory as to what
Speaker 1: is in the files, they can easily be cleansed before
Speaker 1: they are opened. The simple truth is, if James Earl Ray,
Speaker 1: acting alone had really murdered Martin Luther King, there would
Speaker 1: be no need for secret files coming up. On the
Speaker 1: final two episodes of the MLK tapes, mister Hut looked
Speaker 1: over and he says, John, I've just about had a
Speaker 1: bellyfull of the Kennedy boys. They both needed to go.
Speaker 1: He was for a McCarthys right wing vision of America.
Speaker 1: My aunt had been the victim of ja Egger Hoover,
Speaker 1: you know, lying to her. So the main focus of
Speaker 1: that meeting was really trying to figure out how to
Speaker 1: take down Martin Luther King. Hoover used to send in
Speaker 1: Tulson on a regular basis to meet with odkindy Odkin's
Speaker 1: family to Dixie Mafia people, the plan was to get
Speaker 1: King to the city because Tulson said that they wanted
Speaker 1: it handled in Memphis for dead and inm caate Hamlet.
Speaker 1: So apparently come now Mover. You know, I don't think
Speaker 1: why I was doing that on his own. I called
Speaker 1: him and I said, mister Hoover, I just got a
Speaker 1: telex message from our Memphis office said that Martin Luther
Speaker 1: King was shot while standing on a belt Kenny in
Speaker 1: that city, and his immediate reaction to me was is
Speaker 1: he dead? Thanks for listening to The MLK Tapes, a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV. This podcast is not
Speaker 1: specifically endorsed by the King Family or the King of State.
Speaker 1: The Email Ka Tapes is written and hosted by Bill Klaper.
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick and Alex Williams are executive producers on behalf
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio with producers Trevor Young and Jesse Fonk. Donald
Speaker 1: Albright and Payne Lindsay are executive producers on behalf of
Speaker 1: Tenderfoot TV with producers Jamie Albright and Meredith Steadman. Original
Speaker 1: music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Cover art by Mister
Speaker 1: Soul two one six with photography by Artemis Jenkins. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Owen Rosenbaum and Grace Royer at Uta, the
Speaker 1: Nor Group, Beck Median Marketing, Envisioned Business Management, and Station sixteen.
Speaker 1: If you have questions, you can visit our website, The
Speaker 1: email katapes dot com. We posted photos and videos related
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