Speaker 1: Welcome to the MLK Tapes, a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Tenderfoot TV. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast
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Speaker 2: It was about seven o'clock in the evening.
Speaker 3: I got a teletype. It was from the Memphis Field
Speaker 3: office and all it said was Martin Luther King has
Speaker 3: been shot while standing on a balcony in a hotel
Speaker 3: in Memphis. That was it. That was the whole message.
Speaker 3: And I called Hoover at home. I didn't want him
Speaker 3: to hear it over the news. I called him and
Speaker 3: I said, mister Hoover, I just got a telex message
Speaker 3: from our Memphis office said that Martin Luther King was
Speaker 3: shot while standing on a belcon in that city. And
Speaker 3: then there was this pause, and his reaction to me
Speaker 3: was is he dead?
Speaker 4: I called the Union Hall. I said, it's a matter
Speaker 4: of life and death.
Speaker 5: I said, I think these peoples are planning to kill
Speaker 5: doctor King.
Speaker 2: The authorities were parade, Oh, we found a gun that
Speaker 2: James o'ray bought in Birmingham that killed doctor King. Except
Speaker 2: it wasn't the gun that killed doctor King.
Speaker 6: James Lray was a pawn for the official story.
Speaker 7: From My Heart Radio and Tender for TV.
Speaker 8: The plan was to get King to the city because
Speaker 8: they wanted it handled in Memphis where Daddy and then
Speaker 8: could handle it.
Speaker 9: And I've lived with it so long, my searity, and
Speaker 9: they scared for me.
Speaker 4: The Lord told me, not the word. I've been wanting
Speaker 4: to tell it all my life.
Speaker 7: I'm Bill Cleeburgh. And this is the MLK tapes. In
Speaker 7: the nineteen sixties, as the FBI was making life as
Speaker 7: difficult as it could for Martin Luther King, its director
Speaker 7: j Edgar Hoover was living the sweet life in upscale
Speaker 7: restaurants and five star hotels, the Waldorf Astoria in New
Speaker 7: York and exclusive resorts in Florida and California. And Hoover
Speaker 7: didn't go to these places alone, and virtually every instance
Speaker 7: he was accompanied by his second in command, Clyde Tolson.
Speaker 7: So who was Toulson, when did he arrive and what
Speaker 7: was the deal there? To help with this, we recently
Speaker 7: spoke with author Philip Nelson, whose excellent book Who really
Speaker 7: killed Martin Luther King was published just three years ago.
Speaker 10: Clyde Tolson grew up in a small town in Missouri.
Speaker 10: After public schooling, he attended George Washington University, where he
Speaker 10: received a law degree in nineteen ten twenty seven. The
Speaker 10: next year, he applied for a job with the Bureau
Speaker 10: of Investigation, where j Edgar Hoover was boss. Apparently Hoover
Speaker 10: already knew Tulson. In any case, Toulson was hired, and
Speaker 10: only two years later, in nineteen thirty he rose to
Speaker 10: the position of assistant director of the Bureau, which became
Speaker 10: the FBI in nineteen thirty three, with Toulson as Hoover's
Speaker 10: number two, a position he held until Hoover died in
Speaker 10: nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 7: It is widely assumed that Hoover and Twlson were lovers
Speaker 7: for forty years. They lived in what appeared to be
Speaker 7: a spousal relationship. Tulson maintained an apartment near to where
Speaker 7: Hoover lived. The two men were driven to and from
Speaker 7: work every day in the same car, and they ate
Speaker 7: all their meals together.
Speaker 10: Hoover and Toulson had lunch every day in the reb
Speaker 10: room in the Mayflower Hotel. They didn't pay for their
Speaker 10: food or drinks For dinner. Most evenings they would eat
Speaker 10: at Harvey's Restaurant, where they were also comped at great
Speaker 10: expense to the owners, something that was never reported to
Speaker 10: the irs.
Speaker 7: And it wasn't just a workday relationship. For many years,
Speaker 7: Hoover and Tulson went on extended vacations together.
Speaker 10: In the winter, they would go for weeks at a
Speaker 10: time to the Gulf Stream Hotel in Miami, and in
Speaker 10: the summer it would be the Del Chro Hotel in California.
Speaker 10: At neither place did they pay for room or board.
Speaker 10: All travel, either by rail or by air, was built
Speaker 10: to their government expense account under the pretense that they
Speaker 10: were on official business inspecting FBI field offices, but they
Speaker 10: did nothing of the kind. Instead, they spent all of
Speaker 10: their time either at the local racetrack or lounging around
Speaker 10: the hotel swimming pool.
Speaker 7: The Delchara Hotel in La Jolla, California, where Hoover and
Speaker 7: Tulson went each summer, was a high end resort owned
Speaker 7: by oil barring Clint Murchison. To the history website Gibson's
Speaker 7: World Quote, the hotel was frequented by guests such as
Speaker 7: Mobsters Meyer, Lanski, Carlos Marcello, Johnny Rosselli, and Sam g
Speaker 7: and Kanna, along with politicos such as Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon,
Speaker 7: and Jay Edgar Hoover with his partner Clyde Tolson Murchison
Speaker 7: gained control of the nearby del Mar Racetrack, where Hoover
Speaker 7: was set up with his own private box. So the
Speaker 7: head of our National Police Force, who by reputation was
Speaker 7: the very personification of thrift and honesty, was in real
Speaker 7: life something entirely different. And while the FBI was good
Speaker 7: at chasing down bank robbers and carthieves, and quite keen
Speaker 7: on raising the alarm about communists said to be hiding
Speaker 7: in the chambers of government, it didn't do a thing
Speaker 7: against organized crime, which decade after decade, became a stronger
Speaker 7: force in the American landscape. One would have thought that
Speaker 7: the head of the National Police Force would have been
Speaker 7: eager to take on organized crime, but Hoover wasn't. Moreover,
Speaker 7: he said publicly that organized crime didn't really exist in America.
Speaker 7: What could be the explanation for this? According to Bill Pepper,
Speaker 7: Mobster Meyer Lanski, who was basically running things at the
Speaker 7: Gulfstream Hotel, was pulling the strings here.
Speaker 11: Meyer set that up. Meyer instructed Costello, who had a
Speaker 11: suite at the Waldorf Astoria as did Hoover, to go
Speaker 11: visit Hoover and to show him photographs of him in
Speaker 11: sexual activity with Tulsen and put the photographs on a
Speaker 11: table and say to him, well, you can have a
Speaker 11: wonderful life, Edgar, or we can release these. Well. Hoover,
Speaker 11: being the coward that he was, had no choice in
Speaker 11: his own mind. When Frank Costello confronted him and he
Speaker 11: agreed that he would do what they require, and what
Speaker 11: they required was that the mob didn't exist. He has
Speaker 11: sold out to them entirely.
Speaker 7: The story of Meyer Lansky bringing Hoover on board is
Speaker 7: best described in Anthony Summer's book The Secret Life of
Speaker 7: Jay Edgar Hoover. According to Summer's sources, Lansky had Hoover
Speaker 7: in its control because he had photographs of him engaging
Speaker 7: in sex with Tulson and other men. I don't know
Speaker 7: if this is true, but it's not an outrageous idea.
Speaker 7: As we heard earlier, Hoover was happy to bug every
Speaker 7: hotel room that Martin Luther King stayed in so how
Speaker 7: hard would it have been for someone to do that
Speaker 7: to him in the forties and fifties, when Hoover and
Speaker 7: Tulson were staying for extended periods of time without charge
Speaker 7: in mob connected hotels. Once Lansky or anyone else had
Speaker 7: those photographs, he would virtually own the director of the FBI.
Speaker 7: And there is little one who's actions over the years
Speaker 7: to say that wasn't the case. He just didn't go
Speaker 7: after the mob. To be sure, there are other possible
Speaker 7: reasons for Hoover's reluctance to act against organized crime. Arresting
Speaker 7: and convicting a mobster would be a lot more work
Speaker 7: than what was required to bring down a car thief.
Speaker 7: Mobsters could afford good lawyers, and when scary guys were
Speaker 7: put on trial, jurys were more likely to end up undecided,
Speaker 7: and Hoover was particularly proud of the Bureau's conviction rate.
Speaker 7: And along with that, it probably felt pretty good getting
Speaker 7: tips on horse races from people on the inside and
Speaker 7: hanging around the pool with film stars and gangsters, being
Speaker 7: treated like a celebrity and paying for none of it.
Speaker 7: Of course, the people offering the free stuff were most
Speaker 7: likely expecting something in return. So was Hoover being blackmailed
Speaker 7: or was he simply corrupted? And which is worse? Besides
Speaker 7: living the good life with Hoover when they were off duty,
Speaker 7: one might wonder what Tulson's responsibilities were inside the FBI
Speaker 7: as the second in command. Quite simply, it was to
Speaker 7: protect Hoover from any threat, real or imagined, that might
Speaker 7: arise within the bureau or without. Tulson was not only
Speaker 7: a second pair of eyes and ears. He had his
Speaker 7: own informants, a reputation for being mean, and he might
Speaker 7: end a man's career over nothing just to show others
Speaker 7: that he could do it. In short, he was Hoover's
Speaker 7: hatchet man, and everyone was afraid of him because he
Speaker 7: was sitting on the right hand of God. But beyond that,
Speaker 7: Tulson gave Hoover a way to get things done that
Speaker 7: didn't have to be recorded in an order or a memo.
Speaker 7: He could run important errands for Hoover, errands that were
Speaker 7: completely off the books. And it appears that's what Tulson
Speaker 7: was doing when he becomes part of our story by
Speaker 7: showing up in Memphis.
Speaker 8: The first time I met him was at Memphis Airport.
Speaker 8: But it was a little old wireporard, you know, I
Speaker 8: mean they didn't have seven forty seven was dropping in
Speaker 8: and all that, and we went on latter and picked
Speaker 8: him up the airport.
Speaker 7: In previous episodes, we have heard from Ronnie Lee Atkins,
Speaker 7: who was only sixteen years old when King was murdered.
Speaker 7: Atkins lived in Memphis and was privy to many discussions
Speaker 7: about the need to kill King because he was a
Speaker 7: son of Russell atkinsor the man who led many of
Speaker 7: these meetings. Atkins was a man of influence in Memphis,
Speaker 7: and beyond that, he had a special friend in Washington
Speaker 7: who would visit every so often.
Speaker 8: He was a big connection with Daddy. I mean he
Speaker 8: you know, he used Daddy and give Daddy money to
Speaker 8: do different things, you know, but he is there, you know,
Speaker 8: two or three times a year, maybe four or five.
Speaker 4: Times a year.
Speaker 8: Then hid Carl and you know, did he'd go get
Speaker 8: him and you know in the cab or. I almost
Speaker 8: told you call him uncle Clyde. I said, yes, I
Speaker 8: well from then on he was on Clyde.
Speaker 7: So who was this man who would fly in from Washington,
Speaker 7: the man who Ronnie Lee Atkins was told to call
Speaker 7: Uncle Clyde. It was Clyde Tolson, Hoover's second in command.
Speaker 4: This is Bill Pepper.
Speaker 11: Hoover used to send in Tolson on a regular basis
Speaker 11: to meet with Adkin. The Atkins family to Dixie Mafia people.
Speaker 11: Dixie Mafia people were junior cousins of the of the
Speaker 11: Marcello organization, but they worked together. They were closely. When
Speaker 11: Marchello might might not have wanted something to happen, but
Speaker 11: it had to happen, they would have used the Atkins
Speaker 11: family to do this. And what surprised me was of
Speaker 11: the extent to which he used Clyde Tolson, who was
Speaker 11: his number two, as the messenger.
Speaker 7: Always, for as long as Atkins could remember, Clyde Tolson
Speaker 7: would visit his house a couple times a year. When
Speaker 7: Atkins gave his deposition to Bill Pepper, he brought several
Speaker 7: backyard photographs of himself and Toulson, which you can check
Speaker 7: out on our website.
Speaker 8: Heyu is Clyde Lee and kid lived girl street.
Speaker 12: All right, Hian and you would have been how old here?
Speaker 4: Seven? Dumm? Yeah? Probably six seven?
Speaker 12: Okay, So this then would have been fifty eight or
Speaker 12: fifty nine yes, sir, photograph.
Speaker 7: What we learned from these photos is that Toulson and
Speaker 7: Ronnie Lee's father, Russell Senior, had a relationship that went
Speaker 7: back for years, and part of what would happen on
Speaker 7: some of these visits is that Toulson would bring cash
Speaker 7: money for Russell Senior to pass along to those on
Speaker 7: the off the books.
Speaker 8: Payroll came directly from Clyde Towson to my father's hand
Speaker 8: in a brown bag or a sup or kind of
Speaker 8: like a doctor's bag. I have saying Clyde Towlson open
Speaker 8: the bag up and pull his papers out and take
Speaker 8: the money out.
Speaker 4: And it was usually in a bag, you know, and
Speaker 4: they did.
Speaker 8: He'd open a sack up and pull the money out,
Speaker 8: and then they'd go to count, and then they'd both count. Yeah,
Speaker 8: I mean, you know they you know, one potato, two, potato, three,
Speaker 8: potato four.
Speaker 4: That's why they did it.
Speaker 7: Pepper then asked Atkins if he knew how much money
Speaker 7: changed hands.
Speaker 4: I had no idea.
Speaker 8: I always started saying, you know, a good chunk over, but
Speaker 8: it just didn't happen. I got allowance. It's pretty good, though,
Speaker 8: you know. I get some bedy washers and peanuts, and
Speaker 8: stuff when I.
Speaker 7: When I wanted so, Toulson would bring money to Atkins, who,
Speaker 7: as we discovered in an earlier episode, was a leader
Speaker 7: in the Dixie mafia. As Atkins said, Towlson would use
Speaker 7: his father and give his father money to do different things.
Speaker 7: This arrangement gave Hoover players on the board who were
Speaker 7: not g men and who could do things did not
Speaker 7: have to make reports. As Atkins would describe, there had
Speaker 7: often been talk about killing King at various plan and
Speaker 7: Meson meetings going back into the nineteen fifties, but after
Speaker 7: King's nineteen sixty three march on Washington and his awarded
Speaker 7: the Nobel Prize in nineteen sixty four, the talk took
Speaker 7: on a sense of urgency. More ideas were floated about
Speaker 7: how it could be done. And if you've come with
Speaker 7: us this far, you've heard how Ronnie Lee described the
Speaker 7: general plan. But we play his words here another time
Speaker 7: because they are important words.
Speaker 8: The plan was to disrupt the city because they was
Speaker 8: gonna get King to the city, because Tolsen said that
Speaker 8: they wanted it handled in Memphis for Daddy and M
Speaker 8: could handle it. Words specifically, Daddy and M could handle it.
Speaker 8: So the workers would get King to town. That's what
Speaker 8: it all boiled down to. And by getting him to town,
Speaker 8: then they was going to take care of him. So
Speaker 8: apparently come down from over Cloud was doing that on
Speaker 8: his own.
Speaker 7: So this was the deal as fourteen year old Ronnie
Speaker 7: Lee Atkins understood it. But the working relationship between Toulson
Speaker 7: and Russell Senior was derailed when Toulson suffered a stroke
Speaker 7: in nineteen sixty six and Atkins Senior died a year later.
Speaker 7: But according to Ronnie Lee, the plotting kept on under
Speaker 7: new leadership, the part of his father assumed by his
Speaker 7: thirty six year old half brother, Russell Junior, and the
Speaker 7: role of Toulson picked up by veteran FBI agent Frank Holloman,
Speaker 7: who would become the next head of fire and Police
Speaker 7: in Memphis just a few months before King was killed.
Speaker 7: What follows is Bill Pepper questioning Ronnie Lee Atkins, who
Speaker 7: was testifying under oath, with his lawyer Stephen Tolan sitting
Speaker 7: close by.
Speaker 12: We're into nineteen sixty eight. The guest sanitation workers strike hits, Yes,
Speaker 12: that is dead. Hey, your father's dead. Who's taken over
Speaker 12: the Russell Junior in Holloman so Russell Jr. And Frank
Speaker 12: Hollman are running as the assassination effort.
Speaker 4: Yes. Do you know how long your father knew Holloman?
Speaker 4: He knew Frank pretty good while.
Speaker 12: Is it possible because Holloman, of course ran Hoover's office
Speaker 12: and for a number of years. Yes, is it possible
Speaker 12: that Holloman introduced Tulson to your father?
Speaker 8: I think that Tulson introduced Frank to Daddy.
Speaker 4: I think guess how that happened. You think it worked
Speaker 4: the other way around.
Speaker 8: I think Tulson was the one that put Daddy with Frank.
Speaker 8: Of course, Frank run this office here for years.
Speaker 7: Frank Hollman had joined the FBI right out of law
Speaker 7: school in nineteen thirty seven. He worked hard and found
Speaker 7: favor with Director Hoover, and for seven years in the
Speaker 7: nineteen fifties was the man who ran Hoover's office in Washington.
Speaker 7: Then he left for important posts in the field, becoming
Speaker 7: the agent in charge in Atlanta and then continuing on
Speaker 7: the Memphis Which is what Atkins was referring to when
Speaker 7: he said he had run this office for years. And
Speaker 7: this is important because Frank Hollman was no stranger to Memphis.
Speaker 7: When he became the director of Fire and Police, he
Speaker 7: already knew who everybody was and what they were up to,
Speaker 7: and according to Atkins, Holloman was an important part of
Speaker 7: what they were up to.
Speaker 4: What was said anything significant? Senate then of the Frank
Speaker 4: Hollomantel Russell Jr.
Speaker 8: I want some bitch shot, shoot Asomo bitch in the
Speaker 8: mouth and say that our dead Birkery Baptist Church in
Speaker 8: a meeting.
Speaker 4: And do you remember when that meeting was?
Speaker 8: That was probably less than two weeks before they killed him.
Speaker 7: As we saw in the previous segment, in the week
Speaker 7: before King was killed, the FBI had composed a nasty
Speaker 7: article to be secretly released to friendly news outlets that
Speaker 7: attacked King for staying at a posh, white owned hotel
Speaker 7: in Memphis when there was a perfectly good black owned hotel,
Speaker 7: the Lorraine, where he could stay if he was willing
Speaker 7: to patronize black owned businesses as he was telling his
Speaker 7: followers to do. Why did the FBI care were King
Speaker 7: state in Memphis? This was an easy question for running
Speaker 7: the Yapkins.
Speaker 8: I think they had it set up for him to
Speaker 8: stay at the Lorraine ahead of time, because they were
Speaker 8: set up to work out at Jowler's this place.
Speaker 4: Now one or night they were going to hit him
Speaker 4: from the window. I don't know, I don't think so.
Speaker 8: I think they were going to try to hit him
Speaker 8: from the fire station at first, as far as old firemen,
Speaker 8: I know that they had some move My brother had
Speaker 8: talked to somebody and I think it was Holloman about
Speaker 8: having a moved. And I think it was Halloman. It
Speaker 8: came up with the idea, if there's a threat, if
Speaker 8: we can show some kind of a threat, we could
Speaker 8: have a mood. And I think that's what they used,
Speaker 8: was a threat.
Speaker 7: As Adkins relates, the first idea was to shoot King
Speaker 7: from some position at the firehouse, but even with the
Speaker 7: black fireman removed, there were too many people there to
Speaker 7: assure privacy at the back window. But the brush covered
Speaker 7: yard behind Jim's grill had promise. So who made the call?
Speaker 7: Atkins said it was his brother Russell Junior and Frank Holloman.
Speaker 8: Work came down to hitting him from behind the grill.
Speaker 8: I don't know if he ever was down there after that,
Speaker 8: but man, there was a ton of sh had back here,
Speaker 8: so it was the perfect place the angle wasn't right.
Speaker 4: They needed him up where he was level with him.
Speaker 7: At least the angle wasn't right, and that would explain
Speaker 7: the sudden need for a room change. King had been
Speaker 7: successfully booked into the rain motel, where ambush awaited, but
Speaker 7: he'd been booked into room two oh two, on the
Speaker 7: ground floor from the firehouse. A man standing outside Room
Speaker 7: too o two might have been a decent target, but
Speaker 7: not from the yard behind Jowers Grill. If the shooter
Speaker 7: were back far enough to be covered by the brush,
Speaker 7: the hill itself would hide the rooms on the ground floor.
Speaker 7: This problem was apparently recognized a day or so before
Speaker 7: King was to arrive, and there was a rushed effort
Speaker 7: to get King into another room, preferably on the second floor,
Speaker 7: across from the yard behind Jowers Grill.
Speaker 4: So there it is.
Speaker 7: King was moved to room three oh six. Martin Luther
Speaker 7: King was shot in Memphis at six in the evening.
Speaker 7: Almost instantly the news appeared on the FBI teletype, But
Speaker 7: in Washington it was a little after seven and most
Speaker 7: people had already left. But Paul Leturski, a young man
Speaker 7: who was serving is Hoover's personal assistant, was still there.
Speaker 7: He saw the teletype come in, ripped it from the machine,
Speaker 7: and headed for the phone.
Speaker 3: I called Hoover at home. I didn't want him to
Speaker 3: hear it over the news. I called him and I said,
Speaker 3: mister Hoover, I just got a telex message from our
Speaker 3: Memphis office said that Martin Luther King was shot while
Speaker 3: standing on a belt get in that city. And then
Speaker 3: there was this pause, and his immediate reaction to me
Speaker 3: was is he dead? And I said, I don't know.
Speaker 3: All I have is the fact that he was shot.
Speaker 3: And then I asked him if he would like me
Speaker 3: to connect him with the head of the Memphis office,
Speaker 3: and he said, yeah, do that. Then there was another
Speaker 3: slight delay, and he said to me, I hope the
Speaker 3: son of a bitch doesn't die, because if he does,
Speaker 3: they'll make a martyr on Those are his exact words,
Speaker 3: and I'll never forget it.
Speaker 7: So do Hoover's words upon hearing the news about King
Speaker 7: reveal anything to us. Paul Letursky, who just came out
Speaker 7: with a book about his years in the FBI titled
Speaker 7: The Director, was pretty clear with me that he thought
Speaker 7: Hoover's words should remove him from any suspicion about the murder.
Speaker 7: I was surprised because I didn't hear it that way.
Speaker 7: So I played the clip for a friend and he
Speaker 7: said something similar that a man who holps another man
Speaker 7: doesn't die, isn't the one we should suspect of killing him.
Speaker 7: That makes sense if you don't mind being overly literal
Speaker 7: with Hoover's words. See in another way, if Hoover had
Speaker 7: played any part in the killing of King, however passive,
Speaker 7: he would have had time to reflect on possible unfortunate
Speaker 7: side effects, such as even in death, King would best him,
Speaker 7: as he clearly has done. So. Of course, Hoover might
Speaker 7: say what he said about King becoming a martyr, but
Speaker 7: regardless of which way you think his words point, there
Speaker 7: can be no dispute about the hatred you can hear
Speaker 7: in them. At about the same time that Laturski was
Speaker 7: on the phone with his boss Hoover, John Currington was
Speaker 7: on the phone with his boss H. L.
Speaker 4: Hunt.
Speaker 6: Mister Hunt, he called me, I would say, within less
Speaker 6: than ten minutes after Martin Lucy King was killed there
Speaker 6: in Memphis. There and told me to call every radio
Speaker 6: station in the United States or everywhere that lifeline was broadcast.
Speaker 6: We were also in Mexico and at that time Hawaii
Speaker 6: and have them not to do the program on Martin
Speaker 6: Lucy King. We were doing a very derogatory series of
Speaker 6: stories on Martin Lucy King, most of which had come
Speaker 6: through jegg Or Hoover. Over a period of time of
Speaker 6: about two hours, we were able to call all the
Speaker 6: radio stations.
Speaker 7: As soon as Currington had accomplished this task, Hunt had
Speaker 7: another He wanted to go into hiding. His views on
Speaker 7: King were well known and he didn't feel safe in
Speaker 7: his home. He asked Carrington to arrange for travel and
Speaker 7: lodging under an assumed name. So under the names of
Speaker 7: mister and missus John Krrington, Hunt and his wife Ruth
Speaker 7: flew out to El Paso and checked into a hotel.
Speaker 7: But first thing Monday, a call came into Hunt's Dallas office,
Speaker 7: someone wanting to speak to the absent mister Hunt.
Speaker 6: Jaeger Hoover called, I'd say about nine or nine thirty
Speaker 6: on a Monday morning after the death of Martin Lucy
Speaker 6: King on Friday, and asked for mister Hunt, and the
Speaker 6: switchboard advised mister Hoover that miss Trump was out of
Speaker 6: town at that time. Mister Hunt asked our switchboard operator
Speaker 6: if John was in and for I know he never
Speaker 6: knew my last name, but anyway, I got on the
Speaker 6: phone and Hoover asked where mister Hunt was. I told him.
Speaker 6: He asked if I could get a hold of him
Speaker 6: and ask him if he would come to Washington. I
Speaker 6: told him yes I could.
Speaker 7: According to Currington, he called Hunt and told him that
Speaker 7: Hoover not only wanted to talk to him, but wanted
Speaker 7: to do the talking in person. Would Hunt travel to Washington?
Speaker 7: Hunt said yes, and Curington again made the reservations under
Speaker 7: another name. Hunt flew to Washington and stayed for a
Speaker 7: couple of days. In our previous episode, we heard attorney
Speaker 7: John Currington describe how one day out of the blue,
Speaker 7: he was selected to be H. L. Hunt's personal assistant,
Speaker 7: a position he held for twelve years. Hunt was an
Speaker 7: extremely wealthy Texas oilman, often called the richest man in America.
Speaker 7: As Currington tells us, Hunt was a longtime supporter of
Speaker 7: Lyndon Johnson and also had an ongoing alliance with jayag
Speaker 7: Good Hoover.
Speaker 6: Miss Hunt felt like he could do certain things for
Speaker 6: Jag or Hoover that Hoover couldn't do for himself. But
Speaker 6: more important, Miss Hunt believed that Jaeger Hoover could furnish
Speaker 6: him information that he could use in his business activities.
Speaker 7: What activities. As we've heard, mister Hunt produced a radio
Speaker 7: program called Lifeline that was designed to advance his rather
Speaker 7: extreme political views. It was only fifteen minutes in length,
Speaker 7: but a new show came out every day, six days
Speaker 7: a week, and was carried by over five hundred radio
Speaker 7: stations across the country.
Speaker 6: The program did a lot of derogatory comments on Martin
Speaker 6: Luther King. Edgar Hoover Camp a personal file on them,
Speaker 6: and we were privileged to a lot of that information
Speaker 6: in those files that was redrafted and rewritten and used
Speaker 6: in Lifeline programmed.
Speaker 7: As Curington would reveal, Hoover and Hunt would have brief
Speaker 7: conversations on the phone, maybe once a month. It was
Speaker 7: a romance of sorts. Hunt had wealth, Hoover had power,
Speaker 7: and they shared a deep hatred of Martin Luther King.
Speaker 7: According to Curington, Hunt felt sure that he could destroy
Speaker 7: King with his radio program.
Speaker 6: Mister Hunt was under the impression that the message against
Speaker 6: Martin Lucy King that Lifeline could deliver would eventually attract somebody,
Speaker 6: or some want or some group that would say that
Speaker 6: Martin Lucy King was removed from power.
Speaker 7: Hoover, according to Curington, was less certain than Hunt that
Speaker 7: Lifeline alone could achieve this, but he was willing to help.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 7: Jed Garoover, the nation's top lawman, broke the law continuously
Speaker 7: by secretly giving to Hunt material on King that Hunt
Speaker 7: could turn around and use on his radio programs. When
Speaker 7: President John Kennedy was murdered, Attorney General Robert Kennedy lost
Speaker 7: all control over the FBI and jaed Gar Hoover and
Speaker 7: the new President, Lyndon Johnson apparently had no desire to
Speaker 7: shield King from Hoover, though he and King time maintained
Speaker 7: an outwardly friendly relationship, but in private, Johnson's real feelings
Speaker 7: with Surface and Carrington was privy to some of it.
Speaker 6: I've never heard such now language as Linda Johnson used
Speaker 6: in describing his feeling for Martin Lucor King. So for
Speaker 6: the public, they were accepted as very close friends, all
Speaker 6: both looking out for each other. But I don't know
Speaker 6: of anybody that Linda Johnson had a more dislike for
Speaker 6: than Martin Lucor King, and the same thing with Jaigar Hoover.
Speaker 7: When Hoover invited Hunt to come to Washington right after
Speaker 7: King had been killed, it allowed for more private and
Speaker 7: personal conversations than either man was willing to have on
Speaker 7: the phone. Carrington wasn't privy to any of that.
Speaker 6: I have no worse the idea of what they talked about,
Speaker 6: but I believe that Jayacker, Hoover, X L. Hunt, and
Speaker 6: Linda Johnson were putting themselves into a holding past and
Speaker 6: were if anything did surface that would suggest they had
Speaker 6: advanced knowledge of this, they wanted to have as clean
Speaker 6: a pass as possible.
Speaker 7: Of course, a totally clean path was hard to be
Speaker 7: certain of because the alleged killer of doctor King had
Speaker 7: not been captured, and no one could be sure what
Speaker 7: he might reveal once he was, assuming he was captured alive.
Speaker 7: At that time, H. L. Hunt and Jo Savillo, the
Speaker 7: powerful mafia boss, both lived in Dallas. The two men
Speaker 7: were not what you would call friends, but they shared
Speaker 7: a respect, stayed out of each other's business, and once
Speaker 7: in a while might meet at Sivillo's place out at
Speaker 7: the airport, where, according to Carrington, Savilla might offer a
Speaker 7: short lesson on how to get away with murder.
Speaker 6: Savello's in comments to Missus Hunt told him that, you know,
Speaker 6: hiring somebody to kill someone was no problem at all,
Speaker 6: but immediately after that killing was done, you either had
Speaker 6: to one destroy the person who did to kill him,
Speaker 6: or if the may god indicted, you had to make
Speaker 6: a rationalist if that man played guilty, so he could
Speaker 6: not testify an open court as to what he knew
Speaker 6: or did not know on a protecular crime.
Speaker 7: There Two months after King's murder, James Earl Ray was
Speaker 7: captured in London. He was brought to Memphis, where he
Speaker 7: was held in communicado for eight months. Exactly what you
Speaker 7: would do if you were not sure what the man
Speaker 7: might say if allowed to speak in public. But if
Speaker 7: others were involved in the killing the King, it would
Speaker 7: appear that Ray did not pose a danger at least
Speaker 7: as far as telling secrets, because he didn't know much.
Speaker 7: But Ray did pose a danger because if he went
Speaker 7: to trial, the evidence would have to bear up under
Speaker 7: examination and the case against him might fall apart, as
Speaker 7: his first attorney, Arthur Haines, thought it would, and who
Speaker 7: knew what other witnesses might appear and what they might
Speaker 7: have to say. And if Ray were found not guilty,
Speaker 7: or worse still, if the case against him were shown
Speaker 7: to be a sham, where would that, Jay ar Hoover
Speaker 7: in the vaunted FBI, who would run the investigation if
Speaker 7: Ray had been set up, who had done the setting up,
Speaker 7: who had allowed them to do it, and who had
Speaker 7: accepted and promoted the phony evidence. These questions threatened to
Speaker 7: absolutely destroy Jade car Hoover again.
Speaker 6: John Carrington, Hoover and Johnson and mister Hunt all shared
Speaker 6: the same view that if James Arrol Ray should go
Speaker 6: to trial, he could throw everybody out of the boat
Speaker 6: that was volating around out in the ocean there. So
Speaker 6: I think, in the opinion of Jaegar Hoover, Lend Johnson
Speaker 6: hl Hunt, that it was necessary for James Earl Ray
Speaker 6: to play guilty to that work, none of his testimony
Speaker 6: would be made public.
Speaker 7: According to John Carrington, Hoover and Hunt were on the
Speaker 7: phone more often after Ray had been captured. The door
Speaker 7: between Carrington's office and Hunt's office was always open at
Speaker 7: Hunt's assistance, So there wasn't much that happened in that
Speaker 7: office that John Currington wasn't privy to one afternoon. According
Speaker 7: to Currington, after Hoover had been on the phone with Hunt,
Speaker 7: Kurrington was called into Hunt's office, whereupon Hunt made another
Speaker 7: phone call.
Speaker 6: Mister h called Percy Foreman one day and he told
Speaker 6: mister Foreman that he had a young lawyer in his office,
Speaker 6: said it'd come up with a lot of ideas as
Speaker 6: to why James row Ray should enter a guilty plea
Speaker 6: in the killing of Martin Lucy King. And the young
Speaker 6: lawyer was myself, and he asked if I came to Houston,
Speaker 6: would Percy Foreman visit with me and go over the
Speaker 6: series and I had jotted down and Percy Foreman agreed
Speaker 6: to do that. I left the next morning.
Speaker 7: Kurrington made the quick flight from Dallas to Houston, took
Speaker 7: a cab from the airport, and arrived at Foreman's office.
Speaker 7: He was not empty handed.
Speaker 6: I had a briefcase with a one hundred and twenty
Speaker 6: five thousand dollars cash in it. Mixter Foreman and I
Speaker 6: probably exchange a few pleasures for two or three minutes,
Speaker 6: and I just simply stated to him that had jotted
Speaker 6: down one hundred and twenty five thousand raisers why James
Speaker 6: Row Ray should plead guilty to Keillan Martin Lucy King,
Speaker 6: and would like to leave those reasons with him and
Speaker 6: Percy Foreman without any comment, say just leave you a briefcase.
Speaker 6: That was the extent of our conversation.
Speaker 7: Currington would say that the lack of any questions or
Speaker 7: conversation on the part of Percy Foreman felt spooky to him.
Speaker 7: He left Foreman's office feeling that this was a deal
Speaker 7: that had been set up will in advance.
Speaker 6: If I were just making an editorial type of comment.
Speaker 6: In my opinion, I believe that Jay Hoover himself would
Speaker 6: have made a call to Percy Foreman and told him
Speaker 6: what was fiction.
Speaker 4: To have with.
Speaker 7: This is a stunning story. According to Curington, he brings
Speaker 7: one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars to Foreman in
Speaker 7: exchange for the promise that Ray will plead guilty. What
Speaker 7: reasons do we have for believing him?
Speaker 3: First?
Speaker 7: It would go a long way to explaining Foreman's strange
Speaker 7: conduct toward Ray, pushing his way into the case and
Speaker 7: forcing out a pair of lawyers who were preparing an
Speaker 7: affirmative defensive Ray then doing nothing on Race behalf and
Speaker 7: finally putting Ray under extraordinary pressure to plead guilty while
Speaker 7: publicly pretending that was always the plan. And if that
Speaker 7: were not enough, Foreman then puts his name to an
Speaker 7: article in a national magazine assigning nasty, untrue motives for
Speaker 7: Ray in regards to the murder, such as what he
Speaker 7: was really trying to do was start a race war.
Speaker 7: At every turn, Percy Foreman seems to be acting in
Speaker 7: the interest of someone off stage. Would Foreman really take
Speaker 7: money and betray a client by secretly working for the
Speaker 7: other side, Well, as we heard in episode four, Foreman
Speaker 7: did that very thing. Just a few years after the
Speaker 7: King murder. Foreman signed up a client who had a
Speaker 7: conflict with Bunker and Herbert Hunt, the sons of H. L. Hunt,
Speaker 7: and then approached the Hunts and took one hundred thousand
Speaker 7: dollars from them in return forgetting his client to do
Speaker 7: what the Hunts wanted. Is all laid out in a
Speaker 7: federal indictment. So I think we now know how it
Speaker 7: was that James Olray put in a plea of guilty
Speaker 7: when he really wanted to go to trial. It was arranged,
Speaker 7: paid for, he was forced into it. Foreman was simply
Speaker 7: not going to defend him. And the chief beneficiary of
Speaker 7: all that was j Edgar Hoover. He was the one
Speaker 7: on the hook if the trial of James Olray took
Speaker 7: a bad turn. In nineteen twenty four, j at Gar Hoover,
Speaker 7: at the age of twenty nine, became the first head
Speaker 7: of the Bureau of Investigation, which later became the FBI,
Speaker 7: and he was still director of the FBI when he
Speaker 7: died in nineteen seventy two. He had seen presidents come
Speaker 7: and go, and he had used his office to collect
Speaker 7: information on just about every one, which made him the
Speaker 7: most feared man in America, unless, of course, you were
Speaker 7: with a mob. Though many wanted to, no president dared
Speaker 7: to replace the man. It was only after Hoover died
Speaker 7: that the Senate Church Committee was formed to investigate what
Speaker 7: they would call quote the criminal abuse of power by
Speaker 7: the FBI. Two years later, Lewis Stokes, chairman of the
Speaker 7: House Select Committee looking into the assassination of Martin Luther King,
Speaker 7: read a statement of his own into the record that
Speaker 7: took the FBI's conduct to the very edge of murder.
Speaker 9: Should the Committee take special note that the conduct of
Speaker 9: the FBI in this conspiracy of harassment of doctor King
Speaker 9: was not only unjustified as policy, it was also illegal
Speaker 9: and unconstitutional. Did the conduct of the FBI contribute in
Speaker 9: any significant degree to the sequence of events that occurred
Speaker 9: in Memphis and led to doctor King's death?
Speaker 7: In the MLK tapes, we have attempted to answer that
Speaker 7: question by presenting the stories of people who have told
Speaker 7: what they knew about the murder of Martin Luther King.
Speaker 7: No one had a complete picture. Each person only knew
Speaker 7: what he or she saw, heard, or did. We heard
Speaker 7: from Police Captain Jerry Williams, whose all black security detail
Speaker 7: was not called to protect King on his final visit
Speaker 7: to Memphis. Fire Captain Carthel Whedon, who on the day
Speaker 7: of the murder brought men with cameras and fancy id
Speaker 7: up to the roof of the firehouse. Attorney ur Haines,
Speaker 7: who had a witness who saw the package with a
Speaker 7: rifle placed on the street minutes before the shooting. Judge
Speaker 7: Joe Brown, who offered hard reasons why that rifle could
Speaker 7: not have been the murder weapon. Detective Barry Linvill who
Speaker 7: saw a bullet in near perfect condition removed from the
Speaker 7: body of King, something that in no way resembled the
Speaker 7: pieces of lead the FBI would later offer as the
Speaker 7: death's luck. Ronnie Lee Atkins, who told us how the
Speaker 7: shot was fired from the yard behind the grille where
Speaker 7: there was plenty of cover. Betty Spates who saw a
Speaker 7: smoking gun brought in from that yard, and a lot
Speaker 7: of others with similar stories that did not fit with
Speaker 7: the official version of the crime. But even collectively, their
Speaker 7: testimony doesn't tell everything. Each is only a tile in
Speaker 7: the mosaic, and when they are all in place, the
Speaker 7: image is still incomplete. We don't know all the actors
Speaker 7: and the roles they played, but if you step back
Speaker 7: and look at the mosaic, you can see a picture.
Speaker 7: The murder of doctor Martin Luther King was a planned event,
Speaker 7: and that fact was covered up by the people who
Speaker 7: were in charge of investigating the crime. And when it
Speaker 7: appeared that Rai's attorneys were really going to fight the
Speaker 7: charge in court and call into question the shaky evidence,
Speaker 7: something had to be done. So Percy Foreman was sent
Speaker 7: in at the last moment to rest the case away
Speaker 7: from Rai's attorneys and force a plea of guilty, which
Speaker 7: is precisely what he did and what he was paid
Speaker 7: to do. The evidence of this is overwhelming. As a nation,
Speaker 7: we choose what we want to remember. Each year, on
Speaker 7: the third Monday of January, we celebrate the birth of
Speaker 7: doctor Martin Luther King with a national holiday that bears
Speaker 7: his name. Newspapers and magazines publish flattering portraits and gush
Speaker 7: about what a great man he was, conveniently forgetting the
Speaker 7: awful things they said about him after he spoke against
Speaker 7: the war. Now they remember him not as the traitor
Speaker 7: they once denounced, but as an American saint. But they
Speaker 7: never ask questions about how he died, and their pages
Speaker 7: are used to shout down anyone who does. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 7: man who used his public position to take massive bribes,
Speaker 7: who every day violated the law he was sworn to uphold,
Speaker 7: the man who tried to destroy King at every turn
Speaker 7: and finally helped to arrange his death, that man has
Speaker 7: a granite faced building named in his honor in our
Speaker 7: nation's capital. For Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio, I'm Bill Klaber
Speaker 7: and this has been the MLK types.
Speaker 5: Thanks for listening to the MLK tapes. A production of
Speaker 5: iHeart Radio and Tenderfoot TV. This podcast is not specifically
Speaker 5: endorsed by the King Family or the King of State.
Speaker 1: The MLK Tapes is written.
Speaker 5: And hosted by Bill Claper. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams
Speaker 5: are executive producers on behalf of iHeart Radio with producers
Speaker 5: Trevor Young and Jesse Phone. Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay
Speaker 5: are executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV with producers
Speaker 5: Jamie Albright and Meredith Stedman. Original music by Makeup in
Speaker 5: Vanity Set, cover art by Mister Soul to One with
Speaker 5: photography by Artemis Jenkins. Special thanks to Owin Rosenbaum and
Speaker 5: Grace Royer at UTA, the Nord Group, Beck Median Marketing,
Speaker 5: Envision Business Management, and Station sixteen. If you have questions,
Speaker 5: you can visit our website, the emailktapes dot com. We
Speaker 5: posted photos and videos related to the podcast on our
Speaker 5: social media accounts.
Speaker 1: You can check them out at the emailk Tapes.
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