>Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2000 00:52:40 -0500 (CDT)
>From: Grassroots Media Network <tta@mail.utexas.edu>
>Subject: King Family Rejects New Federal Whitewash of MLK Assassination
>
>King Family Rejects Conspiracy Rule
>
>ATLANTA (AP) -- The son of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. says his family
>plans no further
>action to try to uncover a conspiracy in his father's 1968 assassination,
>but they reject a Justice
>Department finding that there was no evidence of such a plot.
>
>''We are disappointed, but this is certainly not something we did not
>expect,'' Martin Luther King
>III said Friday after the Justice Department released results of an
>18-month investigation.
>
>As in four earlier investigations, Justice investigators ''found no
>reliable evidence that Dr. King was
>killed by conspirators who framed James Earl Ray,'' the 150-page report
>said. ''We found nothing
>to disturb the 1969 judicial determination that James Earl Ray murdered Dr.
>King.''
>
>The civil rights leader's son recalled that the family had sought an
>independent investigation,
>''because we do not believe that in such a politically sensitive matter the
>government is capable of
>investigating itself.''
>
>King told an Atlanta news conference that his family stands by a Memphis
>civil jury's ruling that
>Memphis bar owner Loyd Jowers and ''others, including government agencies''
>conspired to
>assassinate his father.
>
>But the new investigation found no credible evidence to support allegations
>in recent years from
>Jowers and former FBI agent Donald Wilson, and earlier from Ray himself,
>that a mysterious
>''Raoul'' -- later identified as ''Raul'' -- or others, including federal
>agents, police or black ministers,
>participated in a plot to kill King and frame Ray.
>
>The Justice Department recommended that no further investigation be conducted.
>
>''We are convinced of our conclusions beyond a reasonable doubt,'' said
>Barry Kowalski, head of
>the investigation and one of the Justice Department's leading civil rights
>prosecutors.
>
>In Smartt, Tenn., James Earl Ray's brother, Jerry, said, ''The American
>public and the King family
>believe James was innocent so it doesn't matter to me what the politicians
>say.''
>
>Although Ray pleaded guilty in 1969 to killing King, he claimed three days
>later -- and until his 1998
>death in prison -- that he was framed, an account dismissed by the report.
>
>Prodded by the King family's embrace of some conspiracy theories, Attorney
>General Janet Reno
>ordered the new probe Aug. 26, 1998, even though two Justice Department
>investigations, a U.S.
>House committee and the Shelby County, Tenn., district attorney's office
>previously studied the
>murder.
>
>In December, a Memphis civil court jury ruled for the King family in its
>wrongful death lawsuit
>against Jowers and concluded Jowers and ''others, including government
>agencies'' plotted to kill
>King. The new Justice Department probe also rejected those findings.
>
>In 1993, Jowers, who owned a tavern across the street from the motel where
>King was shot, said
>a produce dealer involved with the Mafia gave him $100,000 to hire an
>assassin and assured him
>Memphis police would not be around. Jowers claimed someone named Raoul gave
>him a gun and
>the assassin fired from behind Jowers' bar, not from a rooming house window
>above it where Ray
>had stayed.
>
>In many retellings, Jowers ''has contradicted himself on virtually every
>key point,'' the report said.
>No physical evidence corroborates Jowers' story, and some contradicts key
>elements, including
>the lack of footprints in the muddy ground behind the bar after the shooting.
>
>In 1998, ex-FBI agent Wilson claimed to have found papers 30 years earlier
>in Ray's abandoned
>Mustang in Atlanta. Before spurning immunity and ending his cooperation,
>Wilson turned over part
>of a page from a 1963 Dallas telephone directory and a piece of paper with
>handwritten words and
>numbers.
>
>The name ''Raul'' was handwritten on both papers. The phone directory scrap
>carried the
>handwritten 1963 phone number of the Dallas bar owned by Jack Ruby, who
>shot Lee Harvey
>Oswald, the assassin of President Kennedy. But Kowalski said, ''We don't
>believe the papers came
>from Ray's car.''
>
>Wilson's accounts were inconsistent, said Justice investigators, who also
>found contradictory
>evidence. Photos showed the Mustang door was closed and locked, not open as
>Wilson claimed.
>Ray did not confirm the papers were his. No one saw Wilson when the car was
>found; he is not in
>photos of the search.
>
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