1184
THE CIRCUIT COURT OF SHELBY COUNTY, TENNESSEE
THIRTIETH JUDICIAL DISTRICT AT MEMPHIS
_______________________________________________
CORETTA SCOTT KING, MARTIN
LUTHER KING, III, BERNICE KING,
DEXTER SCOTT KING and YOLANDA KING,
Plaintiffs,
Vs. Case No. 97242-4 T.D.
LOYD JOWERS and OTHER
UNKNOWN CO-CONSPIRATORS,
Defendants.
_______________________________________________
PROCEEDINGS
November 30th, 1999
VOLUME IX
_______________________________________________
Before the Honorable James E. Swearengen,
Division 4, Judge presiding.
_______________________________________________
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI,
RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
COURT REPORTERS
Suite 2200, One Commerce Square
Memphis, Tennessee 38103
(901) 529-1999
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1185
- APPEARANCES -
For the Plaintiffs:
MR. WILLIAM PEPPER
Attorney at Law
575 Madison Avenue, Suite 1006
New York, New York 10022
(212) 605-0515
For the Defendant:
MR. LEWIS K. GARRISON, Sr.
Attorney at Law
100 North Main Street, Suite 1025
Memphis, Tennessee 38103
(901) 527-6445
Reported by:
MS. MARGIE J. ROUTHEAUX
Registered Professional Reporter
Daniel, Dillinger, Dominski,
Richberger & Weatherford
2200 One Commerce Square
Memphis, Tennessee 38103
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1186
- INDEX -
WITNESS: PAGE NUMBER
JACK KERSHAW
Direct Examination
By Mr. Pepper --------------- 1188
Cross-Examination
By Mr. Garrison ------------- 1196
JACK TERREL
(By Video)
Direct Examination
By Mr. Pepper --------------- 1198
LOUIS WARD
Direct Examination
By Mr. Pepper --------------- 1234
Cross-Examination
By Mr. Garrison ------------- 1256
Redirect Examination
By Mr. Pepper --------------- 1257
RAYMOND KOHLMAN
Direct Examination
By Mr. Pepper --------------- 1258
EARL CALDWELL
(By Video)
Direct Examination
By Mr. Pepper --------------- 1265
Cross-Examination
By Mr. Ewing ---------------- 1267
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1187
- INDEX CONTINUED -
WITNESS: PAGE NUMBER
ROY GRABOW
Direct Examination
By Mr. Pepper --------------- 1271
Cross-Examination
By Mr. Garrison ------------- 1290
JOHN C. SMITH
Direct Examination
By Mr. Pepper --------------- 1292
WILLIAM SCHAAP
Direct Examination
By Mr. Pepper --------------- 1299
TRIAL EXHIBITS
24 --------------- 1265 (Collective)
25 --------------- 1271
26 --------------- 1275
27 --------------- 1286
28 --------------- 1304
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1188
P R O C E E D I N G S
(November 30th, 1999, 10:35 a.m.)
THE COURT: Are we ready for the
jury?
MR. GARRISON: Your Honor, may
we approach the bench before we start?
THE COURT: Okay. Come on up.
(Whereupon a Bench Conference
was had.)
THE COURT: Bring the jury out,
please.
THE SHERIFF: Yes, sir.
(Jury in.)
THE COURT: Good morning, Ladies
and Gentlemen. I see you scratching on the
door, ready to go. All right. Would you
please call your first witness, Mr. Pepper.
MR. PEPPER: Yes, Your Honor.
Your Honor, plaintiffs call Mr. Jack
Kershaw.
JACK KERSHAW,
Having been first duly sworn, was examined
and testified as follows:
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER:
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1189
Q. Morning, Mr. Kershaw.
A. Good morning.
Q. Thank you for joining us this
morning. I know you had some medical
problems, and it's -- it's an effort on your
part and we're grateful to you.
A. One eye's better than none.
Q. Would you please state for the record
your full name and address.
A. Jack Kershaw, K E R S H A W,
Nashville, Tennessee, member of the Nashville
Bar. The street address is 3616 Doge. The
zip is 37204.
Q. Mr. Kershaw, how long have you been a
practicing attorney?
A. Since '61.
Q. And have you practiced throughout
that period of time in the State of
Tennessee?
A. Yes.
Q. Have you lived in Nashville
throughout that period of time?
A. Yes.
Q. And did you at one time come to
represent James Earl Ray?
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1190
A. Yes, I did.
Q. When did you begin to represent
Mr. Ray?
A. About the spring of '77 on the
occasion of the Congressional Committee
investigation of his case.
Q. And in the course of that
representation of Mr. Ray, did you consult
with him many times?
A. Oh, frequently.
Q. And at one point in time were you
asked -- not by Mr. Ray but by someone
else -- to have a meeting with an author,
William Bradford Huie?
A. That would have been in the summer of
'77, my best recollection. I received a
call from some official at Thomas Nelson
Publishing Company that William Bradford
Huie, a writer for Look Magazine, would like
to meet with me about an unrevealed
question. And I told him I'd be glad to.
And I appeared at the conference room at the
publishing company in due course and met with
Mr. Huie.
Q. And at that time that you met with
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1191
Author Huie, you were representing James Earl
Ray?
A. Yes, that is correct.
Q. And he was aware of that?
A. Oh, yes.
Q. Now, flashing back a bit, had Author
Huie published articles on this case prior to
your meeting with him?
A. Yes. Not too long after the event,
Mr. Huie published two or three stories for
Look Magazine in which he promised to reveal
the true assassin of Martin Luther King. His
fourth article did a turn about. Instead of
revealing a conspiracy and the identity of a
mysterious assassin, he laid it all on James
Earl Ray.
Q. Which he had not done in his -- in
his previous articles?
A. It was an absolute change of face.
It was a flip-flop.
Q. Now, did you go to the Nelson
Publishing Company in Nashville and meet with
Mr. Huie?
A. Yes.
Q. And where did you meet with him in
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1192
that publishing company?
A. In the conference room of the
publishing company.
Q. And who was present at that meeting?
A. I, of course, and Mr. Huie, and
Mr. Huie was accompanied by a couple of young
men who I did not recognize and a couple
other young men who were obviously junior
vice president or something or other of the
Thomas Nelson Publishing Company.
Q. But the people who you did not
recognize with Mr. Huie at that meeting, did
they identify themselves to you?
A. No.
Q. They didn't?
A. No.
Q. Is that unusual to participate in a
meeting and others there do not identify
themselves to you?
A. Well, the whole thing was unusual
without any proper procedure.
Q. And what took place at that meeting?
What was the purpose of Mr. Huie requesting
you to meet with him?
A. He offered a sum of money for James
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1193
Earl Ray's story, quote, unquote. And I
asked him, what story did he want? That
Mr. Ray was telling his story every week
before the Congressional Committee. And
Mr. Huie informed me that the story he
referred to was how he killed by himself --
he and he alone killed -- shot and killed
Martin Luther King.
Q. So this writer, William Bradford
Huie, wanted a story -- the story from James
Earl Ray of how he, acting alone, killed
Martin Luther King?
A. That's right.
Q. And he was prepared to pay a sum of
money for that story?
A. Yes. He offered $25,000 for that
story. And I immediately asked him, what
good is the money going to do this man? He's
in the penitentiary. And Mr. Huie said,
well, we'll get him on pardon immediately.
Q. So Mr. Ray would tell the story,
admit his guilt, he would be given a sum of
money and he would be given a pardon?
A. That was Mr. Huie's message to me.
Q. How did Mr. Huie -- did he indicate
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1194
at all how he was going to arrange this
pardon?
A. Well, I asked him a little bit about
that, and he never revealed his source of
influence with the governor.
Q. But he seemed confident he could
arrange a pardon?
A. Oh, yes, he was very confident. I
suggested that he arrange the pardon before
the story, but he didn't agree to that.
Q. That didn't go over very well. Of
course, Mr. Ray was on detainer from the
State of Missouri at the time. Did he say he
could arrange a pardon from the State of
Missouri as well?
A. That subject didn't come up. One
pardon presumably would be enough.
Q. I see. And this was all at the time
when the Congressional Committee was
investigating the case?
A. Yes.
Q. Well, Mr. Kershaw, did you, as James
Earl Ray's attorney, take this offer to
Mr. Ray in prison?
A. Yes. When the meeting came to a
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1195
close, I rose and addressed Mr. Huie and I
told him that I would be glad to take his
offer to Mr. Ray, but that it seemed to me
that his very presence here in this
conference room contradicted his mission.
That his presence here indicated to me that
there was probably a rich and powerful man
behind the scenes who had instructed a rich
and powerful and gifted writer to make
overtures to get a certain story. And that
in brief, his proposition for a lone madman
killer clearly indicated a conspiracy.
Q. What did Mr. Huie reply to that?
A. He turned as red as a proverbial beet
and managed to say nothing. He was a
sandy-haired, red-faced little man to begin
with. And he never answered.
Q. And you then left. Did you
eventually take this offer to Mr. Ray?
A. Yes, I did. I was very interested to
see what his reaction would be.
Q. And what was Mr. Ray's reaction?
A. He didn't want any part of it.
Q. So he turned it down?
A. That's right.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1196
Q. He turned it down flat. Did you ever
hear anything more about this offer or --
A. I never heard further from Mr. Huie.
MR. PEPPER: That's fine,
Mr. Kershaw. Thank you very much.
THE WITNESS: All right.
MR. PEPPER: Nothing further.
CROSS-EXAMINATION
BY MR. GARRISON:
Q. Mr. Kershaw, let me ask you a
question. It appears you and I started
practicing law the same year, 1961. Isn't it
true that Mr. Huie later said that he had
investigated this and talked to a number of
witnesses and he had come to the conclusion
that Mr. Ray acted alone in this
assassination? Isn't that what he later
said?
A. I'm sorry. Could you repeat that.
Q. Yes, sir. Isn't it true that
Mr. Huie later said that he had talked to a
number of witnesses, including Mr. Ray, and
he concluded that Mr. Ray acted alone? Isn't
that what he later said publicly?
A. I don't recall any such statement
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1197
from Mr. Huie.
Q. Did you ever have any further meeting
with him after this time?
A. No.
MR. GARRISON: That's all.
Thank you.
THE COURT: All right, sir. You
may stand down now.
THE WITNESS: Thank you.
(Witness excused.)
MR. PEPPER: Your Honor,
plaintiffs have been holding off on the
testimony of a couple of witnesses hoping
that they could be brought here and be
available to the Court. And it appears that
in the lateness of the hour, in terms of
plaintiffs' case, that that's not going to be
possible for one reason or another, which I'm
glad to explain to the Court.
So we'll have to proceed with the
video deposition of the first one. This
first witness is dying of liver cancer, and
he has at various times been up and about.
He's hemorrhaged rather badly in the last
week and is bed ridden. He desperately did
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1198
want to come here. But anticipating this
problem, he was deposed in Orlando, Florida,
some time ago.
So with the Court's permission, we
would like to play that -- that first video
deposition.
THE COURT: All right. You
may.
MR. PEPPER: The name of the
witness, Your Honor, is Mr. Jack Terrel,
T E R R E L.
(Whereupon the afore-mentioned
video deposition was played for the Court and
Jury.)
(Transcript from video tape
testimony follows.)
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Will the
court reporter please swear in the witness.
JACK TERREL,
Having been first duly sworn, was examined
and testified as follows:
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER:
Q. Could you state your full name and --
and address for the record, please, Jack.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1199
A. My name is Jack R. Terrel. I live at
1044 Cascade Way in Apopka, Florida 22703.
Q. Jack, will you tell us when you were
born and where you were born.
A. I was born April 13, 1941, in
Birmingham, Alabama.
Q. And you -- could you describe for us
now the current state of your health.
A. At the present time I'm suffering
from terminal liver disease as a result of
Hepatitis C contract -- contracted in Burma
about ten years ago.
Q. And how far progressed is the disease
and what is -- what is the prognosis for you?
A. Without a liver, I will not see
Christmas.
Q. You will not see this Christmas --
A. No.
Q. -- 1999?
A. 1999, no.
Q. Let me thank you for coming here
under these circumstances and making --
A. No problem.
Q. -- yourself available, Jack. I'm
very grateful to you. If we could go a bit
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1200
into your background. Was there a time when
you joined an organization called the
Civilian Military Assistance?
A. Yes, there was. I joined the CMA in
1984.
Q. And what was the nature of that
organization? What was their involvement?
A. At the time they were supplying
everything from arms and ammunition to
military software to the Contra Rebels in
Honduras.
Q. And is that a part of the operation
to try to overthrow the -- the government of
Nicaragua?
A. Correct. They were working hand in
hand with the FDN, which at that time was
headed by Adolpho Calero.
Q. Who was the authority behind that
organization and who created it?
A. The Central Intelligence Agency. It
was created by -- it has a history that goes
back to the early 80's when the Sandanistas,
which were at that time backed by the United
States Government, were launching attacks
from Costa Rica and Nicaragua to overthrow
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1201
the Somoza government, Daniel Ortega and his
troops under the Sandanista banner.
And once he declared communism as
their form of government, the CIA assigned
the regional chief of operations, Duane
Claridge, which people also know as Duey
Claridge or Duey Maroni, which was his nom
deguerre, to go to Nicaragua and commence
militarily bringing down the government. And
he was given 250 million dollars to do it
with.
Q. What was the status of these
operations with respect to the law of the
United States at that time?
A. In the beginning it was unknown to
most U.S. Government officials outside of few
people in the Senate Oversight Committee,
until William Casey approved the mining of
the harbors in Managua which were
subsequently hit by three Soviet vessels.
And the hot line lit up in the White House,
and Ronald Reagan was sort of caught off
guard. And he went down the chain, what's
happening?
And it leaked to the Congressional
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1202
Oversight Committee, and they went
ballistic. And a Congressman by the name of
Bolen floored a bill to create what is now
known as the Bolen Amendment. It was tacked
onto another bill which in essence said that
no aid, whether it be bandaids, bullets,
anything, was to go from the United States --
either militarily or civilian or charitable
or anything else -- to aid the Contra Rebels
in this supposedly overthrow.
Q. At the time -- so at the time you
were involved, the Bolen Amendment was in
effect?
A. Correct.
Q. And were the operations that you
observed in violation -- from what you could
see in violation of that amendment?
A. Directly in violation because we were
shipping arms and ammunition to the Contras.
Q. Right. In a book that you've --
you've written, Jack, about -- that recounts
some of these events -- a book called
Disposable Patriot --
A. Right.
Q. -- you referred to a pool of talent
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1203
that is drawn upon for these types of
plausibly deniable operations.
A. Mm-hum.
Q. Would you just elaborate on what
that -- what that phrase means. What is the
pool of talent you're referring to?
A. Well, you have to go back in the
Central Intelligence Agency -- all the way
back to Stansfield Turner. When Jimmy Carter
appointed Stansfield Turner the head of the
CIA, he immediately cut loose over 1,500
field agents and black operatives in various
countries, this country, working within the
military or whatever.
When Casey took the helm of the CIA,
he not only brought back these people in
black operations, he also enlisted through
Fort Bragg special operations called JSOA.
It was called Joint Special Operations Agency
which had a door in the Pentagon, but behind
that door was an empty office.
At Fort Bragg it was called JSOC,
Joint Operations Command, which was supposed
to be members of the Marines, Army and Air
Force working together in black operations.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1204
But in realty it was reserve units that were
not only in place but some that were created
to carry out certain operations.
But some of the older reserves went
back into the 70's and into the 60's post
Vietnam that were operating in various parts
of the country. And, actually, nobody knew
they existed because they trained in rural
remote states. But when they would carry out
operations, it would be in civilian clothing.
Q. Was one of those reserves units,
perhaps the largest, the 20th Special Forces
Group?
A. The 20th Special Forces Group,
correct. It operated in a five-prong
situation throughout the south in Louisiana,
Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas.
Q. Right. And so it was from the 20th
Special Forces Group as well as the other
sources that these -- that these -- this
talent was drawn --
A. Correct.
Q. -- for these kinds of operations.
A. They either used the reserves whom
they could command, or they had an ancillary
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1205
that through the reserves they could bring in
civilian black operatives to work with
reserves -- with the -- the 20th Special
Forces and the Night Stalkers at Fort
Campbell, things of -- people in groups of
this nature. So it was -- it was very fluid
and involved thousands of people.
Q. Okay. Now, what was your role in the
CI -- CMA operations in Latin America?
A. I was actually placed into the CMA by
Donald Fortier, who was with the National
Security Council, as the eyes and ears for
the National Security Council within a
civilian organization to see that the
mandates that were being passed through from
CIA to NSC be carried out in Central America.
Q. And when -- when you were placed into
the CMA operations, what was -- what was your
role? What were you -- what were you
expected to do?
A. Well, I was working as a contractor
for the Central Intelligence Agency. And I
was to not only be the eyes and ears but also
eventually head the organization and -- and
to carry out the orders that we have received
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1206
from -- anything from assassinations to
ground infiltrations to sabotage.
In fact, we had an operation
called -- our primary responsibility --
Pegasus, which in Spanish is Pagasso, which
we had targeted on a feeding-style project
from Vietnam to go in and take out the
infrastructure physically and personnel wise,
meaning in the directorate of the Sandanistas
assassinate these people to overthrow the
government.
Q. Now, if you were placed in this
organization by a member -- a high-ranking
member of the National Security Council --
A. Mm-hum.
Q. -- is it conceivable -- and the
National Security Council reported directly
to the president of the United States.
A. Yes, sir, they did, every day.
Q. Is it conceivable that the president
of the United States -- would be the vice
president of the United States at the time --
did not know that these activities were going
on in contravention of the Bolen Amendment?
A. The president directly knew. George
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1207
Bush went past knowing. He was over his
head, actually using his assistant to -- and
also his son who is now the governor of
Florida, Jeb Bush, in seeing that quote,
unquote, civilian operations went forward in
the means of transporting aircraft for supply
drops to loading ships with weapons in the
port of Miami, Florida, destined for the
area, putting Manuel Noriega on the payroll
which in turn allowed the bidding cartel from
Columbia to franchise Central America.
And this is where the rub came with
me is because they went into -- the CIA
caused creative financing, which they did in
Vietnam under General Frank Powell and Air
America, which was the transportation of what
they call sticky bricks or opium and the
money deposited in the New Guinean bank in
Australia. They were trying to create the
same situation in concert with a bank called
the BCCI which is now history.
But it was a well-orchestrated
thing, and such a situation that I would put
it this way. If you were a fly on the wall
in the Oval Office, they would have -- they
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1208
would have impeached him faster than even
considering an impeachment on Clinton because
they -- they were up to their elbows in it.
Q. Now, you became disenchanted at one
point in time.
A. Oh, yes.
Q. What was the reason for your
disenchantment?
A. Drugs. The allowing shipments of
drugs to be flown in American aircraft to
Homestead, Florida; U.S. Air Force planes,
contracting people to fly from Cartagena,
Barranquilla, Medellin, to Corn Island and
Nicaragua or to northern Costa Rica to quote,
unquote, a CIA base to be refueled to be
brought into the United States. Therefore, a
kilo of cocaine went from $80,000 to $18,000
in a matter of 30 days.
So I came to Washington to testify
before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
and aired my gripes about it because I was at
that time supposed to be running the
organization. And I found out you do not go
against a popular sitting president the hard
way.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1209
Q. So you became -- effectively became a
whistle blower?
A. Oh, yes.
Q. And it was triggered by the fact that
you objected to the elicit smuggling of drugs
into the United States as a means of
financing these covert operations?
A. Correct.
Q. And what happened -- what happened to
you as a result of your attempting to -- to
testify?
A. Two attempts were made on my life.
One in San Jose, Costa Rica, where there's
probably still a Toyota sitting there with 92
bullet holes in it. And I was poisoned in
Manapol Grama (phonetic) by agents working
through an organization headed by General
Richard Secor and Oliver North, who was
reporting to Bill Casey, called Operation
Freedom.
But it was all a store-front
operation to shut me up because I have got
clout -- I am in possession of classified
information stating that I knew quote,
unquote, too much about their operation, so
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1210
they needed to terminate me. When that
didn't work, they went after my credibility.
They tapped my telephones. Even
down to telling my daughter that I was a paid
intelligence asset for Fidel Castro. I was
listed as a terrorist threat to the United
States Government. I was taken by the Secret
Service to -- from offices in Washington to
be polygraphed, which I passed.
And during -- the 15 questions that
I was asked by the Secret Service, only one
of them had to do with assassination. And
that question was: Do you now or have you
ever thought of harming anyone who worked for
the United States Government? The rest of
them was did I agree with Ronald Reagan's
policy on Central America -- political
questions.
But I passed it. And they really
couldn't do anything to me at that point
except continue to go after my credibility.
Q. Did they at one point in time, also
in attempting to destroy your credibility,
seek to prosecute you?
A. Oh, yes. I was indicted on six
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1211
counts in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, by Edwin
Meese, at the direction of the White House,
who forced the acting U.S. Attorney at the
time in a distant state -- you know, I'm in
Washington D.C., but they indicted me in Fort
Lauderdale and basically for following
orders. But the -- one of the indictments,
to show you how far they will reach, was
conspiring to put a luggage tag on a suitcase
containing a firearm that they issued.
You know, so it was that bad. So
our attorneys -- my attorney, John Magids,
filed a precedent setting motion under -- I
can't even think of the name of the law at
the time -- a neutral anti-trial act called
the "At Peace Motion" which said that we were
not at war with Nicaragua but we weren't at
peace with them either.
So George -- Judge Norman Rutger,
who is the second highest seniority to John
Serika (phonetic), said this is the most
politically charged indictment I have ever
seen in my life and threw it out.
Q. So he dismissed the indictment?
A. Yes.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1212
Q. And the prosecution did not go ahead?
A. Well, the CIA came down there and
briefed the judge. And at that point the
prosecution actually wound up becoming
witnesses in our case.
Q. Was there any polygraph that you had
to take -- that you did take -- that you
elected to take during that point in time
that you failed with respect to any of these
events?
A. No, I've never failed a polygraph.
Q. Jack, we can go back now to an
earlier time around about -- or in the early
1970's you moved to Mississippi.
A. Correct, Columbus.
Q. And you established a business
there.
A. Correct.
Q. Could you just describe the business
that you developed.
A. I developed an EMS system while I was
in Montgomery, Alabama, that was designed to
work in rural states. And Mississippi was
the most rural. I was told it couldn't work,
so I took the challenge and went ahead with
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1213
it and became extraordinarily successful with
it. And in the process I hired and had at
one point probably 400 people working for
me. And everything was roses.
Q. Was one of the people working for you
whom you met and became friendly with a -- a
reserve officer in the 20th Special Forces
Group?
A. There were several. But the one
you're talking about came to work for me --
J.D. Hill, who is a member of the 20th
Special Forces which, incidentally, had a
training headquarters in Columbus.
Q. Mm-hum.
A. But he came to work for me and
eventually rose to the rank of supervisor
within my organization stationed at the home
office in Columbus. And during this period,
because of shared interest in firearms and
things of this nature, we became very close
friends.
Q. Right. Could you describe J.D. Hill
as a -- how you came to -- what your
impression of him was during the time that he
worked for you.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1214
A. J.D. was a -- he was a strange person
in a lot of ways, but in some ways he was a
very intelligent, well-trained individual who
had -- before he come to work with me fought
in Costa Rica. His mother had come from
Costa Rica. But he knew exactly what he
wanted in life in many ways. His only
setback was that he drank.
But when I promoted him to the rank
of supervisor, it was on the condition that
he stop drinking, which he did. He
completely quit drinking and became another
man. He confided in me often about things he
wouldn't talk with (sic) because he came from
a broken home. He was full of rage. He was
the type of person -- if I was going to pick
for an operation, he would be the type I
would pick. He profiled perfectly on a -- on
a lot of things for people that you would
want to look death in the face and not worry
about it.
Q. Did you learn much about the unit he
was attached to, the 20th Special Forces
Group, during this time?
A. I went past that. I tried to get
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1215
into it, and they wouldn't let me. I used to
go out on the weekends and parachute jump
with them, and I got to know many of them
there.
Q. Right.
A. You know, and they would tell me
stories that at that time seemed kind of
unbelievable. But as time passed by, they
weren't so unbelievable.
Q. Did that unit have a training session
once a year?
A. Once a year at Camp Shelby,
Mississippi, they would go for two weeks and
just disappear off the face of the earth, and
then they would show back up two weeks later.
Q. Right. And was that -- were members
of that unit used on various covert
operations throughout this period?
A. Many. A lot of them -- I didn't know
about some of them. I did know about
mission -- two missions that were told to me,
one called Operation Back Pack and one of
them called Operation Quail Hunter. One of
them was designed to literally take a nuclear
device behind enemy lines in a back pack and
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1216
plant it at an undisclosed location to be
detonated later. But that's how high --
highly they were thought of where they could
carry nuclear weapons.
Q. Were they -- were they -- did they
wear civilian clothing in the course of these
covert operations?
A. They never were in uniform -- always
in civilian clothes. And I was told on many
occasions, you know, that if you see me
somewhere and I'm supposed to be, you know,
doing something for the military and I don't
have a uniform on, act like you don't know
me.
Q. Was there a time when your
relationship developed closely enough with --
with J.D. Hill that he had told you about a
highly secret operation that he had been
involved in some years before?
A. Mm-hum. He had just returned from
Camp Shelby, Mississippi, on one of these
tours they did down there, and he looked like
a completely different person. He had lost
like 45 pounds, he was hard as a rock, his
eyes were like steel. And I told him -- I
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1217
said, you know, people who are on diets need
to go where you went because I've never seen
anybody make a transformation like this. And
he said, well, it wasn't the first time.
And I said, what are you talking
about? And he said, well, you do what you
got to do. And I said, well, that's still
not telling me anything. And he said, well,
I'll tell you about it one day. And one day
we were out in the field in one of our cars
and went to an old beer joint -- I don't even
drink, but went to a beer joint down near the
state line. And he said, I want to tell you
something I think I need to get off my
chest.
And he said, not that it's worrying
me or bugging me or anything else but, he
says, I'm going to show you the level of what
it amounted to -- the involvement that they
had. And he started telling me about a
covert operation that he was involved in that
he really didn't know what he was doing. He
was asked to come to Shelby for special
training. He was a sniper. In fact, he had
three MOS's. And he said that he was
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1218
assigned to a --
Q. Excuse me, Jack. Would you explain
what an MOS is.
A. Well, it's a military occupation
specialty. He said that he was assigned to a
team of men at Camp Shelby that had been put
together as a chute -- triangular chute team,
which means chuting from three positions.
And that they went into training and would be
sent to Pocatello, Idaho, to start shooting
at moving targets because they had been told
that they were going to take out an Arab
leader -- unnamed and unknown Arab leader.
And they had to refine their
shooting skills to such a point -- different
elevations, different angles, but always from
the triangular chute on moving vehicles. And
they practiced, practiced, practiced. And he
said they -- they were told what they needed
to know. Everything was on a need-to-know
basis. He said later that he was called back
to Shelby and the team was there. They were
not issued their standard sniper weapons,
which at that time they were using SSG's
which is made by Manliquor (phonetic). It's
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1219
a double-trigger weapon that fires a 3.75 by
five, nine, I think, slug. But it's pretty
powerful and deadly accurate at 1,100
meters.
And they worked out with
standard-issue 30 aught 6 weapons which he
thought was very weird. He said, man -- he
said, they just gave us 30 aught 6's to go
out and start shooting these things. He
said, we didn't know what -- what was going
on. And he said, I was about ready to ruck
up -- which means pack up -- and leave. And
he says he was told real quick by the
commander of the base, you know, that they
were confined and they were fixing to go
somewhere. And he said, you will be briefed
at the time.
He said that they had been taken via
aircraft to West Memphis, Arkansas, and put
on stand by, and that they were to take out a
target in Memphis, Tennessee, still unknown
at the time. And the chute map was laid out
to them and they had two scenarios. One was
a moving scenario, the other was a scenario
involving a hotel where they would fire on
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1220
the target from three positions -- one from
the water tower, one from the third floor of
a building, and the third place was the
rooftop of another building.
And they would be given the yes or
no within a certain period of time. And he
said while on standby they were picked up,
and they were going to go into Memphis. And
all of a sudden it was cancelled. And they
started just rushing people out, and they put
him on a plane and literally flew him back
directly to a county north of Browns County,
Mississippi, and told to, you know, go back
to town, nothing happened, you know. You've
been out of town on a training exercise,
nobody knows nothing. Keep your mouth shut.
Q. So this unit was trained to shoot at
a target or targets in a moving vehicle, that
was the --
A. Originally, yes.
Q. Originally that's what they were --
that they were geared up to do, and that's
what their training at Pocatello was --
A. Mm-hum.
Q. -- was to do. And then -- and they
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1221
were put on standby in West Memphis,
Arkansas.
A. Correct.
Q. And then the operation, for some
reason, was cancelled and they were taken --
they were taken out of there.
A. Mm-hum.
Q. Did they take up their positions at
any point in Memphis?
A. They were headed in to take up their
positions when the mission was cancelled.
Q. They were heading in --
A. Yes.
Q. -- to take up the positions --
A. Yes.
Q. -- when it was cancelled?
A. But it was no way for him to know
what -- in the make-up of the organization
you had three snipers, a command and control
officer, communications officers, had an
ordnance officer and a medic. So they didn't
travel like a covey of quail. You know, they
would be taken differently. Whether other
people had been taken in and set up, he had
no knowledge of it because he was taken out
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1222
by himself. You know, he was flown
singularly.
Q. Oh, he was taken out by himself?
A. Yes, singularly, and flown into the
county above.
Q. I see. So he doesn't know what --
A. No.
Q. -- what happened. Did he ever say
that he had discussed this with any of the
other members of the team at any point?
A. Oh, they all discussed it the next
day.
Q. All right.
A. Because he said, I picked up the
paper and said, oh, my God.
Q. What did he -- what did he read in
the paper that made him say "oh, my God"?
A. That Martin Luther King had been
assassinated.
Q. Martin Luther King had been
assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee --
A. Memphis, Tennessee.
Q. -- on the 4th of April, 1968?
A. Mm-hum.
Q. And then was it his view that he
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1223
had -- he was somehow -- or his unit was
somehow -- had been trained or were being
trained and being prepared to -- to carry out
that assassination?
A. At that time he knew exactly that was
the purpose. He don't know why they were
scrubbed, but he knows exactly that they were
trained for that mission and were never told.
Q. Presumably the reconnaissance was
done by vice -- by others in advance of that
operation?
A. They believe the FBI, among others,
was doing recon and military intelligence.
Q. What eventually happened to J.D.
Hill?
A. J.D., like I said, was a strange
fellow. And he was a person of habit. He
was paranoid to the point that he kept a
light on in front of his house at all times.
And I was called about 2 o'clock in the
morning and advised by another supervisor
that J.D. had been found shot dead on his
porch and said that his wife had shot him
because he was drunk.
So I asked him -- I said, were you
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1224
there? And he said, yes. I said, well, tell
me what's going on. And I said, is the light
on? And he said -- he said, no. What
light? And it just sort of struck a chord in
my head. Why is the light out, you know.
And I knew the investigating officers and
went down to see the set up but really never
got to see the set up. And I didn't go to
his funeral, you know, because I was
extraordinarily upset about it because his
wife was almost red carpeted out of town
after he was shot.
But I do know that he was shot at
close range with a .357 Magnum in almost a
circular pattern around his heart. He was
dead so fast his eyes were still open when he
hit the ground. And I thought to myself,
Janice Hill only weighed like 90 -- 89 pounds
rather, and had no experience with firearms.
And if it was indeed dark -- number one, J.D.
wouldn't have approached the porch. Number
two, if someone of her stature and the
knowledge of firearms had shot him, it
would -- it wouldn't even have come close to
being a pattern of putting three -- I mean,
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1225
five .357's in a circular pattern because the
first shot would have disoriented her so bad,
she wouldn't know where she was in the dark.
So none of it added up, you know.
And I asked questions, questions, questions
trying to see at one point Janice Hill and
wasn't allowed to see her. You know, but in
my mind to this day my belief was he was --
he was assassinated.
Q. She was -- she was charged and a
Grand Jury was convened but nothing --
A. Correct.
Q. -- was ever raised against her. So
there was no indictment.
A. Mm-hum.
Q. And she then left Columbus.
A. But to this day I imagine you would
find very little evidence about the
shooting.
Q. Now, coming back to the unit -- and
this was a -- this sniper team was a 20th
Special Forces --
A. Group.
Q. -- Unit.
A. Yes.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1226
Q. I have checked the rosters of -- of
that unit from each of the -- each of the
states that -- that you have mentioned. I'm
not going to ask you to identify any names or
state any names for the record. But I'm just
going to show you the Mississippi roster, and
I'm just going to see if any of the names on
that roster are names that you heard about or
knew were involved on this team -- this
assassination team with -- with J.D. Hill.
A. See, it's easy to do because J.D. had
told me anybody on the team had to hold at
least the rank of sergeant. And --
Q. Do you see any names there that --
that --
A. One --
Q. -- you know?
A. -- two, three -- and all three of
these people were very close. One, two --
Q. There's J.D.'s name.
A. Mm-hum, J.D. And this one, this
one.
Q. Then you go down to Florida. So
it's -- so there are recognizable names there
on that roster of people who were on that
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1227
team.
A. Mm-hum.
Q. Well, Jack, at various times in your
professional career, you have been -- you've
been interviewed by television teams, and
you've been a source of information --
A. More than I can count.
Q. -- via television on documentary and
news programs, haven't you?
A. Mm-hum. Mm-hum.
Q. Have you as well been a source of
information to -- to ABC's news department
for various --
A. Several times.
Q. -- things?
A. Several times. In fact, I worked
very closely with a producer there, Chris
Isham, on a couple of big stories which were
aired.
Q. And did ABC ever require you to take
a polygraph?
A. Yes, they did. They took me to
Miami, Florida, and had me polygraphed to
make -- to make sure of my quote, unquote,
reliability because of this whole situation
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1228
about the credibility thing in Washington.
But I've been on 60 Minutes, Larry King, you
name it. None of them asked me to do it, you
know. But, like I said, Mike Wallace
would -- if I called him today and said I got
a story, he would say come to New York, you
know, because I've done it before. Because
they have no doubt about my credibility. But
ABC wanted to make sure.
Q. Right. And when you took the ABC
polygraph test, what were the results?
A. I passed it.
Q. And so your credibility was, in your
mind anyway, well established with ABC.
A. Oh, yes.
Q. Now, do you recall some while ago
that ABC did a program -- a documentary on
the King assassination?
A. Mm-hum.
Q. A program presented by a chap called
Forest Sawyer.
A. Yes.
Q. Now, did they send a team here to
Florida to interview you?
A. Right up the road here in a hotel.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1229
Q. And how long did that interview take?
A. About three hours.
Q. So they interviewed you for three
hours?
A. Mm-hum.
Q. And did you tell them -- that ABC
team -- did you tell them the story that you
have put forward here today under oath?
A. Yes, I have.
Q. And this -- with this kind of
detail --
A. Correct.
Q. -- about the presence of that 20th
Special Forces Unit --
A. Correct.
Q. -- in Memphis? And was any of that
interview -- any part of that interview used
on that documentary?
A. No. I was shocked when it wasn't.
Q. Not -- not one second of that
interview --
A. Not one second, no.
Q. -- was used. And do you have any
idea why it wasn't used?
A. Well, after the interview, a few days
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1230
later, I received a phone call from an old
friend of mine in FBI counter intelligence.
And he said, I thought your press days were
over. And I said, well, what are you talking
about? He says, M.I. knows everything that
you're doing with ABC, and that's military
intelligence. So, evidently, DIA was and may
still be keeping an eye on me. And they
didn't -- who knows. If they didn't want it
used, it wouldn't have been used.
Q. So this clearly implies that there
was some -- appears to have been some
collaboration between ABC and
intelligence. Or at least to the extent that
your --
A. Their knowledge --
Q. Their knowledge.
A. -- was out, yes. They had called it
a leak, you know. But somebody knew, yes.
Because, again, this guy didn't just call me
out of the blue. They sent me a message.
And I soon after left the country.
Q. You left the country after that?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. You felt that that was the prudent
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1231
thing to do in terms of --
A. Well, I'm tired of being a target,
you know. I mean, they tried too many times
to get me. And I've learned over the years
that if you want to disappear, you leave the
country for an extended period and you come
back and set up in a different place and they
got a cold trail.
Q. How long were you gone when you left
the country?
A. Several months. In fact, I went to
Russia just to piss them off.
Q. But coming back to the absence of
your -- your information and your
recollection on the ABC program, there would
have been no basis for them to --
A. None.
Q. -- challenge your credibility because
they had used you --
A. Oh, yes.
Q. -- so many times before and tested
it.
A. Correct.
Q. And they knew you very well.
A. Correct. Several people at ABC,
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1232
Karen Burns, people like this, they all know
me. They know my credibility. They've done
too many stories on me. I was the source for
too many of their stories while I was in
Washington for nearly two years.
Q. So there has to be another reason --
A. Yes.
Q. -- for their failure to use that
story. Jack, we just -- we're coming to the
end here, and we have moved along quite
well. I'd just like to know that in the 20
odd years or so that's intervened since J.D.
Hill told you about him being trained and
being a part of the unit that was under
orders to kill Martin Luther King, Jr., if
you -- if you have developed any reason to
question what J.D. was telling you -- any --
anything at all that -- that would lead you
now to disbelieve what he was saying to you
then --
A. No. None. Nothing whatsoever. I
mean, then, now, whatever -- in fact, I
probably would believe it more now than I did
then, you know. Because just the time line
and the way things -- you know, you can look
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1233
back and see things. But probably time has
reinforced what he told me more than, you
know, him just telling me then, which I
believed then because we were that close.
Q. So do you now with all of -- all of
this consideration and all of your conscience
believe that your old friend J.D. Hill was a
part of a 20th Special Forces Sniper Unit
that was on a mission to kill Martin Luther
King on the 4th of April, 1968?
A. Well, if this was a death bed
confession, I wouldn't change a word. Yes,
of course I believe it.
Q. Okay. No doubt at all?
A. No doubt.
Q. Okay. Thanks very much.
A. Sure.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: The time
is 3:45 p.m. We're off the record.
(End of video deposition.)
THE COURT: Okay. Let's take a
short break.
(Brief break taken.)
THE COURT: Bring the jury out,
please, sir.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1234
THE SHERIFF: Yes.
(Jury In.)
THE COURT: Ready, Mr. Pepper?
MR. PEPPER: Your Honor,
plaintiffs call Mr. Louis Ward to the stand.
LOUIS WARD,
Having been first duly sworn, was examined
and testified as follows:
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER:
Q. Good afternoon, Mr. Ward.
A. Good afternoon.
Q. Thank you for coming here today and
helping us in this case.
A. You're welcome.
Q. Would you please state your full name
and address for the record.
A. Louie Ward, 2440 Cardigan Drive,
Memphis, Tennessee. That's 38119.
Q. And what do you do presently,
Mr. Ward?
A. Roofer presently.
Q. I know you -- are you involved in
roofing activity part time or full time?
A. Well, part time now. I have full
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1235
time for about 36 years, but I'm just part
time now. My boy now is kind of handling
most of it.
Q. What did you do previously in
addition to being a roofer?
A. Well, I was security police for the
Government for about 22 years. Of course, I
done -- drove a taxicab part time.
Q. Where did you work in security police
work?
A. Out at the Army Depot.
Q. I'm sorry?
A. At the Army Depot.
Q. The Army Depot. And where was that?
A. Out on Airways Boulevard.
Q. I see.
A. 2163 Airways.
Q. So you held that position for how
long?
A. 22 years in the security police, and
then the last eight years I was a roofer out
there.
Q. And in addition to that you said
you -- you also drove a taxicab part time.
A. Yes, I sure did.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1236
Q. And for which company did you drive a
taxicab?
A. Well, I drove for both companies. Of
course, I drove for Yellow most of the time.
Of course, there was about -- when I first
came to Memphis, I came to take a course in
watch making. And I started driving a cab in
order to have some money coming in. I done
that for three years, and then I found other
jobs, and I just drove part time then for
several years.
Q. Right. And in 1968 which company
were you driving for?
A. Yellow.
Q. You were driving for Yellow?
A. Mm-hum.
Q. Mr. Ward, could you come forward a
bit, a little closer to the microphone so
everyone can hear.
A. Is that better?
Q. Yes. Can you pull your chair
forward, please, just a little bit.
THE COURT: That's good.
Q. (BY MR. PEPPER) Okay. I think that
will be better. Thank you. You were driving
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1237
for Yellow Cab in 1968?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. All right. How often did you drive
for them?
A. Oh, most of the time about once a
week or sometimes twice a week. On my off
days out at the depot I would usually drive.
Q. Okay. Were you driving for Yellow
Cab Company on the 4th of April, 1968?
A. Yes, I sure was.
Q. And were you driving for Yellow on
the evening of April 4, 1968?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did you -- in the course of your
taxicab driving and duties, did you come to
know a driver named Paul Butler?
A. I sure did.
Q. And do you remember which car number
Mr. Butler was driving on the 4th of April,
1968?
A. 58.
Q. He was driving Car Number 58?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Do you know how long Mr. Butler had
driven for Yellow?
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1238
A. Several years because the drivers
that had drove a long time drove the new
cabs, and us drivers that just drove part
time drove the old cabs. So he had a new cab
that he -- at that time that he drove. So he
had been there for some bit.
Q. So -- so Mr. Butler had been driving
for Yellow Cab for a number of years.
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did he always drive Car Number 58
or --
A. Well, he did until they were getting
another new cab. And, of course, when they
got another new cab, it would be a different
number. And he would always -- well, you bid
on your cabs according to your seniority. So
he would -- when the new ones come out, he
would be able to get a different cab. 58, he
had drove it for about -- I guess it was a
couple of years old or something like that,
that he drove all the time.
Q. Did he have a particular route that
he drove on?
A. He -- well, of course, he got
different calls here in the city. But mostly
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1239
he played the airport -- what we call
"played the airport." In other words, he --
Q. Drove the airport route?
A. Mm-hum.
Q. Now, did you see Mr. Butler on April
4, 1968?
A. Yes, sir, I sure did.
Q. Did you ever see Mr. Butler again
after April 4, 1968?
A. No, sir, I sure didn't.
Q. Now, would you tell this Court how
you saw Mr. Butler and when you first heard
from him and how you saw him on April 4,
1968.
A. Well, I was sitting at Quince and
Kirby in a service station. I called and
reported where I was sitting waiting on a
call. And I heard Paul come in on the radio
and -- well, I couldn't hear him, but he
talked to the dispatcher. And the dispatcher
called his name, that's the reason I knew he
was talking to Paul. And I heard him say,
I'll send an ambulance. And so --
Q. You heard the dispatcher say "I'll
send an ambulance"?
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1240
A. Send an ambulance, yeah. And so I
knew then that somebody had gotten hurt. I
didn't know whether it was another cab driver
or not. And then the dispatcher -- he
started repeating what Paul said. He said,
you mean that Dr. Martin Luther King has been
shot? And he said yes. And he said, well,
I'll send an ambulance. And he said, I don't
believe an ambulance can help him. Because
he would repeat it back so I knew what he was
saying. And he said, well, I'll send an
ambulance anyhow and send the police.
He told him -- he says, when you
call the police, tell them that the man who
shot him is headed towards the squad car just
sitting about a half a block north towards
the hotel.
Q. Now, let me back you up a little
bit. How are you hearing this conversation?
Is the dispatcher repeating what he's
hearing?
A. He was repeating, yes, sir. He was
repeating what Paul was saying.
Q. And what did he say? What did he
repeat that he heard Paul broadcasting?
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1241
A. Well, he had -- he just repeated that
Dr. Martin Luther King had got shot and
then -- of course, he repeated that he would
send an ambulance and send a squad car and --
call the police rather. And that's whenever
Paul came back and told him there's a squad
car sitting north -- about a half a block
north of the motel. And that the man who
shot him was heading towards the squad car.
And -- of course, when he -- well,
he -- of course, I went out and talked to him
later on and got the message good of what he
was saying.
Q. Let's move -- let's move to that. So
you heard this exchange on the radio.
A. Yes, sir.
Q. What did you do after that?
A. Well, I told the guy at the service
station -- I said, Martin Luther King just
got shot. He laughed at me. He said, you
see that box sitting up on the pump? He
said, that would be the first thing that come
on it. And I said, no. I said, he just got
shot. It would have to go to where that box
is coming from before you get it. I headed
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1242
from there to my home which at that time was
4935 -- 3549 Kay, which is about two -- two
and a half miles.
And I drove in and told my wife the
same thing. And she had the television on.
She said the same thing. Well, I was there
about two minutes when it came on that he had
been shot but not serious. And I said, well,
the guy said that it looked like he had a
stick of dynamite in his mouth. It blew his
jaw off and part of his vertebrae is out of
his neck. And I said, he's going to the
airport and there's no calls coming in, so
I'm heading to the airport. So I did. So I
went out there, and there's where I found
Paul out there, so --
Q. You then drove to the airport --
A. Yes, sir.
Q. -- and looked for Paul?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. And you found him?
A. Yes, sir. He was sitting out there.
Q. And did you -- did you talk to him?
A. Yes, sir, I sure did. Because I --
you know, I was interested in knowing just
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1243
exactly what happened. So -- of course, what
he told me, that the passenger that he picked
up he believed knew something about it. Of
course, he said I was looking -- I was
loading stuff in the trunk. And there was so
much stuff, I could not get it all in my
trunk, had to put some in the back seat.
While I was placing it in the trunk,
he said, I was looking in the direction where
the guy was going to shoot. Before the shot,
he punched me and said, look up there,
Dr. Martin Luther King is standing up there
by himself, not a soul with him. He said,
that's something you don't usually see. And
as I raised up and looked, that rifle
popped -- it didn't sound like a rifle, it
sounded like two boards clapped together.
And he said, I seen his jaw and part of his
neck blowed away. It was like he had a stick
of dynamite in his mouth. He said, as I
wheeled and looked, I seen a cluster of smoke
coming up out of the bushes, and then I seen
the guy come running up. He didn't have no
rifle. But he said, I know that he is the
one that had to shoot him. And then he
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1244
headed towards the -- headed north towards
the squad car.
And, of course, we thought the
police had picked him up. Because it was a
black and white squad car. Of course, the
black and white squad car at that time takes
care of traffic. The blue squad cars was
really the police. But this was a black and
white squad car. But we thought they had
picked him up. So he told the dispatcher.
He said, did you hear the tires were
squealing? And he said, yes, I could hear
the tires were squealing.
Q. So he's telling you that after the
shot he saw a man come out of the bushes --
A. Yes, sir.
Q. -- run up north on Mulberry Street --
A. Yes, sir.
Q. -- and get into a squad car -- a
traffic --
A. Traffic squad car, black and white,
mm-hum.
Q. Which was parked where?
A. He said about a half a block north of
the motel.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1245
Q. And then what happened to that car?
A. Well, he said they headed north. We
thought he picked -- well, he come back on
the radio and said the police has picked him
up and they headed north with him. You could
hear the tires were squealing. So we thought
the police had already picked up the guy that
done the shooting.
Q. I see. So both you and Mr. Butler
had thought that the police had apprehended
the shooter.
A. Yes.
Q. What happened next? Did any police
come out to the airport?
A. Yes. While I'm standing there
talking, a squad car drove up with a
lieutenant and a patrolman. They got out.
Well, I didn't see the squad car as it drove
up. But they walked up as I was talking to
Mr. Butler. And the lieutenant had a pad.
So he had taken the same report that
Mr. Butler had gave me and the rest of us --
because there are several of us cab drivers
standing around.
And the lieutenant wrote the report
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1246
down that he had and told him that they would
be back in contact with him. So they got in
the squad car and left after they got the
report.
Q. So they took a report from Mr. Butler
and they -- they left. Where were you
standing when that report was being taken?
A. Oh, probably -- when they came up, I
was standing up next to him. When they came
up, I backed away, probably 3 or 4 feet out
of their way, where they would have plenty of
clearance. But I was close enough that he
gave them the same report that he gave me.
Q. You overheard this report being
given?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. All right. Then what happened next?
A. Well, they called -- the dispatcher
called him to come in to the headquarters.
We have a headquarters. Said he was wanted
down there. Well, later on that night, not
too much later, I was in town and drove by
the cab company and there was several squad
cars down there. And I figured that they
were, you know, taking some more reports.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1247
And then I found out later that he was
supposed to be at court at 9 o'clock the next
morning.
Q. He was supposed to give a
statement --
A. Yes, sir.
Q. -- the next morning? And how many
squad cars were around Yellow's offices that
night?
A. There were several. I would say
seven or eight. Might have been more, might
have been five or six. But I just noticed
there were several squad cars sitting there.
I didn't count them.
Q. Seven or eight Memphis Police
Department cars around Yellow's headquarters
that night?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Okay. You didn't see Mr. Butler at
that time, did you?
A. No, I sure didn't. I didn't go in.
I just drove by and seen it. There were so
many squad cars down there, I just pulled on
because I didn't --
Q. What time did you get home that --
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1248
that evening on the 4th of April?
A. I was -- I drove all night that
night. I was the only cab driver that drove
all night that night. And -- but I stayed
out there. And, of course, I seen police
heading out there. And, of course, they had
a curfew. Everybody was in. They called the
cabs in. But I just stayed out there and
drove because I had plenty of business, and I
stayed out there and drove all night that
night.
Q. Right. You drove all night and you
went in -- went home the next morning?
A. Next morning, yes, sir.
Q. When did you next go to Yellow Cab's
offices, Mr. Ward?
A. It was about two weeks. Because,
see, they -- I was security police out at the
time out at the Depot. My wife -- when I got
home, she said there had been a call for me
to come out there. So I went out there, and
we stayed on duty 24 hours a day for a whole
week -- all of the security people did. And
then it was about two weeks.
Q. It was about two weeks before you
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1249
reported back to Yellow --
A. Yes.
Q. -- to go to work?
A. To drive a cab.
Q. And would you tell us what happened
when you reported to work at that time?
A. Well, I was out at the airport and
picked up a gentleman. And he was -- of
course, he was with the FBI. I mean, we had
had dealings with him out at the airport, and
I knew him when I picked him up. So on the
way in, I asked him -- I said, what are you
doing in town? And he said, who am I talking
to? So I raised my cap up. And he said,
Mr. Ward, what are you a policeman or a cab
driver? And I said, well, I don't make money
like the FBI. I have to be both guys. So
we, you know, laughed about it.
He said, you know why I'm in town so
why do you ask? And I said, well, I figured
that's why you're in here, but I'm just
wondering. And he said that's -- well,
that's why I'm here. And, of course --
Q. Then did you go into -- into Yellow's
offices?
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1250
A. No, I brought him on down to the
motel is where I brought him. I brought him
to the Peabody Hotel is where I --
Q. When was the next time you actually
went into the offices and --
A. Oh, it was -- well, I went into the
office when I first came back to work. I
went in then. That's when I -- I asked him
about Mr. Butler.
Q. Who did you ask about Mr. Butler?
A. There was four or five cab drivers
standing around talking. And I just asked
them. And that's when they told me -- I
don't even remember which one told me. But
he said he had been throwed out of a high-
speed automobile between Memphis and West
Memphis. And they found him about 10 o'clock
the next day.
Q. They said he was thrown out of a
high-speed automobile. When was he thrown
out of that automobile?
A. The next -- the next morning. They
said they found his body about 10 o'clock or
10:30 the next morning. He was supposed to
have been in court at 9 o'clock that morning
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1251
and he wasn't there. They found his car
there at the cab company. And -- but he
wasn't -- he wasn't -- never made it to
court. But then about 10:30 they said they
found his body between Memphis and West
Memphis.
Q. They found his body between Memphis
and West Memphis?
A. On the old -- on the old highway. Of
course, they didn't have the other highway at
that time. It was just --
Q. Would it have been the old -- the old
bridge or was it off the bridge?
A. From what they said, it was off the
bridge. They said between Memphis and West
Memphis so I figured it was probably
somewhere along that straight stretch that he
was throwed out.
Q. And did they say what car he was
thrown out of?
A. No, sir, they just --
Q. Just said he was thrown out?
A. A high-speed car. They just found
his body. And they said he had been throwed
out of a high-speeded automobile. And that's
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1252
all I got. I got the paper. I thought I'd
read about it. And, of course, at that time
they had the Press Center and the Commercial
Appeal. And I went from page to page and
there wasn't never nothing put in the paper
about -- about it, so -- and --
Q. You never read anything in the
newspaper about it?
A. No, sir.
Q. About the death?
A. No, sir.
Q. Did you believe the story that you
were being told by your --
A. Well, yes. I didn't see him. Of
course, the boys -- I mean, they all walked
up and told me. Yes, I had no doubt not to
believe it. In fact, that's -- I never did
see nothing -- nobody else about it. I mean,
being he got killed, I didn't -- I wasn't
ready to go then, so -- I'm still not ready
to go, but I feel a little bit more better
now than I did then.
Q. Many years later.
A. Yes, sir, many years later.
Q. Did you ever tell this story to
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1253
anyone?
A. Yes, sir. You know, didn't nobody
believe me. It was just like that guy I
talked to at the service station. I wonder
what he thought later on when it came on his
box, what he called it, what had happened.
But I told the people about it. And then a
year or so later say something about it, and
they never heard a thing about it. And I
said, you didn't believe me the first time I
told you, did you? So I just mostly kept it
to myself then.
Q. Did the -- did you ever tell this
story to the FBI?
A. Yes, sir. I -- well, I called -- his
name -- Mr. Pungetti (phonetic), I believe
was his name. He was a district attorney
here. And I read a piece in the paper where
he was so sure that James Earl Ray killed him
and he didn't want nothing else said about
it. So I called and I never could get to
talk to him. And, of course, Mr. Veasley --
he used to be my Sunday school teacher. I
got a hold of him. He was the Assistant
District Attorney at the time. And I asked
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1254
him, can I talk to Mr. Pungetti? And he said
yes. So -- he said, I'll get you on with
him.
Well, I asked him -- I told him, I
said, I read what you put in the paper that
you were so sure that James Earl Ray killed
him and you didn't want nothing else said
about it. And I said, what makes you so
sure? And he said, well, what makes you sure
he didn't? And I said, well, I know he
didn't.
And -- so -- but you're so sure. I
said, was you driving the squad car that
hauled -- of course, he was a policeman back
at that time. I said, were you -- were you
driving that squad car that hauled the man
who shot him away? And he hung up on me.
Q. He hung up on you?
A. So I don't know whether he was
driving the squad car or not.
Q. An unanswered question. Have the
police ever questioned you or asked you about
this?
A. No, sir.
Q. Any government agency ever come to
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1255
you and ask you about this?
A. No, sir. The only one I talked to
was the FBI that -- that I was -- I mean, I
knew him when I seen him. I knew him because
he had been out at the depot back when I was
in security. Well, of course, we had several
FBI's out there that would have things that
come up. So I just happened to know -- I
knew him when I seen him. And he was the one
that I brought in that -- and I never -- and
I never ever saw him since, so --
Q. So it's your testimony here today
that Paul Butler died being thrown out of a
high-speed automobile?
A. As far as I know he did.
Q. On the -- on the night of the
assassination of Martin Luther King on the
4th of April, 1968?
A. Well, they said about 10 o'clock the
next morning when they found him. In other
words, this happened late in the afternoon
that Dr. Martin Luther King got shot. And
this was some time the next morning. I don't
know what time he was throwed out of it. Of
course, he might have been throwed out that
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1256
night. But his car was found at the cab
company, and he couldn't be found at that
time because they had called around trying to
contact him.
And then at about 10:30 that's when
they said they found his body.
Q. They found his body the next morning?
A. Right, about 10:30.
Q. About 10:30. Some time prior to
that --
A. He was throwed out.
Q. -- he was thrown out of the
automobile -- high-speed automobile
supposedly. And you never saw him again?
A. No, sir.
MR. PEPPER: Thank you,
Mr. Ward. Nothing further.
CROSS-EXAMINATION
BY MR. GARRISON:
Q. Mr. Ward, you first called me a few
years ago and pretty much told me this same
version, didn't you, that you had tried to
tell the police about it and different ones,
but no one would listen to you?
A. Yes.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1257
Q. Basically. Let me ask you -- now,
when you were at the airport with Mr. Butler,
did you -- did he tell this same version to
the lieutenant and the other officers that
were there? You heard him tell them what had
happened?
A. Yes, sir. Because I was standing
there, and he told them practically the same
thing he did me.
Q. And he told them he had seen someone
get in the police car and leave and they were
escorted away in a squad car?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. And they were writing that down all
that time; is that right, sir?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. You had tried to make this known for
some several years, and no one would listen
to you, didn't you?
A. That's right.
MR. GARRISON: That's all I
have.
REDIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER:
Q. Mr. Ward, an author recently -- well,
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1258
the last year or so wrote a book establishing
James Earl Ray as the -- the killer in this
case in his view. Have you been interviewed
by any author who has published and who is
interested in this case?
A. No, sir, I haven't.
Q. You never told that story to anyone?
A. No, sir.
MR. PEPPER: Thanks very much,
Mr. Ward. Nothing further.
THE COURT: All right. You may
stand down, sir. You can remain in the
courtroom or you can leave.
(Witness excused.)
THE COURT: Call your next
witness.
MR. PEPPER: Plaintiffs call
Mr. Raymond Kohlman to the stand.
RAYMOND KOHLMAN,
Having been first duly sworn, was examined
and testified as follows:
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER:
Q. Good afternoon, Mr. Kohlman.
A. Good afternoon.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1259
Q. Thank you for joining us.
A. Certainly.
Q. Would you please state your full name
and address for the record.
A. Raymond D. Kohlman, K O H L M A N.
And my office is at 7 North Main Street,
Attleboro, Massachusetts.
Q. And what do you do for a living,
Mr. Kohlman?
A. I'm an attorney.
Q. And where are you licensed to
practice law?
A. Presently in the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts.
Q. And have you, in the course of these
proceedings and in preparation for this
trial, assisted the plaintiffs with certain
investigative work?
A. Yes, I have.
Q. And would you tell the Court and the
jury what your assignment was in terms of
this matter.
A. I was asked to go to the public
library and to determine the listing for a
Betty Butler or a Paul L. Butler, either
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1260
separately or together. During that
investigation, I found -- I did it from 1966
through 1970 -- those years in the Polk
reference books.
Q. Let me show you a page from Polk,
Page 210, 1966. Is that the page that you
photocopied from Polk for 1966?
A. I can't see it too clearly. But it
is a page because I put -- specifically put a
yellow marking on it.
MR. PEPPER: Let's -- let's do
this. Let's pass these up to Mr. Kohlman so
that he can look at them.
A. Yes, that's Page 210, 1966.
Q. (BY MR. PEPPER) Right. And would you
read the highlighted insert there?
A. It's Paul (Betty), driver, Yellow
Cab, H, which is the house, 339 East South
Parkway.
Q. Okay. That is the address of Paul
and Betty Butler in 1966 listed in Polk
publication, and Paul is listed as a Yellow
Cab driver?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. I'd like to show you the next page.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1261
A. This is, again, Polk. All these
pages would be from Polk. 1967. It's Page
158. The listing is for Paul -- again,
(Betty), and it is 2639 -- it doesn't give a
street. This street is -- it doesn't show up
here, Apartment P1.
Q. Okay. Let me ask you to look at
this.
A. This is from '68. It's Page 157.
And the listing is Betty L. (wid. -- which is
the abbreviation for widow -- Paul), branch
manager, Gridiron Systems, 2639 Central
Avenue, Apartment P1.
Q. May we have that back so we can zoom
in for the jury. That listing then is 1968,
and it shows Paul -- it shows Betty is a
widow -- listed as a widow of Paul.
A. Yes, sir.
Q. So for the first time we see Betty
listed as a widow of Paul Butler.
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Here's the next one.
A. This is Page 163 from 1969. And the
listing here is for Betty L. (wid., Paul)
branch manager, Gridiron System, 2639 Central
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1262
Avenue, Apartment P1.
Q. This is another listing for the year
1969. Betty is still listed a widow of
Paul --
A. Yes, sir.
Q. -- at that point in time?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Now, it's your testimony that you
extracted and copied each of these pages.
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Let me show you this, Mr. Kohlman.
Would you tell the jury what you're holding?
A. This is a request for a death
certificate that was submitted by me to the
Shelby County -- Memphis and Shelby County
Health Department. I went in there to seek
certification of the death of Paul L.
Butler. After the clerk went through 1968 --
and I just dealt with 1968 -- she determined
that there was no death certificate for that
year for Paul L. Butler, and she signed and
dated and gave her clerical number.
Q. Mr. Kohlman, did you also call the --
a similar agency of the State of Arkansas?
A. Yes. Because of where the body
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1263
supposedly -- where the murder supposedly
occurred, the cab was found halfway between
here and Arkansas, wherever, I contacted --
actually, I went over to Crittenden County
Health Department. They don't keep records
back that far. They suggested I get a hold
of Little Rock Vital Records Department.
I did that yesterday morning and
spoke with -- I had to speak with a
supervisor, a Mrs. Carson. And she went
through -- she stated that she went through
the records for 1968 looking for
Mr. Butler -- Paul L.
Q. So is it your testimony then that you
could not find any official records of the
death of Mr. Paul Butler either in Tennessee
or in Arkansas?
A. Correct. There is -- as far as the
official records are concerned, Memphis/
Shelby County, no record of death for
Mr. Butler. And as far as Tennessee is
concerned, for 1968 there was no record of
Mr. Butler's demise.
Q. Thank you, Mr. Kohlman.
A. Thank you.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1264
MR. PEPPER: Nothing further,
Your Honor.
MR. GARRISON: Your Honor, I
have no questions.
THE COURT: You may stand down,
sir.
THE WITNESS: Thank you.
(Witness excused.)
THE COURT: All right.
MR. PEPPER: Your Honor,
plaintiffs have five minutes of film
testimony of a witness from California who
could not be here. We tried desperately to
get him here. He is a former newspaper
journalist for the New York Times. And it
was taken in the television trial
proceeding. He was cross-examined by former
U.S. Attorney, Hickman Ewing. In the
beginning he's giving testimony under direct
examination. We would like to play that.
And we also move at this time that
the documentation of Mr. Kohlman we covered
on -- for the plaintiffs be admitted into
evidence.
THE COURT: Any objections?
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1265
MR. GARRISON: No, Your Honor.
THE COURT: All right.
(Whereupon said documents were
marked as Collective Exhibit Number 24.)
MR. PEPPER: The name of the
witness, Your Honor, is Mr. Earl Caldwell.
(Whereupon the videotape was
played for the Court and Jury.)
FROM THE VIDEO:
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER:
Q. Back in April of 1968, for which
paper were you writing then?
A. I was writing for the New York Times.
Q. You were a New York Times reporter?
A. Yes.
Q. And were you given an assignment to
Memphis, Tennessee, in April of '68?
A. Yes, I was.
Q. And what was your -- what was your
assignment?
A. Well, at that time Claude Sitton
(phonetic) was the national editor of the
paper, and I was working as a national
correspondent. And I was told to go to
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1266
Memphis, Tennessee. And we had a meeting.
And at this meeting he told me that he had
gotten information that Dr. King now had
people as a part -- that were a part of his
group that he couldn't control. Said he
could no longer control his people. And
that -- he explained some of that to me. And
I remember the last words were he wanted me
to go to Memphis and nail Dr. King.
Q. And now we're on the -- we're on the
last hour of Dr. King's life.
A. Right.
Q. And at 6 o'clock -- at 6 p.m., where
are you standing and what are you doing?
A. At that moment I heard what I was
sure was a bomb blast. I ran to the -- I ran
to -- into the doorway to see what happened.
Because I was sure the motel had been
bombed. As it happened, the first thing I
saw when I looked out the door was a figure
in the bushes directly -- I would say
directly across to the right of where I was
looking when I looked out.
Q. And what was that figure doing?
A. Well, I couldn't tell. He was doing
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1267
something in the bushes. I didn't know what
he was doing. At that moment it was like he
was the key to what had happened in my mind.
Q. Has any FBI agent ever asked you what
you saw?
A. No. No one asked me ever. No FBI
agents, no local police, no authorities at
all.
CROSS-EXAMINATION
BY MR. EWING:
Q. How did you know to go to the
Lorraine Motel?
A. Because I had called ahead to
Memphis -- to the SCLC headquarters telling
them who I was. I wanted to know where he
was staying, and I was going to stay at the
same motel.
Q. Then would you have talked to them on
the 1st or the 31st?
A. Yes, I -- all those days.
Q. And you -- you found out from them --
A. Yes.
Q. -- that they were going to stay at
the Lorraine when they came to Memphis.
A. Yes.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1268
Q. Would you come over here and approach
this chart?
A. Right. Right.
Q. Point to where you say you were
staying at the hotel -- or motel.
A. (Indicating) I would have -- I think
my room would have been about like right in
here or something like that.
Q. So you come to the door when you hear
the bomb blast and you're standing there in
your shorts --
A. Right.
Q. -- and you look --
A. Right.
Q. And where do you say this man was in
the bushes?
A. He was right here in the heavy part
of the bushes. These bushes, mind you -- I
say "bushes." They were pretty high. They
were really high. They were like -- they
weren't bushes. You say bushes, like knee-
high. They're much higher than that.
Q. Could you stand right over here so
everybody can see you. Would you describe
what you saw the man do. In other words, get
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1269
down there and let's go through what you say
you saw out there.
A. Well, okay. I -- mind you, there are
these bushes there. And I -- when I'm seeing
this guy for the first time, he's in some
kind of a position. But I can't tell whether
he's like this or whether he's like this or
whether he's like this. I really don't
know. But he was in some kind of a position
that was not a stand-up position.
Q. Okay. Did you see him with a gun?
A. No.
Q. So when you see him and he's in the
bushes, is he twisting toward this way or is
he --
A. No.
Q. -- twisting this way?
A. When I seen him first, he was looking
at something over towards --
Q. Towards the motel?
A. Towards the motel, yes, right.
Q. Did he look up when he twisted?
A. He was still looking over to the
balcony.
Q. Was this man white or black?
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1270
A. He was white.
Q. What was he wearing?
A. I don't know. I thought it was some
kind of a coveralls or something. I said --
in my notes I said I thought he was in
coveralls or something like that. I couldn't
really be sure.
Q. Over the years, up until recently,
you -- were you aware that the House
Committee looked into this?
A. Yes, I was.
Q. And did you -- did you offer to tell
them what you saw?
A. I didn't think it was my place to
offer to them. But I did write in the
newspaper and saw to it it was published --
what I knew and why I knew it.
MR. EWING: Thank you.
MR. PEPPER: Your Honor, that
being the last witness available to the --
(End of the videotape portion.)
MR. PEPPER: Plaintiffs move
admission of that testimony.
THE COURT: Any objection?
MR. GARRISON: I don't have any
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1271
objection.
THE COURT: All right.
(Whereupon said videotape was
marked as Trial Exhibit Number 25.)
MR. PEPPER: Plaintiffs next
witness will take a little bit of time, Your
Honor. Would the Court like to break?
THE COURT: Okay. We'll break
for lunch and resume at 2:30.
(Lunch Recess.)
THE COURT: Bring the jury out,
please, sir.
THE SHERIFF: Yes, sir.
(Jury In.)
THE COURT: All right. We're
ready.
MR. PEPPER: Yes, Your Honor.
Plaintiffs call their first witness, Mr. Roy
Grabow.
ROY A. GRABOW,
Having been first duly sworn, was examined
and testified as follows:
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER:
Q. Good afternoon, Mr. Grabow. Thank
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1272
you for coming all this way up from
Mississippi to be here.
A. Thank you.
Q. Would you state your full name and
address for the record.
A. Roy Allen Grabow.
Q. Would you please pull up a bit in the
chair there.
A. Roy Allen Grabow.
THE COURT: Spell your last
name, please.
THE WITNESS: G R A B O W.
THE COURT: Thank you.
THE WITNESS: Thank you.
Q. (BY MR. PEPPER) And what is your
address, please.
A. 1206 Church Street, Boonville,
Mississippi.
Q. And we're taking you somewhat out of
turn, Mr. Grabow, because of an illness of
your -- your wife.
A. Right.
Q. Can you tell the Court what is --
what is the problem -- medical problem?
A. From a car wreck.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1273
Q. And what is her present physical
condition -- Glenda Grabow's present physical
condition?
A. Her rib is cracked, broke, and it's
pressing against her and she's bleeding
internally a little bit.
Q. Has she been instructed not to be
transported here?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. What I'd like to do is move ahead
with you in this testimony to the extent of
your personal knowledge.
A. Yes, sir.
Q. What you know, not what you have been
told or know from her but what you know
personally.
A. Right. Yes, sir.
Q. Did you live in Houston, Texas, with
your wife in the early 1960's?
A. Yes, sir, I did.
Q. And at that time when you were living
in Houston, Texas, what was the -- where was
the area where you resided?
A. Around Hobby Airport.
Q. Around the Hobby Airport.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1274
A. Yes, sir.
Q. And at that time did you see a -- an
individual who has been described in these
proceedings as -- as Raul?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. Let me, just for the purposes of
identification, show you a spread of
photographs. Do you see a likeness of Raul
in -- amongst those images?
A. Yes, I do.
Q. Which one is Raul as you knew him?
A. Number 4.
Q. Number --
A. 4.
Q. Number 4.
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Second hand --
A. Middle one on the right, yes, sir.
Q. Thank you. Where did you see this
person in Houston?
A. Oh, where I used to gas up on the --
the service station where I used to gas up at
on College Street.
Q. Did your wife also -- to the best of
your knowledge, did your wife also know this
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1275
person and become acquainted with him?
A. Yes, she did.
Q. All right. Mr. Grabow, I'm going to
show you two affidavits that have been
executed before a notary by Glenda Grabow and
ask you if you were present when these
affidavits were sworn -- written and sworn by
your wife.
A. Yes, sir.
MR. PEPPER: Okay. I'll move
their admission, Your Honor.
(Whereupon said documents were
marked as Trial Exhibit Number 26.)
Q. (BY MR. PEPPER) I'm going to show you
a series of photographs and ask you if you
recognize the individuals and/or the places
here. Do you recognize the two people in
that photograph?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. And who are they?
A. Amaro and my daughter, Connie.
Q. That's your daughter Connie on the
right, and the other man is --
A. Amaro.
Q. Amaro. And to the best of your
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1276
knowledge, what is the relationship between
Amaro and Raul?
A. Either a cousin or an uncle. I'm not
real certain, but it's one of the two.
Q. Some relative, cousin or another.
A. Yes.
Q. Did you see much of Amaro?
A. Quite often.
Q. Quite a bit?
A. I knew him quite well, yes.
Q. All right. I'm going to show you
another photograph. Get these photographs
right. Who are the people in this
photograph?
A. That's my daughter, Connie, on the
right, me, Amaro and my wife Glenda.
Q. Let's eliminate any confusion. Where
is your daughter Connie? Is this --
A. That's Connie.
Q. This is your daughter Connie. And
this is you?
A. That's me.
Q. This is --
A. My wife, Glenda, and Amaro.
Q. And this is Amaro here. Where was
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1277
that taken, do you know?
A. Tokyo Garden.
Q. I'm sorry.
A. Tokyo Garden.
Q. Tokyo Garden?
A. Restaurant, yes.
Q. Where is that?
A. Houston, Texas, in west town.
Q. And about what time was that
photograph taken?
A. You mean date or --
Q. Yes, the approximate date.
A. It was in -- probably about '73.
Q. It was in the early 70's?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you recognize that building?
A. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. It belongs to
Felix Tareno.
Q. It -- or it belonged to --
A. Well, yes.
Q. -- then Felix Tareno.
A. Yes.
Q. Had you ever seen the person whose
been identified as Raul on those premises?
A. Yes, I have.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1278
Q. Where have you seen him on those
premises?
A. On the porch.
Q. On the porch. Was that building
the -- to the best of your personal
knowledge, was that building the scene of
some unpleasantness involving your wife --
A. Yes, it was.
Q. -- and Raul?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. It was.
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Was there a time when you and your
wife went together to visit Attorney Percy
Foreman?
A. Yes, there was.
Q. Where did you visit Attorney Foreman?
A. Where? At his office.
Q. At his office?
A. Yes.
Q. And what was the purpose of that
visit?
A. I hired him for my brother.
Q. Sorry.
A. I hired him for my brother.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1279
Q. Your brother had a --
A. Case, yes, sir.
Q. Had a case. And when you went into
Attorney Foreman's office, did you notice
anything of particular interest concerning
this case?
A. They -- they had some books and
papers in the office pertaining to it, yes,
sir.
Q. Pertaining to Mr. Foreman's
representation?
A. Yes. Yes.
Q. And did your -- did Attorney Foreman
give your wife a drawing of himself?
A. Yes, he did.
Q. And was that drawing signed by him?
A. Yes, it was. To her from him.
Q. Right. And the subject of your --
of -- of your visit and the relationship with
Foreman is covered in these affidavits sworn
by your wife?
A. Yes.
Q. Is that right?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Now, when did you leave Houston,
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1280
Texas, and move to Mississippi?
A. When -- we come down in 1980, stayed
for six months, sold my house in Houston.
And went back to Houston, finalized it, and
moved to Mississippi in '81 -- 1981.
Q. Mr. Grabow, why did you leave
Houston, Texas?
A. Threats.
Q. Sorry.
A. Threats. Mr. Foreman said to get out
of town or we would be dead within a year.
Q. Let's back up on that again. There
were threats to you?
A. Threats to my wife and me.
Q. Threats to your wife and you?
A. Yes.
Q. And Mr. Foreman told you what?
A. To get out of town within a year or
we would be dead.
Q. Get out of town within the year or
you'd be dead?
A. That's right.
Q. Who wanted to kill you and your wife,
Mr. Grabow?
A. Well, I don't know. From what he
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1281
told my wife, it was from Raul.
Q. What did that all have to do with,
these threats? Do you know what all that had
to do with?
A. What do you mean?
Q. What was behind the threats? What
caused the threats?
A. My wife --
Q. From your knowledge, what was behind
it?
A. I don't really know. From what --
this is what my wife knows -- most of it.
Mine would just be what I know from her.
Q. Well, we're not going to ask you to
testify about that.
A. But I know it was pertaining to Raul
and the Ray case.
Q. Something to do with Raul and the
Ray case?
A. Right. I know that much.
Q. Did there come a time in Houston,
Texas -- after you left you sold your house
and -- finally in what year?
A. In -- we finally sold it in '81.
Q. 1981?
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1282
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did you go back there in subsequent
years to Houston at all?
A. Yes.
Q. To visit?
A. I went down and worked for a while on
account of my daughter, Connie. She had a
lot of problems -- medical problems. I went
back to where a good hospital was.
Q. All right.
A. I worked down there for about five or
six months on a job that --
Q. At one point later on when you were
living in Mississippi, did you become aware
again of the man you've identified as Raul?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. And how did that happen?
A. My wife called him and talked to him.
Q. Your wife called him and talked to
him. How did your wife get his telephone
number? How did she become aware of where he
was?
A. Look in the phone book, called
information to find him.
Q. How did she know which phone book to
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1283
look in? Did someone show her some
information, or how did she become aware of
his presence and where he was living?
A. I don't know exactly. I don't know
exactly.
Q. But somehow she became aware --
A. Yes.
Q. -- of his presence.
A. Right.
Q. And somehow she obtained his phone
number.
A. Right.
Q. But you weren't present when she did
that, or you don't know exactly how she
obtained it.
A. No.
Q. Okay.
A. There was some things she kept from
me.
Q. You testify to what you know, please,
sir.
A. Yes, sir. That's what I'm doing.
Q. Now, Mr. Grabow, I'm going to show
you an original telephone bill dated the 5th
of May, 1995.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1284
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Is that your telephone bill?
A. Yes, it is.
Q. For that period of time?
A. Yes, sir. Yes, it is.
Q. It has your phone number on there?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Do you see a telephone call made on
the 20th of April?
A. Yes, I do.
Q. What time of day was that call made?
A. What time of day? 12:54 p.m.
Q. And how long was that call?
A. Six minutes.
Q. Were you present when that call was
made?
A. Yes, I was.
Q. And who was that call made to?
A. Raul in Yonkers, New York.
Q. And who made the call to Raul?
A. My wife, Glenda.
Q. I'm not asking you to comment on even
one side of the conversation. Did you have
the impression that this telephone call --
that the parties speaking on this telephone
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1285
call, one of them was your wife, knew the
other party?
A. Oh, yes.
Q. That they were familiar?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Would your wife ever talk on the
telephone with someone for six minutes she
didn't know?
A. No.
Q. Or didn't know her?
A. No. She didn't like to talk on the
phone anyway. Very seldom.
Q. But in this instance she was talking
on the phone for six minutes.
A. Yes, sir.
Q. That's the second longest call on
this -- on this bill, isn't it?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. I'm going to show you a copy of this
bill, and we've blocked out Raul's telephone
number.
A. Okay.
Q. I would like you to compare the copy
with the original and tell us whether they
are identical except for the redacting of
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1286
Raul's telephone number.
A. Yes, they are.
Q. Well, please, would you look at all
of the pages.
A. Oh, all of the pages. Okay. Yes,
sir.
MR. PEPPER: That being the
case, Your Honor, plaintiffs move the
admission of the copy with the redacted
telephone number.
THE COURT: All right.
(Whereupon said document was
marked as Trial Exhibit Number 27.)
Q. (BY MR. PEPPER) Mr. Grabow, have any
investigators -- official investigators of
the United States Government or any police
authority discussed with you or your wife
information that you may have about this man,
Raul?
A. About -- lately or --
Q. At any time.
A. No. I think the -- the men from
homicide in Memphis here came down to talk to
us one time.
Q. Somebody did come down?
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1287
A. Yes, sir.
Q. How long ago was that?
A. Last year.
Q. Did you tell or did your wife tell
everything --
A. Yes, she did.
Q. -- that she knows about this?
A. Yes, she did.
Q. Did you hear anything further --
A. No.
Q. -- with respect --
A. We have come back up and talked to
them because some of the things she said was
changed on the affidavit. She made an oral
affidavit. And when he typed it out and
showed it, we had to change a lot because
some of the things was changed on there.
Q. The statement that she gave was not
the same statement that was printed that she
was asked to sign?
A. Yes, some things were.
Q. It was different?
A. Yes, some things.
Q. Did you effect those changes? Did
you make -- ensure that they made those
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1288
changes?
A. What we could. What we could, yes.
It took so long. She don't read so fast.
And it was taking an awful long time for her
to. So we changed what she could.
Q. This Court has heard evidence that
your wife has given a lengthy, almost auto-
biographical, statement to an English film
producer, Jack Saltman. Do you know that
that's the case?
A. Well, it's -- I don't know what it
was. If I understood it -- we thought we was
working with a lawyer and stuff. And she
talked to him a long time. And I think they
was trying to make some kind of movie deal or
something. I don't know what it was.
Q. So they took a statement?
A. Yes, they did. Yes, they did.
Q. You thought you were working --
A. Yes, sir.
Q. -- with whom?
A. I thought we were working with the
lawyers for -- attorneys for --
Q. Attorneys for whom?
A. The Rays. I don't know. Ray's
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1289
attorneys, I guess. What we understood is
they just kept running us around keeping us
away from him.
Q. And that went on for a period of
time, didn't it?
A. Yes, it did.
Q. But your wife has discussed with you
all of these events and everything that she
knows at this point in time.
A. Oh, yes.
Q. I'm not going to ask you to say what
these are, but she has discussed these things
with you.
A. Yes, she has.
Q. And whatever it is she has told you
and has discussed with you, has she ever
changed her story over all these years --
A. No.
Q. -- in terms of what has happened to
her?
A. No.
Q. And what has happened to her is
reflected in these affidavits that we have
put into evidence?
A. Right. There are no changes.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1290
MR. PEPPER: No changes. Thank
you very much. Nothing further.
CROSS-EXAMINATION
BY MR. GARRISON:
Q. Mr. Grabow, would you tell us if the
gentleman who came from Memphis to talk to
you and Mrs. Grabow was a gentleman named
Mark Glankler? Does that sound like his
name? Last year --
A. Glankler?
Q. Yes, sir.
A. I don't think so.
Q. Someone did come and talk to you and
Ms. Grabow from Memphis?
A. Yes.
Q. Now, you called me several years ago
and told me that your wife had some
information and you had been unable to get
her to come forth.
A. Yes, I did.
Q. And you came and talked to me about
it.
A. Yes, sir.
Q. You and your wife.
A. Yes, sir.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1291
Q. Let me ask you, during the time that
you were around this Raul and -- what's his
name, Amaro?
A. Amaro.
Q. Did they ever mention the name of
Loyd Jowers to you? You never heard of that
name, did you?
A. No, sir.
Q. And Mr. Foreman never mentioned the
name of Loyd Jowers, you never heard of him?
A. No, sir. First time I heard it was
when we seen a little piece in the paper and
we called you.
Q. Okay. When your wife talked to this
Raul -- I'm not asking you what she said --
but did she seem pretty sure that that was
the person that she had seen back in the
60's? Was it pretty certain through the
whole conversation that it was the same
person?
A. She was very certain.
Q. She was very certain it was?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did they talk about things that
people who have known each other a long time
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1292
would talk about?
A. I didn't stay in the room that long.
But when she started out talking to him, she
knew him real well.
MR. GARRISON: That's all.
THE COURT: All right, sir. You
may stand down. You can remain in the
courtroom or you're free to leave.
THE WITNESS: Thank you, sir.
(Witness excused.)
MR. PEPPER: Plaintiffs call
Mr. John Smith.
THE COURT: Would you all come
up here a minute.
(A bench conference was held at
sidebar outside the hearing of the jury.)
JOHN C. SMITH,
Having been first duly sworn, was examined
and testified as follows:
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER:
Q. Good afternoon, Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith, could you please move forward to
the microphone. Thank you for coming here
this afternoon. I know you have been
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1293
hospitalized, and that's why we're calling
you way out of turn in terms of your
knowledge of facts -- particular facts in
this case. We are grateful for you to come.
Would you state your full name for the
record, please.
A. John Charles Smith.
THE COURT: What is it again,
please, sir.
THE WITNESS: John Charles
Smith.
THE COURT: John Charles Smith.
Thank you, sir.
Q. (BY MR. PEPPER) And have you been a
resident of Memphis for many years?
A. Well, about nine now.
Q. You were away for a period of time?
A. Yes.
Q. Where are you from originally,
Mr. Smith?
A. Memphis.
Q. Memphis. And when did you leave
Memphis?
A. As a kid. I grew up in Los
Angeles -- in Oakland.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1294
Q. All right. And when did you come
back to Memphis?
A. '67.
Q. 1967. How old were you in 1967 when
you returned to Memphis?
A. 25.
Q. Did you join a group called the
Invaders at that point in time?
A. Yes.
Q. Or become associated with them?
A. Yes, more -- more --
Q. And were you active with the Invaders
during the time of the Sanitation Workers'
Strike?
A. Yes.
Q. And during the time when Dr. King
came to Memphis?
A. Yes.
Q. And along with Charles Cabbage and
Covey Smith and others?
A. Yes.
Q. Now, were you at the Lorraine Motel
in April -- on April 4, 1968?
A. Yes, I was.
Q. Would you -- would you tell us when
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1295
you came to the motel.
A. It had to be around 6 -- between 6
and 6:30.
Q. Was that when you arrived at the
hotel or when you -- how long had you been at
the hotel during that day? Let me give you a
benchmark for your -- your movements.
Dr. King was assassinated at 6:01.
A. Right. Well, then I had been around
the Lorraine most of the day off and on.
Q. So you had been around -- prior to
the assassination around the hotel?
A. Yes.
Q. And where were you when you were at
the hotel? Do you recall where you were most
of the time?
A. In the lobby.
Q. In the lobby?
THE COURT: Excuse me just a
minute, Mr. Pepper. There's a beeping going
on some place. Does anyone know the source
of it? I just heard it.
MR. PEPPER: I did hear
something, Your Honor.
THE COURT: There it goes
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1296
again. Okay. You may proceed.
Q. (BY MR. PEPPER) So you were around
the hotel most of the day and you were around
there in the afternoon?
A. Yes.
Q. And you were in the lobby in the
afternoon?
A. Yes.
Q. Okay. Did you see earlier in the
afternoon around the lobby in the hotel a
police presence?
A. Yes, there was a black detective who
was sitting in the lobby in the corner.
Q. Right.
A. And I left out, went into the
restaurant. And when I came back out, he had
left.
Q. And what time was it when you came
back out of the restaurant? Do you have any
idea?
A. No, I couldn't tell you the time, but
it was before the shooting though.
Q. Do you have an idea how long it was
before the shooting?
A. Maybe ten minutes.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1297
Q. Shortly before?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did you see any police around the
hotel in the course of the day?
A. There was a few over at the fire
station and cars riding around the motel.
Q. But in the motel itself --
A. The only one I really saw was him.
Q. Was that one?
A. The one black detective.
Q. Was he in uniform or in plain
clothes?
A. No, plain clothes.
Q. He was in plain clothes. And he was
there up until a few minutes before --
A. Before the shooting.
Q. Some time -- a short time before the
shooting.
A. Yes, about ten minutes before.
Q. You came out and you saw he was gone?
A. Right.
Q. Did you ever see him again on the
premises that afternoon?
A. No, not that night.
Q. Did you ever see any other policemen
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1298
around the motel -- in the area of the motel
itself or inside the motel at the time of the
shooting?
A. No. Most of them were outside --
outside of the property.
Q. Did you -- what did you do after the
shooting yourself?
A. Well, I -- I walked out and walked in
the back lot. There was a cafe back there.
And I was looking for my wife at the time.
Q. All right. Did you at any time look
up into the -- across Mulberry up into the
bushes or the brush area?
A. Not -- I can't remember that.
Q. You can't. Do you remember seeing
any -- anything strange or anything that
caught your attention?
A. Well, it was just that it was just --
everything just became steel. Everybody --
there was no movement outside of the motel,
period. No cars were moving, nobody was
walking.
Q. Still.
A. Yes.
Q. For how long a period of time did
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1299
that stillness take place?
A. Up until -- I guess just before I
headed inside the cafe. It was on the lot of
the motel. And when we came out, it was
all -- it was all over then. There was
traffic everywhere.
Q. It just erupted after the shooting?
A. Yes.
MR. PEPPER: Okay. Nothing
further, Your Honor. Thank you, Mr. Smith.
MR. GARRISON: I don't have any
questions, Your Honor.
THE COURT: All right, sir. You
may step down.
(Witness excused.)
MR. PEPPER: Plaintiffs call
Mr. William Schaap to the stand.
WILLIAM SCHAAP,
Having been first duly sworn, was examined
and testified as follows:
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER:
Q. Good afternoon, Mr. Schaap.
A. Good afternoon.
Q. Would you state your full name and
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1300
address for the record, please.
A. My name is William Schaap. My
address is 143 West Fourth Street, New York,
New York.
Q. Could you give us a summary of your
professional background, please.
THE COURT: Before you do that,
spell your last name.
THE WITNESS: I'm sorry.
S C H A A P.
THE COURT: Thank you.
A. I'm an attorney. I graduated from
the University of Chicago Law School in
1964. I've been a practicing lawyer since
then. And I'm a member of the bar of the
State of New York and of the District of
Columbia. I specialized in the 1970's in
military law. I practiced military law in
Asia and Europe. I later became the editor
in chief of the Military Law Reporter in
Washington for a number of years. And in the
70's and 80's I was staff counsel of the
Center for Constitutional Rights in New York
City.
I also in the late 1980's was an
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1301
adjunct professor at John J. College of
Criminal Justice of the City University of
New York where I taught courses on propaganda
and disinformation.
Q. (BY MR. PEPPER) Have you also been
involved in journalism and publishing?
A. Yes, I have. Since 1977 or '78, in
addition to being a practicing lawyer, I've
also been a journalist and a publisher and a
writer specializing in intelligence-related
matters and particularly their relationship
to the media. For more than 20 years I've
been the co-publisher of a magazine called
the "Covert Action Quarterly" which
particularly deals with reporting on
intelligence agencies, primarily U.S.
agencies but also foreign.
I published a magazine for a number
of years called "Lies Of Our Times" which
specifically was a magazine about propaganda
and disinformation. And I've been the
managing director of the Institute for Media
Analysis for a number of years. I also, for
about 20 years now, I think, was one of the
principals in a publishing company called
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1302
Sheraton Square Press that published books
and pamphlets relating to intelligence and
the media.
Q. Do you also write? Have you authored
articles and works?
A. Yes, I do. I've written, oh, dozens
of articles on -- particularly on media and
intelligence. I've edited about seven or
eight books on the subject. I've contributed
sections to a number of other books and
had -- I've -- many of my articles, of
course, have appeared in my own -- our own
publications, but I've also had articles
appear around the world including New York
Times, Washington Post and major media
like -- like those.
I've appeared a lot on radio and
television as an expert on intelligence and
the media. I'm slowing down a bit now
because I'm getting older. But I used to do
a lot of speaking at universities and
colleges around the country and debating
government officials and people connected to
organizations that supported the CIA and the
other -- FBI and the other intelligence
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1303
agencies.
Q. Have you ever testified as an expert
witness in the area of governmental use of
media for disinformation and propaganda?
A. Yes, I have. I've -- I've testified
as an expert in that field in both state and
federal courts in this country. I've
testified in foreign courts. I testified
once before the United Nations on that
subject and once before the U.S. Congress.
Q. Mr. Schaap, I'm going to show you a
copy of a -- of your own CV. It's a summary
of your professional qualifications. I want
you to confirm its accuracy.
A. Yes, that's -- that's my CV that I
prepared.
MR. PEPPER: Your Honor, we move
admission of Mr. Schaap's CV and move that he
be accepted as an expert witness in the
matter at hand for the issues of government
use of media or disinformation and propaganda
purposes.
THE COURT: Objections?
MR. GARRISON: I have no
objection.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1304
THE COURT: All right.
(Whereupon said document was
marked as Trial Exhibit Number 28.)
Q. (BY MR. PEPPER) Mr. Schaap, in the
course of your research, have you had
occasion to study the use of the media by
government agencies?
A. Yes, I have. I've studied many
government reports on the subject. Many, many
books have been written about it and
articles. In fact, I've written many of
those articles.
Q. Can you give the Court and the Jury a
brief summary of the subject indicating the
extent to which this type of activity by
government still takes place?
A. Yes, I can. I -- I won't go into
ancient history, but it should be noted
that -- that governments around the world
have secretly used the media for their
purposes for many hundreds of years, probably
thousands. But certainly from the 16th and
17th century in England on there has been a
great deal of research about the use by
governments -- a secret use of the media.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1305
For our purposes though, the --
particularly relating to the U.S., the most
significant and the first major deliberate
program in this country was during World War
I when President Wilson set up an
organization called the Committee For Public
Information under a public relations
executive -- a man named George Creole.
The purpose of this committee was to
propagandize the war effort against Germany.
This was created immediately after the U.S.
entered World War I in 1917. And in
propagandizing the war effort and war news,
it was the policy of this committee to have
no compunctions about falsifying the news
whenever it was felt that that was necessary
to help the war effort.
Q. Can you give us an example of the
type of falsification of the news that you're
talking about.
A. Yes. They -- the Committee For
Public Information purported very often to
release documents, supposedly genuine
documents, to the press in order to
substantiate whatever particular position
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1306
the -- the Wilson government might have been
taking at the time. And one of the most
famous that happened early in its creation in
1917 was a disinformation campaign to suggest
that the Russian revolutionaries, Lenin in
particular and Trotsky, were actually German
agents being paid by the Kaiser.
The Government and Creole's
committee made up the story. They made up --
created phony documents. They passed it all
to friends in the major newspapers. And
almost immediately this was front page news
around the United States and around the
world.
Q. I'm going to show you a New York
Times headline of that era and see if that's
the kind of falsification you're talking
about.
A. Yes, this is -- the rest of the text
is from an article where that headline
appeared. But that was on the front page of
the New York Times in 1917. And later it
transpired that the documents were -- were
forgeries that had been created by
Mr. Creole. And, of course, it was obvious
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1307
by the current course of history, the Russian
revolutionaries were hardly friends of the
Kaiser.
Q. Yes, indeed.
A. Much less employees.
Q. Can you continue with your summary,
please.
A. Yes. After World War I, the U.S.
continued to be the -- or actually became the
world's leader in the control of
information. Britain had been more pre-
eminent before World War I. But at the end
of the war, the U.S. was really in control of
all the world communication media. And
disinformation was used by the government
sporadically during the inter-war years. It
was particularly used in the red scares of
the 1920's and the creation of dis-
information suggesting various opponents of
the government were communists.
But it wasn't a major aspect of
government policy until the advent of World
War II. And that was when deliberate
disinformation or a structure for emitting
deliberate disinformation became very, very
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1308
important.
Q. What happened at that point in
history to bring about that resurgence?
A. Well, at the very beginning of World
War II there were really two schools of
thought competing, both of which had
government agencies. One that was set up was
called the Office of War Information which
was a civilian organization although it
worked closely with the War Department, as it
was then called. And it was headed by a man
named Elmer Davis who was a very famous
reporter -- journalist.
His philosophy was that the agency
should tell the American people exactly what
was happening -- tell them the truth. If we
lost a battle somewhere in Europe or the
Pacific, we should tell the people we lost
that battle. If we won a battle, we'd tell
them we won it. But he believed that in the
long run we would do best by reporting the
truth.
But at the same time another key
organization that developed during World War
II was the Office of Strategic Services, the
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1309
OSS, which was headed by a military man,
William Donovan, who was known as Wild Bill
Donovan, who believed the saying that George
Creole had -- his philosophy from World War
I, which was that you should lie to the
people whenever it's necessary, whenever you
think lying will help maintain morale and win
the war.
This struggle was taking place, of
course, in the context of World War II. And
Donovan won both with President Roosevelt and
afterward with President Truman. His
philosophy that disinformation was a
powerful -- a valuable weapon for a country
to have, and that the disadvantages of lying
to the American people were outweighed by the
advantages of being able to manipulate the
media.
So when the war was over, the Office
of War Information was dissolved. The OSS
was transformed into the CIA. And the CIA
was now existing in peace time, mind you.
World War II is over, and now the CIA is set
up with this information as a major part of
its work and, in fact, as most of the reports
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1310
later pointed out, the largest single part of
the CIA's operations.
The -- within the government at
least, the acceptability of lying to the
public became very widespread and acceptable
even in time of peace. There had been people
who felt, well, it's one thing when you're at
war. But even in time of peace it became
acceptable, and it spread from other
agencies, including the -- the FBI which also
began to engage in media manipulation in a
very, very large way.
Q. So in addition to being a war time
strategy with respect to the security of the
nation and the -- the promulgation of -- of
falsehoods in times of war, this tactic
started to be used in peace time.
A. Exactly. That was the major
difference. Certain things were -- were much
more acceptable or expected over the course
of history in time of war and were generally
supposed to stop when the war was over. Now,
there were people who argued in the late 40's
that the Cold War was a war just like a hot
war, and that was the war that was on, and
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1311
that was why we had to do this.
But what really happened is there
were not battles being waged between
soldiers. There was not a hot war going on
anywhere, and yet the -- the infrastructure
that had been set up to spread disinformation
to be able to lie became institutionalized
and became operating at a greater and greater
level.
Q. Mr. Schaap, how is it that some
individuals like yourself have become more
aware of these kinds of practices in our
lifetimes while the mass of the population
has not?
A. Well, it's mostly because -- by
coincidence there were a number of factors
that came together, mostly in the 1970's,
leading to major congressional investigations
of these activities leading some newspapers
to fund serious in-depth investigative
reports. And in the middle and late 70's
there were a series -- a huge series of
congressional reports on intelligence
activities , a whole section of which was
devoted to media activities.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1312
And then there were major exposes in
the New York Times and the Washington Post.
It was sort of the Watergate mentality, I
guess, that allowed this to happen. There
was a window of a few years when exposing
government misconduct, particularly past
government misconduct -- and as far as the
government was concerned, the older the
better. But at least there was a window of
opportunity where this was acceptable even
within the mainstream, the establishment
press. It was not frowned upon as much as it
might have been at other times both before
and since.
Q. Before we go into some specific
instances of this and details, can you
explain to the Court and Jury really how does
disinformation work? And why is it so -- why
is it so successful?
A. Well, you have to understand first
the target of propaganda -- of
disinformation. The consumer of the false
news so to speak is -- in what we're talking
about is the American public in general and
sometimes the public overseas. Dis-
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1313
information is almost always by -- by
definition, about things that the average
person has no separate personal knowledge of,
otherwise it couldn't really work.
I mean, you can't fool the people
you're talking about. You can fool the other
people who don't know about it. You're not
trying to fool the people you're talking
about.
The simplest example is during the
Vietnam War when there was a massive bombing
campaign and the U.S. was bombing Cambodia.
President Nixon and Secretary of State
Kissinger repeatedly made public statements
that we were not dropping bombs in Cambodia.
Well, you couldn't fool the Cambodians who
looked up and saw the bombs falling in their
back yard. They knew you were bombing
Cambodia. But the American people by and
large accepted these statements as truth, and
in fact that was a disinformation campaign
that was later admitted.
You're -- really we're talking about
things that the public has no separate
knowledge of. And it's also reinforced by
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1314
the fact that Americans generally tend to
believe what their government tells them, to
believe that government officials on all
levels generally tell the truth. And that --
if you have that, that absence of skepticism,
it's a major plus for the disinformationists.
And, also, it's very, very unusual
around the world other than in the United
States. In most other countries,
particularly in Europe, it's much more the
opposite. People tend on average to be very
skeptical of their government. If the
Italian government issues a statement, the
average Italian on the street will say it's
probably a lie until you can prove to me
otherwise that it's not a lie. Because
governments lie. That's what they -- you
know, they sort of expect them to do that
whereas Americans don't expect that.
The average American would hear
something from the government or hear the
news on television and assumes that what
they're hearing is the truth unless they're
shown otherwise. They assume that almost
nothing is ever a conspiracy. In Europe it's
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1315
very much the opposite. Anything happens.
They tend to think it's a conspiracy unless
you show them that it wasn't a conspiracy.
I mean, after all, "conspiracy" just
means, you know, more than one person being
involved in something. And if you stop and
think about it, almost everything significant
that happens anywhere involves more than one
person. Yet here there is a -- not a myth
really, but there's just an underlying
assumption that most things are not
conspiracies. And when you have that, it
enables a government which has a propaganda
program, has a disinformation program, to be
relatively successful in -- in having its
disinformation accepted.
The other reason why it -- why it
works even though as we -- as we know,
somewhere there are people who know it's not
true. Somewhere they know you're lying about
something. But another reason it works is
that disinformation is very, very effective
over time. The longer that you, whoever you
are, can control the spin on a story, the
more that spin becomes accepted as the
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1316
absolute truth. And in this country the
government has a great deal of power and
influence over that spin.
Q. Why is it so effective over time?
A. Well, this is an area where I had to
consult with other experts because it turns
out really to be a neurological function.
And that was first explained to me by a -- a
professor at Harvard Medical School. And it
has to do with the way the human brain
remembers things, the way we learn things,
the way we create patterns and associations
and reinforce -- well, I don't know how
you -- it sort of like channels in the brain
when certain things trigger certain
collateral thoughts.
And when you associate one thing
with another over time, just the mention of
the one brings the association of the other.
What this will sometimes mean is that even
when something is later exposed as a lie, if
it was accepted as a truth for a long time,
the exposure of it as a lie is not believed.
It's in one ear and out the other.
The best example that we know in my
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1317
field is one that John Stockwell reported
on. He was a CIA officer in Angola -- for
Angola. But they were based -- the CIA
station was based in the Congo. And when the
Cuban troops were sent in to help the
Angolans fight the South Africans during the
early and mid 70's, the CIA's task was to try
to discredit the Cubans and do whatever it
could to make people around the world think
it was a terrible thing that the Cubans were
helping the Angolans.
So Stockwell's group in Congo sat
down, and one guy says to the other guy,
let's think of something terrible to say that
the Cubans did. And another guy says, hey,
why don't we say they're raping Angolan
women. That would be a great thing to say.
The other guy says, terrific. And they call
in their media experts, and they start
sitting there at their desk at the CIA office
and they start typing out these news stories
about how a group of Cuban soldiers raped a
bunch of Angolan women in some operation.
And then they write Story Number 2
which is that the villagers got incensed and
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1318
decided they didn't want the Cubans anymore,
and they were going to find the fellows who
did it and arrest them. And in Story Number
3 the villagers captured the Cubans. In
Story Number 4 they were tried by a jury of
the women victims and they were later
executed with their own weapons.
And they made a series of about 12
newspaper stories in a row. And with one
phone call and one visit, it went over the
wire services, it went into Europe, it went
into the United States, it went around the
world. And for about a six-month period
there were all these stories about the
horrible Cuban rapes in Angola. And what
that does is when you hear -- the average
person hears Angola or Cuban, they'll think
rape of the women. And if they hear rape of
the women, they will think Angola or Cubans.
And if you get Angola, they'll think Cubans
and rape of the women.
And these patterns build up so that
that becomes the truth embedded in your
mind. Four years later John Stockwell quit
the CIA and wrote a book exposing it. Wrote
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1319
a big piece for the New York Times about how
the entire Cuban/Angola story was a
fabrication. And he sat there at the desk
typing it. And the day after that story
appeared, there was still 900 million people
around the world who thought the phony story
was true.
Because when year, after year, after
year you hear that something was the case,
one story -- one day saying, hey, the whole
thing was a lie, and it doesn't register on
their brain. It can't beat those -- those
patterns that have been built up.
Q. Let's go back now taking an
example -- let's go back now to the general
area of intelligence because all of this
activity is useless unless there's a
structure into which it fits and into which
it can be put out. Can you deal with the
kind of structure of media operations that
puts out this kind of disinformation. How
extensive is it?
A. Yes. We can be -- we have a lot of
information about the CIA. We have a certain
amount of information about the FBI, a
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1320
certain amount about military intelligence.
And the reason for this is because there were
those congressional investigations that I
mentioned before. There have been reports
published, particularly from the Church
Committee in the late 70's, where they
published volume after volume describing the
extent of media operations by the CIA and --
and other agencies.
They -- the exact amounts of money
that were being spent were -- were not
divulged by those initial reports because
that was considered to be classified. The
intelligence budgets are always classified
except at the same time every few weeks
you'll read something in the newspaper where
they say, the classified budget, which is
approximately 25 billion dollars, and so on
and so on and so forth.
So what we -- what we have learned
from these reports is that -- the first thing
was that about a third of the whole CIA
budget went to media propaganda operations.
Q. Well, if a third of the CIA's budget
went to media propaganda operations, how much
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1321
would that be approximately?
A. We're talking about hundreds of
millions of dollars a year just for that. I
mean, the intelligence budget -- now
everything together is according to these --
all these reports that say it's secret, but
it's about 25 to 30 billion dollars a year.
Now, a lot of that is high-tech stuff. It
has nothing to do with what we're talking
about -- satellites and so on. But the stuff
that goes to the CIA is several billion.
And when you factor out overhead and
things like that, you have got your
operational amount. Most of the estimates
suggest that -- that hundreds of billion --
hundreds of millions of dollars -- close to a
billion dollars are being spent every year by
the United States on secret propaganda.
Again, we have fairly good figures
for the CIA because it at least has been
admitted in the past that they did do this
stuff. They admit they do it now except they
say they don't do it within the United
States. But they admit that that's part of
what they do.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1322
The FBI is much harder to -- to get
figures for because they don't generally
admit to conducting media operations. And
unless and until something gets exposed and
they have to admit that particular operation,
they -- they deny to an extent where it's
really hard to try and estimate how much
money is being used by the FBI and by the
military intelligence agencies.
But it's sort of clear that hundreds
of millions of dollars a year are being spent
by various aspects of the government on
deliberately creating and spreading lies.
Q. Before we get into the specifics of
media operations related to the Martin Luther
King case and James Earl Ray, can you give
us -- just to finish the background, can you
give us some idea of the influence that the
CIA and the FBI have had over the media.
A. Yes. Again, this was something that
very specific figures came out in the 70's
and 80's, and we don't know the precise
figures. Today we have no reason to think
that they are significantly less than when
they came out. But when the Church Committee
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1323
reported on the CIA media operations, for
example, beyond friends in the press, beyond
having people who were just generally --
thought along similar lines, it turned out
that they had thousands of journalists in
their employ. Not merely friendly, not
merely agents, not merely someone you could
pass a story to, but people who might have
appeared to the outside world to be a
reporter for CBS was in fact a CIA employee
getting a salary from the CIA.
And that was repeated thousands of
times all around the world. They also owned
outright, the CIA -- about that time 250 or
more media organizations. That's wire
services, newspapers, magazines, radio, TV
stations -- all around the world that they
owned outright. The actual shareholder of
the company turned out to be some CIA front.
The Church Committee, unfortunately,
did not name very many of these organizations
because those that got named, of course, had
to close down immediately. But it was
learned that -- even things like the Rome
Daily American, which was a major English
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1324
language newspaper in Rome, for 20 or 30
years had been owned by the CIA. This was
published and, of course, the paper closed
the next day.
But most people didn't realize
the extent of the intelligence media
organization. It's fairly incredible. They
sort of brag about it. When you read the
books about the history of the CIA, one of
the heroes was the first man in charge of
media operations, a man named Frank Wizner.
And they referred to his organization as the
Mighty Wurlitzer. And there's this image of
this guy sitting at one of those giant
organs, you know, with seventeen keyboards
and you're playing this -- sort of like The
Phantom of the Opera in that scene, and there
was the guy running the CIA media operations
all around the world. And he really was
because every single city of any size on
earth, he had some employee who was --
supposedly worked for a newspaper or a
magazine or a radio station or a wire
service, and they could get stories
anywhere.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1325
Q. Can you give just one or two more
specific examples.
A. Yes. There was one -- actually in an
article that was published written by a
former CIA officer named James Willcot, who
was not in the propaganda division, he was in
finance. But he was so amazed he wrote a
little article about this. And he was
stationed in Japan one time when there was a
big debate raging there over whether nuclear
power ships should be able to dock in
Japanese ports. It's been a very touchy
issue -- at least since Hiroshima it's been a
very touchy issue in Japan -- even peaceful
uses of nuclear power.
And the U.S. line was to promote the
docking of nuclear power ships because the
U.S. had more and more of them. So they
wanted the Japanese papers to editorialize in
favor of this in the debate that was going
on.
And Jim said he looked and he saw
this guy at a nearby desk sit down and
type -- this is a CIA officer, an employee of
the U.S. Government -- type an editorial and
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1326
then wave goodbye to everybody, left the
office. The next morning that appeared as
the editorial -- the lead editorial in the
largest newspaper in Japan. Now, that
level -- they didn't go to a friendly
publisher and say, gee, we would sort of like
it if you could maybe do something a little
bit favorable to this issue. They wrote the
editorial, they handed it to the guy. And
the next day in Japanese it appears in the
paper.
Another thing showing the influence
here in this country was during the Vietnam
War. I don't know if -- well, some people
might. People my age will remember it.
There was -- Life magazine that had a cover
picture of a North Vietnamese stamp that
showed the Vietnamese shooting down American
planes. And it showed U.S. planes with U.S.
markings being burst into flames and crashing
and U.S. pilots being killed.
And it was a pretty bizarre and
gruesome set of postage stamps. And there
was a whole story in there basically trying
to give the line that the Vietnamese were
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1327
glorifying the killing of Americans. And
they thought it was so great to kill
Americans that they were putting it on their
postage stamps. The only thing that was
later learned is that these were not North
Vietnamese stamps. They were CIA forgeries.
Had never been real stamps. And the CIA was
able to have them appear on the cover of Life
magazine as if they were the real thing.
That level of influence is something
that many people don't realize. And when you
read the congressional reports, page after
page after page, it's absolutely astonishing
how, given the urgency and given that they
have hundreds of millions of dollars at their
command, they could get almost anything to
appear almost anywhere.
Q. What about the FBI and domestic
propaganda?
A. Well, the FBI, there's much less
documentation, again, because the official
position is that the FBI doesn't do this.
Whereas the official position is the CIA does
do it although they tried not to talk about
it. But what did come out in the
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1328
congressional reports primarily is that a
major FBI division that was called the crime
reporting division was theoretically supposed
to keep track of how federal crimes were
being reported. Why that was their business,
I don't know. But that's what its theory
was.
But in fact what it was doing was a
whole division set up to keep track of
journalists and reporters and magazines and
newspapers to decide who could be counted on
to write stories that the FBI wanted written,
who would slant stories the way they wanted
it.
The question of whether these
particular reporters were actually FBI
employees, like so many were CIA employees,
is unclear. That's never been admitted by
the government that the FBI actually took its
own employees and had them get a job as a
correspondent on the newspaper, whereas we
know the CIA did that in many, many places.
There's no reason to think they couldn't have
done it other than the fact that it hasn't
yet been -- been exposed.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1329
But in any event, there were
significant pressures available to the FBI
to -- to use their friends. And the Church
Committee report gives -- gives many, many
examples -- copies of memos from Hoover on
down where there would be a thing attached
and say, get this information to our friends
at the Copely News Service, get this
information to our friends at Reader's
Digest, get this to our friendly AP reporter
and so on.
And then, of course, they would show
the clipping indicating that in fact someone
had gotten it to their friends, and it would
then go over the wires or appear in stories.
Q. Let's turn now to the use of the
media in this type of campaign against Martin
Luther King, Jr. But before you do that,
could you tell the Court and the Jury, what
are the sources of -- underlying your
testimony -- this aspect of it.
A. Yes. I did a goodly amount of
additional research and preparation and
contemplation of appearing here. And there
really are two main sources. The first, of
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1330
course, is the various congressional reports
that we have talked about. In addition to
reports about the general operations or
misconduct of the CIA or the FBI, there have
been specific studies -- I don't know if they
have been mentioned in this case, but there
have been specific studies relating to Martin
Luther King, Jr., both with respect to
attacks on him while he was alive and also
specific reports with respect to his murder.
There was an entire volume published
from one of the Senate investigations on the
FBI media campaign against Dr. King. And
there was a House Committee that published a
volume investigating his assassination. And
these, of course, are the -- the most
important sources for what I'm talking about
and what other people have written about
because they have a great deal of government
documentation in them which no private
journalist could ever get their hands on.
There are things in there that even
the best of research wouldn't be able to
obtain. But the congressional committees had
subpoena powers and were able to amass
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1331
thousands of documents, most of which were
photocopied and attached to their reports.
Q. For our purposes here, as well as
those sources, what other sources have you
used?
A. Well, I've also, of course, reviewed
many books that have been written on the
subject -- hundreds of articles. And I've --
I've done briefcases full of clippings that
were major stories written about Dr. King,
particularly in the last few years of his
life. And then the -- most of the coverage
in the first few years of the James Earl Ray
case. Both before and after his guilty plea
there was intensive coverage, as you can
imagine.
And throughout the 60's and into the
early 70's, there was quite a bit of
coverage, and those clippings that I've been
able to find I've reviewed. Some of the
sporadic coverage in the 80's and 90's I've
also been able to assemble and review,
although the level of that coverage
has decreased very much over the last decade
or so.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1332
Q. What do the congressional reports --
if you can summarize them, give some
instances, what do the congressional reports
tell us about the FBI's use of the media in
general but then particularly as it relates
to Dr. King?
A. Well, in general, the first thing
they show is that throughout its history, the
FBI has made relations with the media a key
area. Not so much infiltrating employees as
the CIA did, but cultivating very, very deep
connections throughout the American media.
They had the entire division of the FBI --
the crime reporting division was dealing
solely with developing friendly journalists,
developing ways in which you could get what
you wanted to appear in the papers to be
there and what you didn't want not to be
there on a level that was -- nobody realized
until these -- these reports came out.
The crime reporting division was
keeping track of virtually every journalist
in America that wrote anything that had to do
with the FBI. And whether everything was
being classified as friendly or unfriendly,
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1333
it -- of course, it was somewhat complicated
because it generally meant: Did J. Edgar
Hoover like what they wrote or not like what
they wrote? And practically -- the opinion
of nobody else at the FBI mattered while
Hoover was alive.
But he kept charts on every
significant journalist as to who was
helpful. And when you look through the
reports and the documents that have come out,
you will see statements by Hoover and his
immediate subordinates get this information
to friendly journalists. Get this to our
friend at U.S. News and World Report. Get
this to some friendly reporters in Memphis.
And you just see all that sort of stuff.
Interestingly though, this
information -- it never mattered whether the
information was true or false. That was not
what it was about. You find FBI planting
information that's true, you find them
planting information that's false. The
critical thing was if they had the friend at
that media place, that friend was going to
run what they wanted without investigating
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1334
it.
Q. Could you just cut through -- tell us
what the Church Committee said about
CoIntellPro reports and explain to the Court
and the Jury what were the CoIntellPro
activities.
A. CoIntellPro was Counter Intelligence
Program, and that was the -- the major FBI
program to counter what it conceived to be
threats to American democracy. And it
was, at least in my opinion, rather paranoid
in what it considered threats. It had
divisions trying to operate against
communists, against socialists, against the
New Left, against the Old Left, against what
they referred to as Black Nationalists, what
they referred to as hate groups.
They had a separate section just on
the Nation of Islam. They had a separate
section on the Civil Rights Movement. They
had a hybrid program on CommInfil which was
to deal with the possibility that communists
were infiltrating non-communist groups.
So they had one section trying to
disrupt groups they felt were communist
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1335
influence or dangerous, and another one
trying to infiltrate groups or find out about
groups that they thought other people were
infiltrating.
Basically they -- and, of course,
you have to understand, "counter intelligence
program" was really a misnomer. Because
counter intelligence normally means you're
trying to find things out. Counter
intelligence officers in war time and in
espionage are supposed to be finding out
information. But these were active
committees, not passive. And what counter
intelligence programs were, were overt
attempts -- sometimes very, very complicated
operations to disrupt organizations which
they felt were a threat regardless of whether
the organizations were committing any
crimes.
I mean, the irony of this is that
while the FBI theoretically was supposed to
limit itself to investigating crimes, and
federal crimes at that, it basically took the
position that, you know, thinking bad
thoughts was a crime. Or if you didn't like
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1336
the current government of that day, that was
a crime. And if J. Edgar Hoover decided the
group should be disrupted, then CoIntellPro
would sit down and figure out how to disrupt
it.
Q. Where was Dr. King in this
constellation? Where did they -- how did
they regard him? How was he targeted?
A. Well, he was just about the top of
the list in terms of J. Edgar Hoover for
reasons that are still unclear. Many books
have been written about J. Edgar Hoover, and
I don't think anybody quite understands what
made him tick. He hated Dr. King. He made
no bones about it. I mean, he would -- he
would send letters using -- referring to him
as garbage, referring to him as slime.
When Martin Luther King was awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize, he wrote a long
diatribe about how that was the most
ridiculous thing he ever heard of in his
life, and in fact started a whole thing to
disrupt the Nobel Peace Prize program. But
he and the SCLC, as Dr. King's organization,
were by themselves a major target of the FBI
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1337
from early on. He certainly was being
investigated in the 50's. It wasn't until
the early 60's that it really intensified.
But Hoover was much more public
about Dr. King than almost any other
individual. He would be public about "the
communists" or "the terrorists" or whatever.
But Martin Luther King he specifically
used -- used the most horrendous language to
describe him. And once went on a -- the only
time he ever gave a press interview called
him -- called Martin Luther King the most
notorious liar in the history of the United
States.
Q. Okay.
A. And he was saying that because King
had had the temerity to say that the FBI
agents in the south weren't being terribly
helpful to blacks who were having problems
with the racism there.
Q. Can you give an example of some of
the media operations that the FBI and Hoover
mounted against Dr. King's organization.
A. Sure. The first really significant
ones were -- were to -- to suggest that the
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1338
Southern Christian Leadership Conference was
communist infiltrated and communist
dominated. They -- the FBI had prepared
dossiers on King and on everybody who was
working with him and had two people who were
close to Dr. King who had at some time in the
past had some affiliations with communists.
You should understand, because this
came out later, they had no evidence
whatsoever that either of these two people
was at that time a communists or that either
of these two people was trying to impose some
communist line on Dr. King, but they decided
to say that anyway.
And they prepared dossiers on these
two -- one was a white lawyer, Stanley
Levinson, the other was a black organizer
named Jack O'Dell. And what they did is
they -- the same way, get us a friend at this
paper, get us a friend there. They started
planting stories. And I think I've --
Q. Let me -- let me --
A. -- given you one of the key ones.
Q. Yes, let's pull up on the stand one
of the stories -- screen one of the stories
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1339
that they planted.
A. That's the second page. I think the
headline is -- right. This was a major story
about -- about Jack O'Dell and an attempt
to -- I mean, they were attempting to
discredit Dr. King and the organization.
They were not -- they were not trying to just
get rid of O'Dell because that would be
better for the organization. But they spread
this -- this particular clipping, I believe,
is from The Atlanta Constitution. But it
says in it that -- it makes reference to
prior articles in the St. Louis Globe
Democrat, in the New Orleans Times
Picayune. The story which was essentially
based on the FBI spreading this -- this
information appeared all over the country.
Q. Other than a general attack, is there
anything -- anything else significant about
this -- this article?
A. Well, actually, this is a good one
because it demonstrates some of the
techniques they used. The most significant
one is being fuzzy whenever you can. It
has -- in there it talks -- it refers to
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1340
O'Dell and says: "Has been identified as a
member of the National Committee of the
Communist Party."
And that -- this is sort of the
passive tense to avoid saying what -- what
you know. When you say someone has been --
you don't say who identified him. You don't
even say whether this identification has been
confirmed. You don't say whether it's true
or false. I mean, you know, one person
anywhere can say something about anybody, and
then you say he has been identified as a such
and such.
That's very important, particularly
because we -- that's in the present tense.
It says: "Has been identified as a member of
the communist party." We know now that at
the time, when the FBI gave this information
to its friend, they knew that was untrue.
Because they knew -- whatever might have been
ten years before, they knew at that time that
he was not a member of the Communist Party
and yet they sent out this information saying
he has been identified as a member of the
Communist Party.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1341
Q. Was this a part of a broader effort
on the part of the FBI to discredit the Black
Movement and to tie the Civil Rights Movement
to communists generally and communist
infiltration?
A. Very much so. It was one of the --
the few instances where -- where Hoover
actually testified before Congress and
allowed the testimony to be public. He --
the line was that the -- the Black
Movement -- the Civil Rights Movement was
being exploited by communists. And this
particular clipping is another example --
again, this is from the New York Times -- of
this program. These are all -- despite the
fact that many of them have bylines, although
this one does not have a byline, these are
all based on material packets -- press
packets almost that were prepared by the FBI
and given to their -- to their friends in
these -- in these stories.
And in this case, it's even more
significant because this was part of a
campaign that was so organized that Hoover
got his friends to write stories about it
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1342
before his testimony became public so that
when the testimony then became public, as it
did for this one, people would know about
it. One of his very, very close friends was
Stewart -- Joseph Alsop, who was a syndicated
national columnist back then. And this was
Alsop's column about the terribly sad fact
that the Civil Rights Movement in America was
totally being run by the communists.
This, again, was based on whatever
the FBI handed him and asked him to publish.
This was just one week before the other story
where the -- where the testimony became
public.
Q. There was an escalating battle
between Hoover's FBI and Martin Luther King's
SCLC and the Civil Rights and then anti-war
activities. What -- how did it intensify
from the standpoint of media operations
against Dr. King?
A. Well, the first real escalation was
in sixty -- in late '64 when I mentioned
before that Hoover gave a press conference
and called King the most notorious liar in
the country. This was sort of a -- it was
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1343
shocking that he said it, it was shocking
that he said it in the context of a public
meeting with journalists. And it appeared
all over the country. And the whole
conference was reprinted in U.S. News and
World Report with a short response from --
from Dr. King.
That was the start of -- of a
campaign which continued right up until --
until King's death. I mentioned before that
during the Nobel Peace Prize period of time
this was in -- the nomination was in late
'64, and he received it in January of '65.
Hoover had the FBI do everything they could
to minimize -- he couldn't stop the Swedish
and Norwegian governments from giving him the
prize. But he did everything that he could
to try to stop it from being honored here.
There was a major banquet in
Dr. King's honor in Atlanta when he came back
from receiving the prize. Hoover got the
editor of the Atlanta Constitution personally
to go around and try and persuade various
people not to attend the banquet. There were
also a series of articles around this time
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1344
trying to show that -- that King was being
influenced by communists which were being --
again, we learned this from reports.
The FBI, as the CIA, was actually
writing the articles anonymously and then
trying to get their friends in papers to
print the article under somebody else's
name. And there were a whole series, some of
which actually did get printed, some of which
didn't. There were also -- I won't go -- I
mean, there are big -- hundreds and hundreds
of pages of reports detailing all the things
that the FBI did.
They -- one of the most outrageous
was a doctored tape recording that was
prepared that purported to -- to be a
recording of Dr. King engaging in raucous and
possibly sexual activities with various
people. It turned out to be -- most of it
was totally fraudulent. And what wasn't
fraudulent did not have to do with anything
torrid going on. It was all put together.
And the tape -- in fact, the tape was
originally used -- and this is one of the
things that the House Committee found the
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1345
most outrageous -- in an attempt to try and
drive Dr. King to commit suicide.
Shortly before he went to get the
Nobel Prize, the tape was mailed to him with
a long letter basically saying, if you don't
kill yourself, we're going to make this
public. Nothing ever happened because he was
getting so much mail that this thing that
somebody thought was -- somebody made a tape
of one of his speeches. And they put it in
the back room, and they didn't get to look at
it until about nine months later, long after
he had come back.
And then they saw the note trying to
get him to commit suicide. And then, ten
years later, we discover that it was the FBI
who wrote that note and made that tape and
mailed it to Dr. King.
THE COURT: Let's take a few
seconds and stretch.
(Brief break taken.)
THE COURT: Bring in the Jury.
(Jury In.)
Q. (BY MR. PEPPER) Mr. Schaap, you've
described an awesome power that exists in
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1346
government influenced and controlled,
sometimes owned, media -- print, audio,
visual media entities -- and how that
infrastructure gets focused on opponents of
the United States such as Martin Luther
King.
Do you see how this incredible power
was brought against Dr. King and intensified
against him during the last year of his life?
A. Yes. I think the -- the main reason
for that was very, very specific. There was
one speech that Dr. King gave in April of
1967 at Riverside Church in New York City
where he came out against the war in
Vietnam. And if you remember back to that
period of time, this was a fundamental debate
gripping every aspect of this country, the
pros and cons of the involvement in Vietnam.
And when Dr. King came out against
the U.S. involvement there, this was
immediately accepted by J. Edgar Hoover as
proof that he was a communist, proof that he
was a terrible person.
Q. But didn't this have the effect of
unifying all the forces -- all of the
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1347
intelligence forces of the United States, and
so now just -- it was not just an FBI matter,
but it -- it seemed to spread to military
intelligence, central intelligence and other
areas too, didn't it?
A. Absolutely. Once Dr. King made that
statement, the CIA in particular considered
him and his movement fair game. Even to the
extent that their operations were limited to
foreign policy, the -- again, because of the
congressional investigations, we know that
the CIA, which people thought did not operate
domestically within the U.S., had a huge
domestic program called Operation Chaos which
was designed to counter opposition to the
Vietnam War.
And even though they later admitted
it was illegal and later admitted they
shouldn't have been doing it, there have been
whole books of congressional reports about
all the Operation Chaos activity in the
United States, and what they called Black
Nationalists were a specific target of
that -- that campaign.
Q. Did this continue into 1968 in his
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1348
activities with the Sanitation Workers'
Strike in Memphis and planning for the Poor
People's Campaign in Washington?
A. Absolutely. The campaign against
Dr. King's activities went up to the very
last day of his life. In particular, on
the -- his involvement with the strike in
Memphis, the FBI decided at that point to try
to spread stories that he was encouraging
violence. One of the -- the key articles was
in the Christian Science Monitor at the end
of March of '68 and, again, gives all of
the -- the themes that the FBI wanted --
wanted planted, particularly about violence.
The article uses bizarre language
for something about a small strike in a
medium-sized town that, you know, was
something but was not like an earth-shaking
event. This was the Sanitation Workers'
Strike. And this story refers to it as a
potentially cataclysmic racial
confrontation. Not quite World War III, but
along that kind of language.
And stories that began to appear --
and this was just before Dr. King was
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1349
killed -- were -- were suggesting that he was
closely allied with violent forces.
Q. Mr. Schaap, this Court and Jury has
heard testimony from a former New York Times
reporter who was told by his national
editor -- Times reporters in this courtroom
notwithstanding -- told by his national
editor, Claude Sitton, to go to Memphis and
nail Dr. King. Those were the words Earl
Caldwell used in his testimony here. Is that
the kind of thing you're talking about?
A. Oh, absolutely. Hoover was -- you
see from the memos in the report -- and Lord
knows what we don't know and haven't seen --
was sending people out everywhere to talk to
all of their friendly media contacts to get
King. And they would usually deliver packets
of information, much of it false, to be used
as part of the -- of the campaign. They also
were -- used a lot of interesting tactics.
And you see in these stories a lot
of fuzzy -- I mean, the story that's on the
screen, for example, has a sentence in it
near the end where it says: "Many blacks
have mixed feelings about Dr. King." I mean,
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1350
this is a -- they teach you in Journalism 101
not to use sentences like that. What does it
mean "many blacks"? Many -- everybody had
mixed feelings about everything. If you want
to do it, you say who has what feelings.
But the whole thing was to try to
say he's violent, he's hanging around with
violent people, and basically the blacks in
this country shouldn't support him.
Q. What was this operation like -- this
media blitz, this media disinformation
campaign? What was it like after Dr. King
was killed?
A. Well, for one thing, the attempts to
discredit Dr. King -- particularly the FBI
attempts -- did not stop after his death.
They continued to send out their little
dossiers and reports and phony information to
try and discredit his memory. They also --
in the beginning when, of course, the
assassin had not yet been caught or, rather,
no one yet had been caught and charged with
the assassination, had to give the impression
that the FBI was doing a great job.
I mean, one of the criticisms that
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1351
was unavoidable is when Hoover had already
publicly attacked Dr. King in all these
magazines and said he thought he was a liar
and thought he was the worst problem facing
the United States and so on, it became a
problem for the FBI then to try and convince
America that they were doing everything in
their power to apprehend his killer. And to
do that, they had to pull out all the stops
and get all their friendly columnists writing
story after story that they were doing
everything they could. And also subsequently
to try and add to the stories that they were
convinced that James Earl Ray was the lone
assassin.
Q. Let me put up this article. This
story relates to a Jack Anderson column.
A. Yes. This is interesting for what it
reveals later. This was a story that came
out in 1975. That's actually an interesting
example of Jack Anderson criticizing a group
of people, of whom he fails to mention he was
one at the time. It's something that happens
often when columnists decide to clear the --
clear the slate.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1352
But he was reporting at this time
about how the FBI had waged the campaign
against Dr. King, how he knew about it, how
he knew about all these gross accusations
that were being -- being handed out. It's --
I mean, the story is only interesting because
why didn't he say it at the time is one's
first thought. But at least he stayed
abreast of some of it. He also was able
to -- to explain that a number of rumors
about Dr. King had been proven to be not
true. What he didn't know at the time
because the Congressional Report came out a
little bit later -- what he didn't know is
that even the FBI at the time they were
spreading the stories when Dr. King was alive
knew that the stories were not true.
Q. Now, at the same time they were
trying to discredit Dr. King and continued to
discredit his name after he was killed, they
were trying to enhance the -- the manhunt and
the law enforcement work during that time.
A. Yes. Not only enhance, but use
hyperbole that was pretty bizarre. Although,
of course, you can understand the pressures
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1353
that were on them when no one had been
caught. Drew Pearson, who was a very close
friend of Hoover's, had a nationally
syndicated column and wrote one basically
designed to try and kill the rumors that
Hoover wasn't trying hard because he didn't
like King.
And in it Pearson says he is
convinced that the FBI is conducting perhaps
the most painstaking exhaustive manhunt ever
before undertaken in the United States.
Why -- how he would know is beyond
us, but that's clearly what Hoover told him
to say. They also -- I don't have the
clipping here. But they also had another one
of their very close operatives, Jeremiah
O'Leary, who was then with the Washington
Star, did an article for the Reader's
Digest. And he went one beyond Pearson and
said it was the greatest manhunt in law
enforcement history in the world. So he was
now saying this wasn't only the greatest
manhunt in America, it was the greatest
manhunt ever, anywhere.
There were -- there are a whole --
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1354
and, of course, when Ray was arrested, then
there was a state of sort of self-
congratulatory columns done by the same
friends of the FBI showing what a wonderful
job they had done.
Q. Are there any other aspects of this
coverage after Dr. King's death that were
clearly media operations?
A. Well, there certainly are in my
opinion. At this point, once we get beyond
the things that have been admitted in the
Congressional Reports, I'm drawing my
conclusions based on my own experience and
expertise. But it certainly seems clear that
there were media operations around -- not
only that the FBI had done a wonderful job,
but also on the -- the campaign to
demonstrate that -- not only that James Earl
Ray had done it, but that he had acted alone.
Q. What are the possible operations that
you actually see?
A. Well, there -- you see in stories,
again by friends of the FBI, statements
like: It looks like the theory that there
was a conspiracy is untrue. The FBI has
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1355
exploded the theory that there was a
conspiracy. The -- even people who had --
see, they -- they got caught a little bit
because in the beginning they were planting
stories that had conspiracy -- I mean, there
was a story that the FBI planted at the very
beginning saying that Dr. King had been
killed by the husband -- by an irate husband
of a lover of his.
Now, later -- ten years later we saw
that this was invented and that they had made
up this story. But then they were sort of
stuck. Because if you're saying that Ray was
hired by somebody else to do it, that's a
conspiracy. So then they had to drop that
story because now the line was there was no
conspiracy. Now they're saying -- and the
same people. Pearson mentioned that story
and then later on denounced the generally
prevalent theory that the murder involved a
conspiracy without pointing out that he was
one of the people who were part of the
original prevalent theory.
Even -- particularly, actually,
after the guilty plea, when it got -- there
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1356
was no longer a judicial proceeding going on
about which they could feed the stories they
wanted to, they still felt a compulsion to
periodically come up with stories that there
was no conspiracy, there was no plot. This
one on the screen being another one of
these -- these examples.
Q. This is the continuation of the lone
killer, lone nut gunman that was -- had to be
perpetuated throughout the period of James
Earl Ray's incarceration?
A. Absolutely. It never -- because Ray
insisted virtually from the day of the plea
that there was a conspiracy, they felt
compelled to -- to continue to plant these --
these stories. They -- they went on for a
number of years at a very intense level, and
then it sort of petered off.
But in the first year after the plea
of guilty, Anderson wrote a number of columns
saying there just wasn't any conspiracy. Max
Lerner wrote columns saying Ray was the
killer, there's nothing to the conspiracy
theory. And when -- another example of how
they -- they fuzzied it was even at the time
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1357
of the plea, there was a story on the -- in
the Washington Post, which I think I've given
you a copy of, where they said: No evidence
of any plot, Jury is told.
Now that isn't really what the Jury
was told. But if you read the story, it was
that the prosecution was not presenting any
evidence of a plot, which is very different
from saying -- of course, they didn't present
any evidence that there wasn't a plot
either. Yet if you look at that headline, it
looks like something has been said and done
in court showing a jury there was no -- no
plot. And that's not what happened. It
wasn't -- it wasn't discussed either way.
And they -- they -- there was a
story I believe the next week in the
Washington Post where the title of the story
was: "Ray Alone Still Talks of a Plot."
Which, again, journalistically was
ridiculous. Because there were millions upon
millions of Americans talking about whether
there was a plot. And a story which, you
know, tries to create the impression that
James Earl Ray was stark raving mad and was
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1358
the only person in America who thought there
might have been a plot.
That campaign went -- and, in fact,
they then said, well, what we really meant
was that he's the only person who is
officially involved in the proceedings and
thinks there's a plot, everyone else
doesn't. And even that wasn't true because
the next day there was a story in the papers
that the -- the judge here -- the judge at
the time, Judge Battle, wasn't sure and
thought maybe there had been a plot and
certainly made it clear that under Tennessee
law if further -- if co-conspirators came up
or were arrested or indicted, they would be
subject to -- to trial.
Q. Let me pass this article to you and
ask you to look at that, Mr. Schaap. That's
an article that appeared in the New York
Times, Column 1 on the 17th of November,
1978, right at the time when the -- both Ray
bothers were being questioned and examined in
public before the House Select Committee on
Assassination. And that article speaks of an
independent investigation by the New York
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1359
Times and the FBI and the Select Committee,
into an Alton, Illinois, bank robbery -- an
investigation which never took place because
it's now been established.
Is that an example of the type of
disinformation that one finds in an attempt
to train the public minds?
A. Oh, absolutely. Given the fact that
subsequently it was shown that they were not
suspects in that robbery, it -- the first
thing it means is that the -- the reporter is
saying some things which had to have been
simply fed to him and not checked. Because
if you're saying something happened, which in
fact very, very basic journalism would have
proven didn't happen, you are either doing it
on your own to spread some disinformation,
which is extremely unlikely, or you're being
asked to put a spin on something that you
know is going to -- to be coming out.
The -- again, I'm -- I don't know
what happened in Alton, Illinois. But if, as
I understand there's been testimony, it is
clear that the Ray brothers were not suspects
in that case, this story is clearly
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1360
disinformation because it's designed to make
it appear not only that they were suspects in
that case but that they did it, and to make
it appear that two investigations confirmed
that whereas, since we know it wasn't true,
it's impossible that either investigation
could have confirmed it.
Q. Let me ask you finally -- this has
been a long road -- how you regard -- what is
your explanation for the fact that there has
been such little national media coverage of
these -- of this trial and this evidence and
this event here in this Memphis courtroom,
which is the first trial ever to be able to
produce evidence on this assassination --
what has happened here that Mighty Wurlitzer
is not sounding but is in fact totally
silent -- almost totally silent?
A. Oh, but -- as we know, silence can be
deafening. Disinformation is not only
getting certain things to appear in print,
it's also getting certain things not to
appear in print. I mean, the first -- the
first thing I would say as a way of
explanation is the incredibly powerful effect
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1361
of disinformation over a long period of time
that I mentioned before. For 30 years the
official line has been that James Earl Ray
killed Martin Luther King and he did it all
by himself. That's 30 years, not -- nothing
like the short period when the line was that
the Cubans raped the Angolan women. But for
30 years it's James Earl Ray killed Dr. King,
did it all by himself.
And when that is imprinted in the
minds of the general public for 30 years, if
somebody stood up and confessed and said: I
did it. Ray didn't do it, I did it. Here's
a movie. Here's a video showing me do it. 99
percent of the people wouldn't believe him
because it just -- it just wouldn't click in
the mind. It would just go right to -- it
couldn't be. It's just a powerful
psychological effect over 30 years of
disinformation that's been imprinted on the
brains of the -- the public. Something to
the country couldn't -- couldn't be.
Q. Not only -- excuse me. Not only
psychological, but weren't you also saying
neurological?
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1362
A. Yes. I'm not a doctor. But what I
understood is that these -- the brain's
patterns of thinking are a physical aspect of
the human brain. That's how we develop
patterns of thought, how we develop
associations.
And then, of course, the Mighty
Wurlitzer we talked about is still there,
it's still playing its tune. And even though
you might think 30 years is a long time, that
almost everybody who might get in trouble is
probably dead by now, that's -- that's how it
works. People obtain influence, people make
vast sums of money through this propaganda.
Those people pass that influence on to
others, they pass the money down the line,
and all of that can be at risk for a very,
very long time.
There are documents from the
investigation of the assassination of Abraham
Lincoln that are still classified. Don't ask
me why, but they were originally sealed for
100 years. And then in 1965 President Linden
Johnson said, well, it's so close to the
Kennedy assassination, if people read the
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1363
Lincoln documents, it might make them think
funny things about Kennedy, so he classified
them for another 50 years. So now the grand
children of anybody around Lincoln was around
are long dead, and these documents are
still -- still classified. And we're talking
today about a case that's 100 years more
immediate than Lincoln. And the
establishment is still the establishment.
Q. Mr. Schaap, thank you very much for
joining us this afternoon.
A. Thank you.
MR. PEPPER: Nothing further,
Your Honor.
THE COURT: Just a moment.
Mr. Garrison?
MR. GARRISON: Your Honor, I
have no questions of this witness.
THE COURT: You have nothing.
Very well. Sir, you may stand down. Thank
you very much.
THE WITNESS: Thank you, Your
Honor.
(Witness excused.)
(Court adjourned until
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1364
December 1, 1999, at 10:00 a.m.)
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999