He Couldn’t Breathe Either–Still Can’t–and Didn’t Get Resurrected

As the tri­al of George Floy­d’s alleged mur­der­er pro­ceeds in the glare of the spot­light of nation­al atten­tion, we recall (from FTR#1133) that Dr. Mar­tin Luther King could­n’t breathe either, when the breath­ing tube was removed from the grave­ly wound­ed, but still liv­ing, Dr. King and a pil­low was put over his face to suf­fo­cate him. ” . . . . This caused her [nurse Lula Mae Shel­by], on the way out, to glance back over her shoul­der, and see that the breath­ing tube had been removed and Dr. Bland put a pil­low on and over the face of Dr. King. . . .”

FTR #1174 Harvest Time, Part 1

The title refers to the U.S. and its cit­i­zens har­vest­ing the crops risen from dead­ly seeds sown for decades. The Capi­tol Riot was one of those. 

It is to the U.S. as the Beer­hall Putsch of 1923 was to Germany–a har­bin­ger of things to come.

The pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of Richard Hof­s­tadter, whose the­o­ries have been bruit­ed about in the wake of the Capi­tol Riot. An icon of the main­stream media and the so-called pro­gres­sive sec­tor, Hof­s­tadter’s work was under­writ­ten by the CIA.

In the con­text of Hof­s­tadter’s work being under­writ­ten by CIA, one of the fac­tors allow­ing the seeds of evil to grow has been the gov­ern­ment financ­ing of much of U.S. polit­i­cal life. 

Intel­lec­tu­al curios­i­ty has been damp­ened by finan­cial gain.

The armed con­fronta­tion in the Capi­tol remind­ed us of a con­fronta­tion that took place in Park­land Hos­pi­tal on 11/22/1963.

A con­tin­gent of Secret Ser­vice agents and Kennedy aide Ken­neth O’Donnell con­front­ed and threat­ened Park­land physi­cians who were going to autop­sy Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s body in accor­dance with law.

(Author Joseph McBride presents con­vinc­ing evi­dence that O’Donnell faced prob­a­ble indict­ment for cor­rup­tion. He helped arrange the Kennedy motor­cade route through Dealey Plaza, set­ting JFK up for assas­si­na­tion. O’Donnell suc­cumbed to alco­holism, dying in 1977.)

McBride—drawing on schol­ar­ship by numer­ous authors and researchers—concludes that the Fed­er­al agents were intent on pre­vent­ing an autop­sy in Dal­las, so that JFK’s body could be sur­gi­cal­ly altered to obscure the fact that Kennedy was killed in a cross­fire.

The “offi­cial ver­sion” of the murder—an insti­tu­tion­al­ized his­tor­i­cal fiction–maintains that Oswald—the lone assassin—slew Kennedy by fir­ing from the rear.

Analy­sis of the Capi­tol Riot high­lights a “Before” and an “After.”

Even rel­a­tive­ly staid polit­i­cal and nation­al secu­ri­ty insid­ers, as well as media out­lets open­ly expressed fear after a series of post-elec­tion shuf­fling by Trump at the Pen­ta­gon.

” . . . . there is spec­u­la­tion that more defense offi­cials may be on their way out and that this is just the begin­ning — even with only 70 days until the Biden admin­is­tra­tion takes over. . . . The flur­ry of depar­tures appar­ent­ly sent shock­waves through the Depart­ment of Defense. A defense offi­cial told CNN that the sit­u­a­tion was ‘unset­tling,’ adding that ‘these are dic­ta­tor moves.’ The Asso­ci­at­ed Press wrote that ‘unease was pal­pa­ble inside’ the Pen­ta­gon Tues­day. . . . ‘I’ve been shot at a lot. I’ve been near­ly killed a bunch of times. I’m not an alarmist. I try to stay cool under pres­sure. Mark me down as alarmed,’ retired four-star Gen. Bar­ry McCaf­frey said on MSNBC Wednes­day. . . .”

Unnamed offi­cials in NATO coun­tries have opined that the events of 1/6/2021 were a coup attempt by Trump’s forces.

In addi­tion, there is an ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion of an active duty PSYOP offi­cer who oper­at­ed under the Spe­cial Forces com­mand struc­ture for lead­ing a con­tin­gent of 100 strong to the “ral­ly” on 1/6/2021.

As vet­er­an listeners/readers will no doubt real­ize, these events are to be seen against the back­ground of numer­ous pro­grams and posts high­light­ing Spe­cial­ized Knowl­edge and Abil­i­ties and Ser­pen­t’s Walk.

Notable among the croc­o­diles shed­ding tears over the Capi­tol Riot was for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush. Con­demn­ing the riot in one breath, he intoned that he would be attend­ing the inau­gu­ra­tion and that “ . . . . wit­ness­ing the peace­ful trans­fer of pow­er is a hall­mark of our democ­ra­cy that nev­er gets old,’ he added. . . .”

The pro­gram con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of some of the Nazi con­nec­tions to the 9/11 attacks, as well as to the busi­ness rela­tion­ship between Dubya and the Bin Laden fam­i­ly.

Exit Stage Right: Eugenio Martinez Dies (What Was Richard Nixon Doing In Dallas, Texas, on 11/22/1963?)

In FTR #‘s 961, 962 and 963, we exam­ined the pro­found con­nec­tions between the Water­gate Break-in and the assas­si­na­tion of JFK. The obit­u­ary of recent­ly deceased Water­gate bur­glar Euge­nio Mar­tinez con­tained a detail that opens up a vista onto the real Water­gate “op.” “. . . . In 1983, after his requests for clemen­cy had been reject­ed by Pres­i­dents Ger­ald R. Ford and Jim­my Carter, Mr. Martínez — who, it turned out, had still been on retain­er to the C.I.A. at the time of the Water­gate break-in — was par­doned by Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan. . . .”

Reflections On The Fun and Games of 1/6/2021

In past pro­grams, we have spo­ken of the 1934 coup attempt against FDR, engi­neered by the most pow­er­ful eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal forces in our coun­try. It was only foiled because Marine Corps Gen­er­al Smed­ley But­ler (right) betrayed the con­spir­a­tors. The armed con­fronta­tion in the Capi­tol also remind­ed us of a con­fronta­tion that took place in Park­land Hos­pi­tal on 11/22/1963. A con­tin­gent of Secret Ser­vice agents and Kennedy aide Ken­neth O’Donnell con­front­ed and threat­ened Park­land physi­cians who were going to autop­sy Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s body in accor­dance with law. (Author Joseph McBride presents con­vinc­ing evi­dence that O’Donnell faced prob­a­ble indict­ment for cor­rup­tion. He helped arrange the Kennedy motor­cade route through Dealey Plaza, set­ting JFK up for assas­si­na­tion. O’Donnell suc­cumbed to alco­holism, dying in 1977.) McBride—drawing on schol­ar­ship by numer­ous authors and researchers—concludes that the Fed­er­al agents were intent on pre­vent­ing an autop­sy in Dal­las, so that JFK’s body could be sur­gi­cal­ly altered to obscure the fact that Kennedy was killed in a cross­fire. The “offi­cial ver­sion” of the murder—an insti­tu­tion­al­ized his­tor­i­cal fiction–maintains that Oswald—the lone assassin—slew Kennedy by fir­ing from the rear.

FTR #1163 Farewell America, Part 2

The pro­gram kicks off with a look at a full-page adver­tise­ment from The New York Times pledg­ing resis­tance to Trump admin­is­tra­tion attempts at elec­toral nul­li­fi­ca­tion. The orga­ni­za­tion behind the ad is RefuseFascism.org. We note the first two sig­na­to­ries:

1.–Cornel West–a mem­ber of the [Bernie] Sanders Institute–advised after the 2016 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion that the Sanders vot­ers had no choice but to cast their bal­lot for Jill Stein, the Green Par­ty can­di­date.
2.–Noam Chomsky–whose work on gen­er­a­tive lin­guis­tics (which estab­lished him as an aca­d­e­mi­cian) was financed large­ly by Navy and Air Force Intelligence–helped to neu­tral­ize recog­ni­tion of the deci­sive role in the Viet­nam War of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion. JFK was in the process of pulling the U.S. out of Viet­nam. That was among the rea­sons he was killed. With his behav­ior fol­low­ing the Oliv­er Stone opus “JFK,” Noam Chom­sky did much to per­pet­u­ate the insti­tu­tion­al­ized fas­cism that has pos­sessed the U.S. since before the end of World War II. Gen­er­a­tive lin­guis­tics proved most use­ful in teach­ing per­son­nel at the Mon­terey Defense Lan­guage Insti­tute, one of whose grad­u­ates was Lee Har­vey Oswald.

On the back of the front sec­tion of that same edi­tion of The New York Times is an obit­u­ary of Sey­mour Top­ping. A lumi­nary of the “Gray Lady” for decades, he was South­east Asian Bureau chief from 1963 until 1966, dur­ing the time that JFK was mur­dered and the Viet­nam War, as a result, gained full momen­tum.

Much of the pro­gram sets forth mate­r­i­al from a con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant recent book: Chaos: Charles Man­son, the CIA, and the Secret His­to­ry of the Six­ties by Tom O’Neill.

O’Neill devel­ops a strong, albeit cir­cum­stan­tial, case that the crim­i­nal activ­i­ties of the Man­son Fam­i­ly were the core of a domes­tic intel­li­gence oper­a­tion. Specif­i­cal­ly, it appears that the Man­son “op” was a key ele­ment of a domes­tic Phoenix program–an assas­si­na­tion and ter­ror cam­paign in the South dur­ing the Viet­nam War.

Designed to “win hearts and minds,” the Phoenix Pro­gram was real­ized by the CIA, and employed “false flag” ter­ror­ist inci­dents and the delib­er­ate mur­ders of non-com­bat­ants that were blamed on the Viet­cong and North Viet­namese.

” . . . . A Spe­cial Forces sol­dier, Antho­ny Her­bert, the sin­gle most dec­o­rat­ed com­bat vet­er­an of Viet­nam, pub­lished a best­selling book, Sol­dier, that detailed typ­i­cal orders from his Phoenix supe­ri­ors: “They want­ed me to take charge of exe­cu­tion teams that wiped out entire fam­i­lies and tried to make it appear as though the Viet Cong had done it them­selves. The ratio­nale was that the Viet Cong would see that oth­er Viet Cong had killed their own and . . . make alle­giance with us. The good guys. “. . . .” Chaos: Charles Man­son, the CIA, and the Secret His­to­ry of the Six­ties by Tom O’Neill; p. 228.

Exem­pli­fy­ing the fusion of CIA, Oper­a­tion Phoenix and the Los Ange­les law enforce­ment estab­lish­ment, Lieu­tenant Edward Her­rmann helped cre­ate a coun­terin­sur­gency pro­gram in L.A. and Cal­i­for­nia as a whole, inte­grat­ed and coor­di­nat­ed with fed­er­al intel­li­gence and law enforce­ment agen­cies.

Edward Her­rman:

1.–Had a doc­tor­ate in psy­chol­o­gy.
2.–Specialized in quelling insur­gen­cies.
3.–Developed one of the first com­put­er sys­tems to track crim­i­nals and pre­dict vio­lent out­breaks in cities.
4.–Worked for many U.S. intel­li­gence and mil­i­tary agen­cies, includ­ing: the Air Force, the Secret Ser­vice, the Trea­sury Depart­ment, the Pres­i­den­t’s Office of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, the Insti­tute for Defense Analy­sis, the Defense Indus­tri­al Secu­ri­ty Clear­ance Office, the Defense Depart­men­t’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). 
5.–Appears to have worked for the Phoenix Pro­gram in Viet­nam, using USAID for a cov­er.
6.–Worked for numer­ous defense con­trac­tors includ­ing: Elec­tro-Dash Opti­cal Sys­tems, Sys­tem Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion and Con­trol Data Cor­po­ra­tion.

The con­clud­ing por­tion of the pro­gram con­sists of read­ing and analy­sis of O’Neil­l’s pre­sen­ta­tion of the career of one of the CIA’s most impor­tant MK-Ultra mind con­trol oper­a­tives.

Louis Joly­on West was Jack Ruby’s psy­chi­a­trist, and pre­sent­ed the unten­able hypoth­e­sis that Ruby killed Oswald because he had a brief psy­chomo­tor epilep­tic event in the base­ment of the Dal­las jail. In fact, the evi­dence sug­gests strong­ly that West had helped to erase Ruby’s mem­o­ry of hav­ing killed Oswald.

After detail­ing West­’s involve­ment with Sid­ney Got­tlieb of the CIA and one of the cen­tral fig­ures of its mind con­trol pro­grams, the broad­cast sets forth the mur­der of Chere Jo Hor­ton, a three-year-old girl whose muti­la­tion, rape and mur­der were pinned on 29-year-old Jim­mie Shaver.

An obvi­ous vic­tim of mind con­trol, appar­ent­ly imple­ment­ed in con­sid­er­able mea­sure by Louis Joly­on West, Shaver was pro­grammed to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the killing, despite enor­mous con­tra­dic­tions in the evi­dence.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and analy­sis include:

1.–Shaver’s unusu­al behav­ior and demeanor at the ini­tial scene of the crime: ” . . . . He was shirt­less, cov­ered in blood and scratch­es. Mak­ing no attempt to escape, he let the search par­ty walk him to the edge of the high­way. Bystanders described him as ‘dazed’ and ‘trance-like’ . . . .”
2.–Shaver’s appar­ent lack of aware­ness of the imme­di­ate cir­cum­stances of the crime: ” ‘What’s going on here?’ he asked. He did­n’t seem drunk, but he could­n’t say where he was, how he’d got­ten there, or whose blood was all over him. Mean­while, the search par­ty found Hor­ton’s body in the grav­el pit. Her neck was bro­ken, her legs had been torn open, and she’s been raped. . . .”
3.–” . . . . Around four that morn­ing, an Air Force mar­shal ques­tioned Shaver and two doc­tors exam­ined him, agree­ing he was­n’t drunk. One lat­er tes­ti­fied that he ‘was not nor­mal . . . . he was very com­posed out­side, which I did not expect him to be under these cir­cum­stances.’ . . .”
4.–Shaver did­n’t rec­og­nize his own wife when she came to vis­it him. ” . . . . When his wife came to vis­it, he did­n’t rec­og­nize her. . . .”
Ini­tial­ly, he believed some­one else com­mit­ted the crime. ” . . . . He gave his first state­ment at 10:30 a.m., adamant that anoth­er man was respon­si­ble: he could sum­mon an image of a stranger with blond hair and tat­toos. . . .”
5.–Eventually, he signed a state­ment tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty: ” . . . . After the Air Force mar­shal returned to the jail­house, how­ev­er, Shaver signed a sec­ond state­ment tak­ing full respon­si­bil­i­ty. Though he still did­n’t remem­ber any­thing, he rea­soned that he must have done it. . . .”
6.–Enter Jol­ly West: ” . . . . Two months lat­er, in Sep­tem­ber, Shaver’s mem­o­ries still had­n’t returned. The base hos­pi­tal com­man­der told Jol­ly West to per­form an eval­u­a­tion: was he legal­ly sane at the time of the mur­der? Shaver spent the next two weeks under West­’s super­vi­sion . . . While Shaver was under–with West inject­ing more truth serum to ‘deep­en the trance’–Shaver recalled the events of that night. He con­fessed to killing Hor­ton. . . .”
7.–West was a defense wit­ness who, instead, appears to have aid­ed the pros­e­cu­tion: ” . . . . At the tri­al, West argued that Shaver’s truth-serum con­fes­sion was more valid than any oth­er. And West was tes­ti­fy­ing for the defense . . . .”
8.–Shaver’s behav­ior at the tri­al is fur­ther sug­ges­tive of mind con­trol: ” . . . . One news­pa­per account said he ‘sat through the stren­u­ous ses­sions like a man in a trance,’ say­ing noth­ing, nev­er ris­ing to stretch or smoke, though he was a known chain-smok­er. ‘Some believe it’s an act,’ the paper said, ‘oth­ers believe his demeanor is real. . . .”
9.–Shaver’s med­ical records at Lack­land Air Force base had van­ished. ” . . . . But, curi­ous­ly, all the records for patients in 1954 had been main­tained, with one excep­tion: the file for last names begin­ning with ‘Sa’ through ‘St’ had van­ished. . . .”
10.–” . . . . West had used lead­ing ques­tions to walk the entranced Shaver through the crime. ‘Tell me about when you took your clothes off, Jim­my,’ he said. And try­ing to prove that Shaver had repressed mem­o­ries: ‘Jim­my, do you remem­ber when some­thing like this hap­pened before?’ Or: ‘After you took her clothes off, what did you do?’ ‘I nev­er did take her clothes off,’ Shaver said. . . .”
11.–” . . . . The inter­view [with Shaver] was divid­ed into thirds. The mid­dle third, for some rea­son, was­n’t record­ed. When the record picked up, the man­u­script said, ‘Shaver is cry­ing. He has been con­front­ed with all the facts repeat­ed­ly.’ . . .”

FTR #1133: The Plot to Kill King

In the after­math of the killing of George Floyd, there has been wall-to-wall cov­er­age of his mur­der and of the world-wide demon­stra­tions stem­ming from it. The advent of smart phone (with cam­eras) and the inter­net affords detailed and inti­mate expe­ri­ence of such an event.

How­ev­er, the orgias­tic cov­er­age of that event, the memo­r­i­al ser­vice led by FBI infor­mant and alleged [by the late War­ren Hinck­le] CIA oper­a­tive in Grena­da Al Sharp­ton stands in stark con­trast to the utter silence across the board on the cir­cum­stances of Dr. Mar­tin Luther King’s assas­si­na­tion.

On the fifti­eth anniver­sary of King’s mur­der, Mr. Emory did a twelve hour pro­gram about the cir­cum­stances of the assas­si­na­tion, repris­ing AFA #8 (done in 1985 on the 17th anniver­sary of the killing) and FTR #46, record­ed a decade lat­er and sup­ple­ment­ed on 4/3/2018.

Despite exhaus­tive and per­ilous research done by the likes of Dr. William F. Pep­per, 4/4/2018 was notable for the absence of sub­stan­tive dis­cus­sion of King’s mur­der.

The polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of such an event was pre­sent­ed by Dr. Pep­per in his third book about the King assas­si­na­tion, The Plot to Kill King: ” . . . . . . . . When one is con­front­ed with the assas­si­na­tion of a major leader who per­son­i­fies the most trea­sured val­ues of the species and it becomes clear that those respon­si­ble for the mur­der are offi­cials of his own gov­ern­ment act­ing with the sanc­tion of those in the shad­ows who actu­al­ly rule, sure­ly one should strive to under­stand what that means now and for the future. In oth­er words, when the removal of a leader who has offend­ed pow­er­ful forces and spe­cial inter­ests in the Repub­lic takes on the sta­tus of an act of state, cit­i­zens must con­tem­plate what this reveals about their cul­ture and its civ­il and polit­i­cal sys­tems, their free­dom, the qual­i­ty and sta­tus of the rule of law, and their entire way of life. . . . ”

It seems that–for many–black lives mat­ter, but not Dr. King’s, appar­ent­ly, past a point.

Again, Dr. Pep­per not­ed that: ” . . . . cit­i­zens must con­tem­plate what this reveals about their cul­ture and its civ­il and polit­i­cal sys­tems, their free­dom, the qual­i­ty and sta­tus of the rule of law, and their entire way of life. . . . ”

In said con­tem­pla­tion, this pro­gram sup­ple­ments our pre­vi­ous work on the killing.

Although Dr. Pep­per repris­es the stun­ning infor­ma­tion he set forth in Orders to Kill in The Plot to Kill King, we will not reprise that here, in the inter­ests of time. (We do recap a short excerpt from Orders to Kill com­pris­ing an appar­ent evi­den­tiary trib­u­tary between King’s mur­der and the assas­si­na­tion of Robert F. Kennedy, which occurred two months lat­er.)

The bulk of the dis­cus­sion in this pro­gram is pre­sen­ta­tion and analy­sis of the polit­i­cal machin­ery in Mem­phis, Ten­nessee that engi­neered Dr. King’s mur­der. (Dis­cus­sion of the Spe­cial Forces team that was in Mem­phis as a back-up unit in case the civil­ian sniper missed King is detailed in FTR #46.)

In Pep­per’s inves­ti­ga­tion of King’s mur­der­ers, he detailed the appar­ent role of the late Rus­sell Lee Adkins, a mem­ber of the Dix­ie Mafia in Mem­phis, Ten­nessee. (The Dix­ie Mafia is dis­tinct from the Mafia, per se, that oper­at­ed in the South, although–as Pep­per makes clear–they worked with Mafiosi like New Orleans capo Car­los Mar­cel­lo and Mar­cel­lo asso­ciate Frank Lib­er­to, like Adkins, an oper­a­tor in Mem­phis.) 

His son Rus­sell Jr. took over exec­u­tive man­age­ment of the assas­si­na­tion machin­ery after his father’s death in 1967.

Note the coop­er­a­tion between the Ku Klux Klan and ele­ments of the Masons in Mem­phis. This should NOT be mis­un­der­stood as buy­ing into the myr­i­ad of anti-Mason­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries which have pro­lif­er­at­ed on the Inter­net. The bulk of Freema­son­ry are what they rep­re­sent them­selves as being–civic activists and phil­an­thropists. The Third Reich planned to exter­mi­nate the Masons, along with the Jews and oth­ers.

That hav­ing been said, there have always been net­works with­in the Masons which, due to to their clan­des­tine oper­at­ing struc­ture, have been uti­lized for con­spir­a­to­r­i­al pur­pos­es. In these broad­casts, we have not­ed the P‑2 lodge of Licio Gel­li as one such enti­ty.

The Rus­sell Adkins Klan/Mason nexus is anoth­er. Note Rus­sell Sr.‘s son Ron Adkins depo­si­tion about the deci­sive influ­ence of this insti­tu­tion­al­ly racist enti­ty and its pow­er­ful oper­a­tional con­nec­tions:

1.–It dom­i­nat­ed Mem­phis munic­i­pal pol­i­tics empow­er­ing May­or Hen­ry Loeb and Fire and Police Com­mis­sion­er Frank Hol­lo­man, among oth­ers fig­ur­ing in the mur­der of King.

2.–The Adkins/Klan milieu had long-stand­ing oper­a­tional links with the FBI. Num­ber two man in the bureau at the time, as well as J. Edgar Hoover’s live-in lover, was close to Rus­sell Adkins and used him to dis­pense pay­ments to bureau oper­a­tives, includ­ing the Rev­erend Jesse Jack­son.

2.–The Adkins/Klan milieu net­worked with the Mafia, as stat­ed above.

3.–Ron Adkins, Rus­sell Sr.‘s son, deposed under oath that: ” . . . . Ron said that his father took him to his first lynch­ing when he was just six years old. . . .”

4.–The Adkins milieu was close to Dr. Breen Bland, whose alleged role in King’s death is dis­cussed below.

Next, we present the role of the Adkins machine as a con­duit for Hoover and Tol­son’s financ­ing for the escape of pat­sy-to-be James Earl Ray: ” . . . . . . . . [FBI offi­cial Clyde] Tol­son was a sub­stan­tial con­nec­tion for his [Ron­nie Adkins’] father . . . . Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to this case is that he brought the mon­ey which was to be paid to Harold Swen­son, the War­den of the Mis­souri State prison, in Jef­fer­son City, Mis­souri, in order for him to arrange for the escape of James in 1967. At Hoover’s request, James had been pro­filed as a poten­tial scape­goat, although the nature of the crime was not revealed. Ron told us about this assign­ment because he was an actu­al observ­er. He saw the mon­ey being deliv­ered by Tol­son and then, at his father’s invi­ta­tion, he rode to the prison where the mon­ey was paid to Swen­son by his father. . . Ray (who was always kept in the dark about this arrange­ment) suc­cess­ful­ly escaped from prison on April 23, 1967, and then . . . was mon­i­tored, con­trolled . . . . and moved around until the plans for the assas­si­na­tion and his use were final­ized. . . . .”

In the run-up to the assas­si­na­tion of king: ” . . . . In ear­ly 1968, two work­ers, thir­ty-five-year-old Echole Cole and twen­ty-nine-year-old Robert Walk­er were lit­er­al­ly swal­lowed by a mal­func­tion­ing ‘garbage pack­er’ truck. We would lat­er learn this was a planned mur­der by the Dix­ie Mafia fam­i­ly of Rus­sell Adkins, in coor­di­na­tion with Mem­phis Police Depart­ment Direc­tor of Police and Fire Frank Hol­lo­man, in order to com­pel Dr. King to return to sup­port the strik­ers. . . .” 

Sworn depo­si­tions by Lenny Cur­tis (a cus­to­di­an for the Mem­phis Police Depart­ment) and Nathan Whit­lock, a Mem­phis police­man named Frank Strauss­er was the actu­al shoot­er select­ed to exe­cute King: ” . . . . On that day, he [Strauss­er] broke to take lunch with [MPD Cap­tain Earl] Clark, and when he returned he resumed fir­ing. When he left at around 3:30 p.m., he put the top down on the con­vert­ible, took off his pow­der blue shirt, and threw it over the rifle in the back­seat, leav­ing only his white T‑shirt on. He ruf­fled his hair and put on a pair of sun­glass­es. When he left, May­or Loeb, Hol­lo­man, and the oth­er vis­it­ing police offi­cers were still there. They had met in Lieu­tenant Bullard’s office. . . .”

After high­light­ing the alleged role of Frank Strauss­er as the actu­al assas­sin, we present the oper­a­tional sequence of events on the ground in Mem­phis, Ten­nessee. Again, note the ubiq­ui­tous pres­ence of the Adkins/Dixie Mafia/Klan machine in the pro­gres­sion of events. ” . . . . Also observed arriv­ing at the MPD fir­ing range build­ing where he met with the shoot­er and Earl Clark were Direc­tor Hol­lo­man and May­or Hen­ry Loeb. . . .”

Note, also, the roles of Jesse Jack­son and the Rev­erend Bil­ly Kyles in these maneu­vers. (As dis­cussed in FTR #1005, both were being paid by FBI offi­cial Clyde Tol­son, through the Adkins machine. Jack­son’s appar­ent role was to help secure Room 306 in the Lor­raine Motel, over­look­ing the pool and afford­ing a clear shot, as well as to maneu­ver the Invaders out of the area. (The Invaders were a local Black Pow­er group who were present for secu­ri­ty pur­pos­es.) Kyles was there to help lure King out onto the bal­cony for the kill shot.

After King was shot, he was tak­en to St. Joseph’s hos­pi­tal, where, again the influ­ence of the Adkins machine came into play: ” . . . . . . . . Ron Adkins Tyler, under oath, told me that Dr. Breen Bland, who, remem­ber was also the Adkins’ fam­i­ly doc­tor, was in fact, the head sur­geon at the hos­pi­tal. . . . He said he was present and over­heard con­ver­sa­tions between his father and Dr. Bland, and then, fol­low­ing his father’s death, between his broth­er (Rus­sell Junior), Police and Fire Direc­tor Frank Hol­lo­man, and Dr. Bland about the impor­tance of Dr. King being tak­en to St. Joseph’s if he was still alive. . . . Ron Adkins Tyler has no doubt that they were deter­mined to make cer­tain that Dr. King would nev­er leave the emer­gency room at St. Joseph’s Hos­pi­tal alive. Though he did not know the details of the final cause of death, it appears that he was cor­rect. . . .”

Next, we focus on events at St. Joseph’s Hos­pi­tal on 4/4/1968:

1.–Among those events ” . . . . was the large pres­ence of mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cers who had tak­en up posi­tions in the hos­pi­tal well before the shot was fired. Accord­ing to Dr. Cause­way, who was on duty at the time, the mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cers knew the names of all of the emer­gency room nurs­es and doc­tors on duty. . . .”

2.–The atten­tion giv­en to the grave­ly wound­ed Dr. King: ” . . . . He [Dr. Cause­way] observed that no con­sid­er­a­tion was giv­en to mov­ing the crit­i­cal­ly injured vic­tim to the oper­at­ing room and he saw no sur­gi­cal effort being made to save him. When he inquired about treat­ment, he was told that he was being treat­ed. . . .”

3.–According to sur­gi­cal aide Lula Mae Shel­by: ” . . . . there were many MPD offi­cers and army peo­ple milling about, in addi­tion to men in suits. . . . Dr. King was lying on a blood­ied gur­ney. She saw the huge hole in the low­er left side of his face, but heard one of the ER doc­tors say that he has a pulse. The ER doc­tors had per­formed a tra­cheoto­my and insert­ed a breath­ing tube. . . . in a while, the head of surgery (who appears to have been Dr. Breen Bland–the Adkins’ fam­i­ly doc­tor and col­lab­o­ra­tor dis­cussed ear­li­er) came into the emer­gency room with a cou­ple of men in suits and shout­ed at the staff work­ing on Dr. King, ‘Stop work­ing on the nig­ger and let him die. Now, all of you get out of here, right now. Every­body get out.’ . . . . as she was leav­ing, she heard three sounds of the men gath­er­ing or suck­ing up sali­va in their mouths–and then she heard two or three spit­ting sounds. This caused her, on the way out, to glance back over her shoul­der, and see that the breath­ing tube had been removed and Dr. Bland put a pil­low on and over the face of Dr. King. . . .”

After the mur­der, the above-men­tioned Lenny Cur­tis heard rumors about Frank Strauss­er being the assas­sin of King, as well as dis­cus­sion of Strauss­er being pres­sured to leave the MPD because of civ­il rights com­plaints being lodged against him.

Con­cerned that Cur­tis might dis­close infor­ma­tion about him to the FBI, Strauss­er con­front­ed him dur­ing a dri­ve and deliv­ered a warn­ing: ” . . . . ‘Lenny, you be care­ful now.’ The look he gave him was clear­ly threat­en­ing. . . .”

Fol­low­ing this inci­dent, Cur­tis expe­ri­enced strange, fright­en­ing things: ” . . . . . His gas was strange­ly turned on once when he was about to enter his house. He had lit a cig­a­rette, but as he opened the door he smelled gas and quick­ly put out the cig­a­rette. A strange Lin­coln was occa­sion­al­ly parked across the street from his apart­ment house. . . .  One morn­ing when the car was there, he got into his own car and quick­ly drove off, and the strange car pulled out and fol­lowed him. He man­aged to see the dri­ver. It was Strauss­er. At that time, new evi­dence in the case came up. He said that every time new evi­dence arose the offi­cer would pop up. He tried to move to a new house with­out notice but the land­lord of the new com­plex would report see­ing a man in the back of his house. When Lenny checked the area, he found a ‘tree stand,’ a V‑shaped stand where you could rest a rifle. When he put a stick in it, it focused on his kitchen and bath­room win­dows. He moved again, with­out notice. . . .”

Pep­per found Cur­tis to be inspir­ing, wait­ing until after his death in 2013 to come for­ward with his tes­ti­mo­ny out of fear for Lenny’s safe­ty. ” . . . . I safe­guard­ed his infor­ma­tion and his depo­si­tion for all of these years, fear­ful that the assas­s­in’s mas­ters would kill him if they learned about his coop­er­a­tion with me. . . .”

Before con­clud­ing the pro­gram, we revis­it the state­ment of one of the Spe­cial Forces offi­cers com­pris­ing the back-up fire team–a man Pep­per described under the pseu­do­nym “War­ren.” ” . . . .  . . . . War­ren said that on that occa­sion they also had a sec­ondary mis­sion, which was to do recon (recon­nais­sance of a home up in the West­ern Hills near the UCLA cam­pus.) The recon was to deter­mine the fea­si­bil­i­ty of a ‘wet insert ops deter­mined’ oper­a­tion. (‘Wet insert ops deter­mined’ means that the unit car­ries out a sur­rep­ti­tious entry at night into the tar­get­ed res­i­dence, kills every­one there, and leaves with­out a trace.)  He said that their recon deter­mined the fea­si­bil­i­ty of such an oper­a­tion. War­ren sub­se­quent­ly learned that the house was used by Sen­a­tor Robert F. Kennedy when he was in Los Ange­les in 1967–68. . . .”

We end the pro­gram with a caveat deliv­ered to for­mer Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Wal­ter Faun­troy [of Wash­ing­ton D.C.]–a founder of the Con­gres­sion­al Black Cau­cus. After inform­ing then Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Carl Albert that he wished to head what was to become the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions: ” . . . . Albert said to him, ‘Wal­ter, you don’t want that job.’ To which Faun­troy replied, ‘But I do want it; why not?’ Albert whis­pered, ‘Wal­ter, they will kill you.’ . . .”

“They Are All Bound on The Wheel . . . .” Reflections on The Death of George Floyd and Its Aftermath

My feel­ings about the George Floyd killing and its after­math are best expressed in a poem I have read on a num­ber of pro­grams. In FTR #46, I detailed the assas­si­na­tion of Mar­tin Luther King. The research in FTR #46, in turn, updat­ed infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed on the 17th anniver­sary of the assas­si­na­tion of Dr. King more than a decade ear­li­er. Two years ago, when doing ten hours of pro­gram­ming about Dr. King’s mur­der on the 50th anniver­sary of that event, I was struck by the utter pas­siv­i­ty and silence, not just on the part of the main­stream media, but on the part of the African-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty, as well as the so-called “pro­gres­sive sec­tor.” How can peo­ple who have acqui­esced in the cold-blood­ed assas­si­na­tion of Amer­i­ca’s most promi­nent civ­il rights leader at the hands of pow­er­ful ele­ments of gov­ern­ment man­i­fest sur­prise or out­rage at Floy­d’s death? Per­haps it is because “They are all bound on the wheel . . . .”

Pottinger Agonistes: Covid-19 Disinformation Meets Weaponized Feminism

“A lib­er­al’s idea of courage is eat­ing at a restau­rant that has­n’t been reviewed yet.”–Mort Sahl. In FTR #‘s 998, 999 and 1000, we set forth what Mr. Emory calls “weaponized fem­i­nism.” Refash­ion­ing the doc­trine of advanc­ing the cause of women into a legal and polit­i­cal weapon for destroy­ing tar­get­ed men, dom­i­nant man­i­fes­ta­tions of the #MeToo move­ment have served the cause of the far right. In Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M4, we set forth Glo­ria Steinem’s work for the CIA and her nine years’ rela­tion­ship with J. Stan­ley Pot­tinger. In addi­tion to Steinem’s lover, Pot­tinger was: Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­er­al for Civ­il Rights under Nixon and Ford; report­ed by Don­ald Freed and Fred Lan­dis (in “Death in Wash­ing­ton”) to have foiled inves­ti­ga­tions into the assas­si­na­tions of Mar­tin Luther King and Orlan­do Lete­lier; the attor­ney for the Hashe­mi broth­ers in the Octo­ber Sur­prise inves­ti­ga­tion and a close per­son­al friend of George H.W. Bush (for whom CIA head­quar­ters was named). Despite the fact that Steinem tout­ed her CIA back­ground as good jour­nal­is­tic cre­den­tials in both “The New York Times” and “The Wash­ing­ton Post” (both with long-stand­ing CIA links them­selves), Pot­tinger has defend­ed her against charges that she worked for the CIA!! J. Stan­ley Pot­tinger’s son Matthew is Trump’s Deputy Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advi­sor and a point-man for the “Chi­na-did-it” Covid-19 meme. One won­ders if Matthew may have fol­lowed J. Stan­ley into the CIA, if in fact Dad­dio is Agency, as Mr. Emory sus­pects. We find it more than coin­ci­den­tal that Tara Read­e’s shape-shift­ing accu­sa­tions against Joe Biden have sur­faced decades after the alleged incident–coinciding with Biden’s chal­leng­ing of Trump and with Pot­tinger, Jr. help­ing to direct the admin­is­tra­tion’s traf­fic. Bernie Sanders sup­port­er Tara Read­e’s charge brings to mind George H.W. Bush cam­paign man­ag­er Lee Atwa­ter’s gam­bit of using Don­na Rice to destroy the Pres­i­den­tial can­di­da­cy of for­mer Sen­a­tor Gary Hart.

Walkin’ the Cobra in India: Hindutva Fascism’s Triumphal Revisionism

In FTR #’s 988 and 989, we set forth the assas­si­na­tion of Mahat­ma Gand­hi by an elab­o­rate, well-doc­u­ment­ed plot by the Hin­dut­va fas­cist RSS and the asso­ci­at­ed Hin­du Mahasab­ha:The RSS was mod­eled after Euro­pean fas­cist move­ments and the Hin­du Mahasab­ha open­ly emu­lat­ed the Ger­man Nazi Par­ty under Hitler, see­ing the Fuhrer’s treat­ment of the Jews as an oper­a­tional par­a­digm for their pro­posed han­dling of Indi­a’s Mus­lims.The RSS came to pow­er with the elec­tion of Naren­dra Modi, whose regime has under­tak­en a pro­gram of active per­se­cu­tion of Mus­lims and mur­der of crit­i­cal jour­nal­ists and polit­i­cal oppo­nents. Now, the Hin­du Mahasab­ha is lead­ing a pro­gram to cel­e­brate Nathu­ram Godse, the RSS assas­sin who killed Gand­hi.Yogi Adityanath, appoint­ed by Modi to lead Uttar Pradesh, has pro­posed renam­ing the city of Meerut after Godse.

Suggestive Detail in the Alleged “Suicide” of Iris Chang

A “San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle” arti­cle about the alleged “sui­cide” of Iris Chang con­tained a detail we over­looked. In FTR #‘s 1107 and 1108, we high­light­ed Ms. Chang’s death, which sug­gest­ed the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty of foul play. A detail about the phys­i­cal cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Iris’s “sui­cide” suggests–strongly–that she did not pull the trig­ger her­self. Her body was dis­cov­ered by a San­ta Clara Coun­ty Water Dis­trict Employ­ee: “. . . . He noticed con­den­sa­tion on the win­dows, peered inside and saw Iris in the dri­ver’s seat with her hands crossed in her lap. The revolver lay on her left leg. . . .” Some­one who had fired a .45 cal­iber black pow­der weapon into her mouth would be unlike­ly to have her hands crossed in her lap and with the revolver on her left leg. This sounds like it may well an arranged crime scene. Thanks to a sharp-eyed listener/reader who noticed this detail.