Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'MLK' is associated with 62 posts.

Latest Patreon Talks: Reflections on Assassinations of MLK and RFK and Mind Control (Four Articles Posted)

Mr. Emory’s Patre­on Archive con­tin­ues to grow: In addi­tion to bril­liant expos­es by Hal Sander­son and “Mon­ty” about the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, fas­cism and the new age and ground-break­ing research about the depth and scope of Nazi pen­e­tra­tion of U.S. intel­li­gence, the most recent talks revis­it the assas­si­na­tions of MLK and RFK, as well as the sub­ject of mind con­trol. Dr. Jef­frey Sachs “pret­ty con­vinced” Covid came from a U.S. Bio-Lab. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.


FTR#‘s 1285, 1286 and 1287: Interview #‘s 22, 23 and 24 with Jim DiEugenio about “JFK Revisited”

Con­tin­u­ing our vis­its with Jim DiEu­ge­nio, we alter our focus some­what to JFK’s civ­il rights pol­i­cy. Although the sub­ject is pre­sent­ed in JFK Revis­it­ed, we delin­eate a deep dive into a mag­nif­i­cent group of four essays that Jim did on his web­site www.kennedysandking.com: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

To make a VERY long sto­ry short: “The Kennedy admin­is­tra­tion did more to advance civ­il rights in three years than the pri­or 18 did in near­ly a cen­tu­ry. This is sim­ply a mat­ter of record. (See the chart at the end of Part 3.)”


Latest on Patreon Site: The 9/11 “Truthers,” Covid, China’s Economy

On Mr. Emory’s Patre­on site, the most recent one hour talks include: Debunk­ing of the “con­trolled demo­li­tion” dis­in­for­ma­tion with regard to the 9/11 attacks; the O.J. Simp­son case and the assas­si­na­tion of Mar­tin Luther King, as well as Covid-19 and the Chi­nese econ­o­my post “Zero Covid.” Dr. Jef­frey Sachs “pret­ty con­vinced” Covid came from a U.S. Bio-Lab. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.


FTR#‘s 1281 and 1282: Interviews #18 and #19 with Jim DiEugenio and David Talbot

Con­tin­u­ing our series of inter­views about JFK Revis­it­ed, we vis­it with both Jim DiEu­ge­nio and David Tal­bot, the author of Broth­ers and The Dev­il’s Chess­board. (We have high­light­ed infor­ma­tion from the lat­ter in FTR#‘s 894, 1162.)

Note that David Tal­bot is a major con­trib­u­tor to the com­men­tary in JFK Revis­it­ed.

The broad­cast high­lights the many top­ics of dis­cus­sion that David Tal­bot con­tributes dur­ing the pro­gram. We also high­light David’s prob­lems get­ting The Dev­il’s Chess­board reviewed.

Of note, as well, is David’s dis­cus­sion of a doc­u­ment that he and Lisa Pease dis­cov­ered: On the week­end of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion, Allen Dulles had decamped to Camp Peary aka “The Farm”–a major CIA train­ing facil­i­ty. The doc­u­ment lat­er dis­ap­peared.


FTR#‘s 1279 and 1280: Interviews #16 and #17 with Jim DiEugenio and John Newman

Our ongo­ing series of inter­views with Jim DiEugenio–selected by Oliv­er Stone to write the screen­play for the doc­u­men­tary JFK Revis­it­ed and to write and edit the book derived from the film—presents an extreme­ly enrich­ing guest, John New­man.

Dis­cus­sion con­cludes with what Sen­a­tor Richard Schweik­er not­ed: that there were “the fin­ger­prints of Intel­li­gence all around Oswald.” An impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion brack­et­ing this dis­cus­sion con­cerns the CIA’s coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence search/obsession for a KGB mole with­in the Agency. John has writ­ten, and is writ­ing, about that sub­ject. Oswald’s “defec­tion” to the USSR over­lapped that dynam­ic.

Author of among oth­er titles JFK and Viet­nam and Oswald and the CIA, John was deeply involved with Stone’s 1991 opus JFK.

The inter­views begin with review of top­ics pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cussed in this FTR series, includ­ing: Pres­i­dent Eisenhower’s order to kill Patrice Lumum­ba of the Con­go, reach­ing a crescen­do with Ike’s out­burst at a nation­al secu­ri­ty meet­ing demand­ing aloud Lumumba’s ter­mi­na­tion; Pres­i­dents Trump’s and Biden’s balk­ing at the man­dat­ed release of doc­u­ments pur­suant to the ARRB’s man­date; dis­cus­sion of Oper­a­tion North­woods, Lyman Lemnitzer’s and Maxwell Taylor’s planned series of provo­ca­tions designed to pro­voke a U.S. inva­sion of Cuba.

Next, we review JFK’s Viet­nam pol­i­cy (this, too, has been cov­ered in past talks, how­ev­er we present added depth draw­ing on John’s exper­tise and pub­lished book JFK and Viet­nam.)

We then high­light Gen­er­al Cur­tis LeMay’s atti­tude toward and behav­ior with regard to JFK.

Of par­tic­u­lar note is John New­man’s dis­clo­sure that no record­ings of the meet­ings of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have sur­vived intact!


FTR#‘s 1275 & 1276 Interviews #14 and #15 with Jim DiEugenio and Paul Bleau about “JFK Revisited”

This broad­cast con­tin­ues our vis­its with Jim DiEugenio–author of Des­tiny Betrayed and JFK Revisited–selected by Oliv­er Stone to write the screen­play for his lat­est doc­u­men­tary.

In these broad­casts, we are addi­tion­al­ly priv­i­leged by the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Paul Bleau, a vet­er­an JFK assas­si­na­tion researcher who is promi­nent­ly fea­tured in JFK Revis­it­ed.

The recent inquiries into the 1/6/2021 insur­rec­tion have yield­ed some jour­nal­is­tic cov­er­age (Wash­ing­ton Post) of Secret Ser­vice destruc­tion of records of 1963 threats to JFK from “white suprema­cist” groups. We begin by pre­sent­ing Paul’s analy­sis of the Chica­go plot against JFK’s life; with appar­ent shoot­ers posi­tioned in a high-rise build­ing to elim­i­nate JFK as he trav­eled in a motor­cade.

Next, Paul ana­lyzes the plot against JFK’s life in Tam­pa.

Fol­low­ing dis­cus­sion of the pre­vi­ous plots against JFK in 1963, we turn to Oswald’s pres­ence in New Orleans and the cast of char­ac­ters revolv­ing around Guy Ban­is­ter’s “detec­tive agency.”

In a pre­vi­ous pro­gram, we not­ed that the term “Con­spir­a­cy The­o­rist” was great­ly ele­vat­ed in its use and intel­lec­tu­al pro­file by stress­ing the util­i­ty of the moniker in dis­cred­it­ing War­ren Com­mis­sion crit­ics.

Instead of “con­spir­a­cy,” the term “net­work­ing” is both accu­rate and res­onates pos­i­tive­ly with the rela­tion­ships that char­ac­ter­ize the JFK assas­si­na­tion land­scape.

Among Paul Bleau’s numer­ous arti­cles avail­able on kennedysandking.com is one about Oswald’s escorts. We delve into some aspects of the net­work­ing involv­ing Oswald and the Camp Street milieu in New Orleans.


FTR#‘s 1273 & 1274 Interviews #12 and #13 with Jim DiEugenio and Dr. Gary Aquilar about “JFK Revisited”

This broad­cast con­tin­ues our vis­its with Jim DiEugenio–author of Des­tiny Betrayed and JFK Revisited–selected by Oliv­er Stone to write the screen­play for his lat­est doc­u­men­tary.

In these broad­casts, we are addi­tion­al­ly priv­i­leged by the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Dr. Gary Aquilar, one of the experts fea­tured in the Stone/DiEugenio doc­u­men­tary, as well as being one of the ground-break­ing fig­ures in the ongo­ing inquiry into the med­ical evi­dence in the assas­si­na­tion.

Dr. Aquilar high­light­ed the deep pro­fes­sion­al com­pro­mis­ing of peo­ple who filled “expert” roles in the var­i­ous med­ical exam­i­na­tions, the involve­ment of a num­ber of them as “experts” in oth­er, impor­tant intel­li­gence-con­nect­ed cas­es such as the assas­si­na­tion of Mar­tin Luther King.

In par­tic­u­lar, Dr. Aquilar parsed the incon­sis­ten­cies in a review of the med­ical evi­dence in the JFK assas­si­na­tion case that was insti­tut­ed by then Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ram­sey Clark–“inconsistencies” which are dif­fi­cult to ascribe to caprice or error.

In addi­tion to his pre­sen­ta­tion of new mate­r­i­al with which even Jim DiEu­ge­nio was unfa­mil­iar, Gary was instru­men­tal in dis­cus­sion of the medical/forensic evi­dence in the JFK assas­si­na­tion case.


Patreon Update: First Zoom Q & A Sunday, 6/5 at 2pm Pacific Time

The Patre­on site con­tin­ues to devel­op and take form: The first Zoom Q & A Ses­sion is sched­uled for 6/5 at 2pm Pacif­ic Time. A theme of the talk Fri­day was how to best bridge the gap between new, cred­i­ble doc­u­ment­ed infor­ma­tion that con­flicts with peo­ple’s pre-exist­ing beliefs and the chang­ing of those beliefs. That gap can be expressed in this online, com­ic, clev­er­ly con­ceived and exe­cut­ed. Ukrain­ian tele­vi­sion anchor quotes Adolf Eich­mann ver­ba­tim in this video from UKRAINE 24. This video of Ukraine’s top mil­i­tary med­ical offi­cer dis­cussing an order to cas­trate Russ­ian males is an eye-open­er. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.


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 #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.’ . . .”