Prison escape by Ray has reopened Kennedy and King conspiracy charges

Press, 5 July 1977, Page 17

Prison escape by Ray has reopened Kennedy and King conspiracy charges

By

RAN JIT DE SILVA, of Reuters

The dramatic break for freedom by James Earl Ray, the convicted killer of Martin Luther King, has focused new attention on whether the civil rights leader was a victim of conspiracy. It also appears to have given a timely boost to an apparently faltering Congressional investigation of the murder.

The House of Representatives Assassinations Committee, which has been probing the King slaying, and the murder of President Kennedy, claimed to have uncovered new leads about both killings. But after eight months, committee investigators have found virtually no new information to suggest that either Dr King or President Kennedy were victims of conspiracies.

Ray, who escaped with six other prison inmates in a hail of gunfire on June 10, was captured 55 hours after his break from the maximum security Brushy Mountain State prison in Tennessee. But his escape, accomplished with relative ease, has rekindled a national debate over whether he acted alone in killing Dr King in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 8, 1968.

On hearing of Ray’s escape, Black Congressman Louis Stokes dispatched staff investigators

to Tennessee to determine whether Ray had outside help in making his jailbreak. Mr Stokes, other assassination committee members, and conspiracy theorists throughout the country expressed fears that Ray’s escape had been engineered by someone outside, possibly Dr King’s real killer.

A short while before his escape, Ray, serving a 99year term for the King killing, had been questioned by committee investigators. He was seeking a new trial, contending that his lawyers had pressurised him into pleading guilty. But the Supreme Court had rejected his plea.

“We know there are people who would not want him to talk,” Mr Stokes said, soon after learning about Ray’s escape.

Authorities are looking into a theory that Ray had accomplices standing by a mountain road near the prison, ready to help him complete his escape

Ray himself has been tight-lipped about his escape, and appears quite willing to accept any punishment prison authorities may hand him.

The assassinations committee expects a report from its investigators on the Ray escape in the next few weeks. In the meantime, committee members are afraid Ray may try again. Tennessee Governor

Ray Blanton has asked the Federal Government to take custody of Ray, and has ignored a Federal order that exceptionally tight security surrounding Ray be relaxed.

At the time the assassinations committee was claiming it had new leads on the King and Kennedy killings, a Justice Department report of a new probe of the King murder was released. This report said: “All the evidence of Ray’s guilt points to him exclusively ...”

But it appeared to leave one loophole. It also said: “Of course, someone could conceivably have provided him (Ray) with logistics, or even paid him to commit the crime. However, we have found no competent evidence upon which to base such a theory.”

The department’s investigation was prompted primarily by disclosures that the F. 8.1. under the personal direction of its late director, J. Edgar Hoover, had conducted a massive campaign to discredit Dr King.

Several committee members denounced the Justice Department’s report as a se 1 f-serving document, aimed at discrediting their own investigation. In a preliminary report, the assassinations committee said that its new leads

included a report that Ray had received help from a secret contact in Europe to aid him in his escape following the King murder.

It also said: “The most important current development is the willingness of James Earl Ray ... to talk to the committee.” But, so far, the committee has not indicated whether Ray has given it hard evidence to suggest a conspiracy in the King slaying.

In the Kennedy murder, the committee’s report said that the new leads, if proven, would disprove the Warren Commission finding that Lee Harvey Oswald was the President’s sole assassin. Among the leads, the committee asserted, was a witness who claimed to have been introduced to Oswald by the Dallas nightclub owner, Jack Ruby, who in turn killed Oswald. The introduction, according to the committee, took place in November, 1963, just before the Kennedy assassination.

None of these so-called dramatic leads have been developed for the public by the committee. In fact, smarting under press criticism that its claims were largely unfounded, the committee has draped a cloak of secrecy over its activities.

Most of its meetings,

even routine hearings dealing with procedures, have been closed to the public and the press. These actions have fueled speculation that its investigations so far have proved fruitless, and that the committee itself was heading towards extinction at the end of this year.

Mr John Preyer, who heads the committee’s task force on the Kennedy killing, concedes that so far it has turned up no evidence to substantiate the conspirary theories.

“The committee is not setting out to prove conspiracy theories,” he said. “It is only trying to determine the truth. It may well be that we will find that, in the Kennedy case for instance the Warren commission was correct.”

The assassinations committee has been engulfed in controversy since its inception. It was created in response to widespread demands within Congress and from outisde. One of the leading proponents of a Congressional probe was Mark Lane, an outspoken and controversial critic of the Warren Commission.

Mr Lane heads an organisation known as the “commission of inquiry” located on Capitol Hill, the home of Congress. He is the author of the book, "Rush to Judgment,” which was critical of the Warren Commission probe of the Kennedy murder.

Some critics of the assassinations committee allege that its probe is, in fact, being directed by Mr Lane, and that a good many of the so-called new leads have been provided by him. The committee denies such allegations.

There have been bitter internal disputes, resulting in the resignations of the committee’s original chairman, the Texas Democrat, Henry Gonzalez, and its chief counsel, Richard Sprague. The controversy and the apparent lack of credible new evidence has been cited by critics as reasons why the panel has so far been uhable to find a new chief investigator. The former supreme Court Justice, Arthur Goldberg, and Archibald Cox, the former Watergate special prosecutor, have both declined the post.

The committee still has no permanent staff director or chief counsel to guide its $2.5M investigation. And after eight months it is still investigating the new leads it claimed last year to have uncovered.

Critics say there is little chance that committee investigators will find evidence that Ray had outside help in making his prison break. And despite new attention on the conspiracy possibilities that the escape has aroused, congressional critics say that controversy surrounding the committee, and questions about its objectivity, would make a meaningful inquiry into the escape and the King murder unlikely.