F.B.I. wanted fighter escort for Luther King murderer

Press, 17 February 1978, Page 13

F.B.I. wanted fighter escort for Luther King murderer

The F. 8.1. worried that the murder of Martin Luther King might have been a foreign conspiracy, considered asking for a fighter escort for the Air Force plane returning James Earl Ray from London. F. 8.1. files show.

Preparations for the Atlantic flight were so extensive that the F. 8.1. devoted pages of memos to every detail. Food during the flight should not require metal utensils; the plane’s bathroom door should ne removed; leg irons, chains, and body armour should be ordered for the suspect.

One entrv noted 'hat an F. 8.1. agent accompanying Ray was two metres tall and in good health. Another discussed whether

accompanying agents should remain silent during the trip or respond if Rav began casual conver-

Rav was arrested on June’B. 1968. in London, after a two-month flight that took the Missouri state prison escaper from the rooming house in Memphis, Tennessee, from which he shot the civil rights leader on April 4,

1968, to Canada, Portugal and Britain. The F.B.L said Ray financed his travels before and after the assassination with an estimated SUSI2.OOO derived from hold-ups. Four days before capture in London, Ray robbed a British bank. The arrest of Ray ended an international manhunt, but it marked a fresh beginning for bickering between the F. 8.1. and the Attorney General (Ramsey Clark), this time over arrangements for the accused assassin’s return to the United States. Hours after Ray’s arrest, the Attorney General summoned a top aide to the F.8.1.’s director, J. Edgar Hoover, to congratulate the F. 8.1. according to agency files released under a freedom-of-information request. “Then he went into a song and dance on the absolute necessity for security and the avoidance of evasion of civil rights of the subject,” the aide, Cartha Deloach, wrote in a memo.

But the Attorney General and the F.B.L disagreed at every turn. The Attorney Genera!

wanted a charter commercial aircraft used to return Ray to the United States, but the F. 8.1. wanted a military aircraft. The F. 8.1. even considered seeking a fighter escort because of uncertainty about the assassination being either a plot by “Right-wing forces or a hostile intelligence agency.”

There was no record whether fighters escorted the Air Force plane used to return Ray, but the F. 8.1. did prevail on using a military aircraft.

But the F.8.1.’s anxiety about the possibility of conspiracy apparently was not shared by the director, at least in a meeting with the Attorney General.

“I said I think Ray is a racist and detested Negroes and Martin Luther Kind ...” Mr Hoover wrote in a memo on June 20.

“. . . 1 said I think he acted entirely alone. But we are not closing our minds that others might be associated with him and we have to run down every lead.”

Mr Clark wanted additional F. 8.1. agents sent to

London, wondered about having F. 8.1. informers planted in Ray’s cell in the British prison, and suggested a security inspection of the jail in Memphis, Tennessee, that would house Ray on his return.

Mr Hoover’s aide dismissed the suggestions as “foolish.” “unnecessary” and “none of the Attorney General’s business.” One memo by Mr Deloach ’written on June 8, the day of Ray’s arrest, recalled that the Attorney General said he was “unhappy about the manner in which the case had been handled” and "obviously he had been kept in the dark thus far and that he did not intend to put up with this in future.”

Mr Deloach wrote that Mr Clark finally bellowed through the telephone: “Who the hell do you think you’re working for? I’ll tell you who you’re working for? You're working for the Department of Justice.”

Mr Deloach said he hung up on the Attorney General. — NZPA. Washington.