House hopes to heal public wounds in open hearings

Press, 14 August 1978, Page 9

House hopes to heal public wounds in open hearings

(NZPA-Reuter Washington ( A Congressional panel will i begin potentially e:c plosive I public hearings this week (which it hopes w9ll end (more than a decade iof nat(ional controversy, at?! >ut the (murders of President John (Kennedy and Dr . Martin i Luther King.

The hearings will mark the first time the House of Representatives Assassinations Committee, wiiiich has. been working behind closed doors, has publicly p resented evidence it has gal! lered in its two-year invest!;?! ition.

The probe was jp rompted i by persistent allegati ons that President Kennedy, fwho was shot dead in Dallas® in 1963, and Dr King, who I was fatally shot in Memphis, Tennessee, three yetu s later, were victims of com,piracies. I Investigations by} the Warren Commission, 'vhich con-j (eluded that Lee Hirvey Os- ( wald alone killed President ■ (Kennedy and by t’6 e Federal Bureau of Investigation! (which held that Jjames Earl, ( Ray was Dr King! 5 lone as-1 isassin, did not aue 11 the drI mands for fill ther in- ■ (vestigations. u

Ray, who is serving a 99year prison term for. the King murder, has fuelled speculation by charging that he was coerced by his lawyers into pleading guilty. The House AssassinationsCommittee, outlining its task in a preliminary report last March, said the passage of time had not healed the national trauma caused by the killings but rather had , raised more questions about them. Therefore, committee investigators hope that by focusing the spotlight in nationally televised hearings, the wounds caused by the deaths would be healed. The hearings represent the final phase of the probe on which Congress has spent nearly S 5 million. They are ’expected to focus on points I of controversy surrounding .the deaths, with the committee’s conclusion and i recommendations contained in a final report to be issued in December. The hearings, which will (be held intermittently until December, are not expected to be conclusive. However. 'Congressional sources said

■ they would .raise new questions about the killings. 1 I The new information, ] : I sources said, had been devel(oped partly through the use |of new sophisticated techni- ( ileal means not available to] neither the Warren Commis-j ■ 1 . —

(sion or the F. 8.1. during I ’ their original investigations. II This week’s hearings will i be devoted to the King mur- . der and the star witness will li be Ray, who will appear be-

fore the panel on Wednesday in response to a subpoena. It is not yet certain whether Ray will respond to the committee's questions ] about his activities in MemI phis the day Dr King was killed. Sources said it was possible that Mark Lane, Ray’s lawyer, who has been a persistent critic of Government investigations of the murders and advocate of the conspiracy theory, could turn the event into an attack on the panel. But the commute has more .than 28 hours of taperecorded conversations with Ray and conceivably couid release transcripts of those conversations should Ray refuse to testify. Before Ray takes the witness stand the panel will hear from Dr Ralph Abernathv, a long-time associate of IDr King and a leader of the Southern Christian I.eadI ership Conference which Dr King headed. The next series of public hearings to be held next ( month will focus on the Kennedy assassination.