time once again for community form and we're very lucky to have back with us live in the studio this morning tom carpenter tom carpenter is executive director of the and for challenge partners current position tom worked as the director of the nuclear oversight campaign for the government accountability project from one thousand nine hundred five to two thousand and seven he also founded the cincinnati alliance for responsible energy which challenge plans to open the defect ridden zimmer nuclear power plant and he also helped establish is a board member of the hanford concerns council and its predecessor the hanford joint council and he's here to talk about the continuing unfolding situation at hand for nuclear reservation located in eastern washington so start out tell us a little bit about  what is the hanford challenge yeah hanford challenges is an oversight some would say watchdog organization that monitors the cleanup at the hand for nuclear site tries to protect the public from radiation emergencies that might occur there which seem to happen on a frequent basis and we work with a lot of workers at the site brave employees who raise serious safety concerns and protect them if they get in trouble for instance that you know they get fired from their jobs or whatever so we have a legal director staff attorney as it were or a smaller organization but we have pretty big networks from many many decades of working on this issue small but feisty right very feisty and good thing too as has just recently as a couple weeks ago there was another incident at the hand for nuclear reactors were built there they were experimental in nature and the reactors are radiated uranium and the uranium was then next may put tony i'm you know when you bombard  in a reactor so they that plutonium was used in the first nuclear bomb using plutonium and nagasaki and it was such a success for the american military that they went to plutonium production therefore hanford ramped up here in the state of washington southeastern washington and ran for about forty five years with nine reactors and five big reprocessing facilities and made the most contaminated facility in in the nation and really the western hemisphere so it's closed now it's not making plutonium because we have so much of it but it did leave this gigantic her indus mess it's two thirds of the nation's high level nuclear waste there's an ocean of contamination in the groundwater and it remains a threat twenty five thirty years after the after the operation ceased and will for the foreseeable future because of just the  vast amounts of contamination radioactive and chemical that are there so hanford is in transition they are starting to tear down buildings and facilities and one of those is called the plutonium finishing plant and a few weeks ago in the process of carried out one of the sub facilities called the plutonium reclamation facility they could nearly were not careful and clouds of plutonium particles contamination won't cross this fence right you know maybe one hundred yards away or two hundred yards away when in fact they started finding the contamination on workers clothing as well as on what they call cookie sheets which they really are cookie sheets little particles are detected on these things and they realize that they have breached their containment that was on a friday in early december they didn't do anything saturday same thing sunday they found more contamination and it just went on through the next wednesday when finally after six days of finding contamination in the clean area a worker stopped  work the company says it stopped work the union says it stopped work but whatever it stopped on wednesday no word to the public no news release they just kind of quietly went about trying to figure out what was going on and even other workers around the site weren't informed of what was happening on thursday we we got wind of it hampered challenge has a great network of people and they someone contacted us and said did you know what's happening out there and i had no idea and neither did anybody else on the outside so we tweeted it out you know we have a twitter account for challenge and  put that news out there and started calling around to see if other people had heard about it including in the news media and susanna frames king five jumped on it real hard she has their own networks too and  know all day thursday consisted of ham for challenge and king five and a battery hanford with tweets and questions and trying to get them to respond and i did call this the site and they confirmed this was happening but they were not forthcoming with any real information other than saying yeah there was a release but it was raid on right oh it was not radon it was plutonium particles and but that's what they told the  local paper which ran that story that it was radon you know and that they didn't actually find contamination workers clothing when we had internal documents saying that it was their documents and so thursday night they quietly lifted the stop work and despite not knowing the cause despite having not having it under control and on friday they had another release and once again they did not announce it they kept working through sunday and i think saturday was off but on sunday they realized that there was another serious release and this time they found contamination on vehicles in the parking lot including workers personal vehicles and company vehicles hanford government vehicles etc some of which had left the site and gone into town with contamination on them with this is a big no no you don't do this at a plutonium factory you control your posts and plutonium i might say is  very deadly particle it doesn't really exist in nature it only happens because man or humankind split the atom complete tony m is useful for nuclear bombs but it also has a tremendously bad health effect and microscopic quantities so it's i was amused then to read when hanford finally did start putting stuff out there that they suddenly there these were specks of plutonium and microscopic quantities of plutonium it's like well how much do you think you need to inhale into your lung i mean the amount you can see what would be a fatal dose right and so this this is now covering first they said it was a couple of vehicles and then it was like seven then it went to thirteen and then nineteen and now it's twenty one  vehicles and how many workers we don't know have inhaled it and so this is a growing crisis and if it's on the vehicles on these twenty one vehicles certainly it's contaminated  people is contaminated clothes i mean people have probably taken this stuff home and i know that hanford has sent teams of radiation technicians to workers houses to check their houses and we're  far from over on this incident by the way it's ongoing and they still don't know how far it's gone so then they know that at least seven a minimum of seven worker personal vehicles travel off of hanford potentially going home maybe stopping at a store or maybe going to a restaurant taking you know your coat off when you get in a restaurant hang it up next to other people's coats i mean it seems like there's numerous ways where particles that had been on their clothing and or them could be distributed elsewhere right in the in also you know this stuff last forever so plutonium has a half life of twenty four thousand years and it takes ten half lives for it to be considered gone so essentially put tony in as around for a quarter of a million years so letting it introducing that into the community even in tiny quantities is a bad idea it doesn't go away you can't destroy it it is there you cannot barely tech to it so we don't know how much contamination was on these vehicles when they left well after town we just know it was still on there when some of it was still detected when they came back to the site what about vehicles that left the site and didn't come back right so there's there's a lot of questions to be answered here and you know one thing i want to point out is they should have been surprised they have plutonium releases from this same facility in the same operation back in january and february of twenty seventeen they lost control there was put tony beyond the fence line then then they had another release in april and then in may they had a very serious one  d workers found put tony in specs on their clothing and contamination on cars then as well and they weren't really planning to test the workers and they examine fecal matter right so there's not very pleasant but that's how they do it so they sent workers home with kits and it ended up i think three hundred or two hundred eighty workers you know hastened to say oh that's just a little bit of radiation and it's like flying on an airplane no it's not these were manufactured hotch plutonium particles that have a tremendous health impact over time and it keeps irradiating if it's in your tissues of his in your lung most of it stays in your lungs the rest of your life and for anyone to say they know what the risk is you can't because the health effects of plutonium are there's still a huge scientific debate about that so they poisoned workers you know back in june they weren't even going to test initially it looks like they didn't have the ki available for weeks so many workers didn't even get tested for two weeks or even a month later because they weren't ready you know at a plutonium plant for you know these kind of exposures to happen so that happened in june you think they would have learned a lesson and what is the lesson well contain the plutonium put tinting around to stop the particles from flowing out you know you see these giant tents here in seattle around office buildings that are being built or or torn down you know forty story buildings at hanford we're talking two or three stories maybe four or five but they they weren't willing to spend the money in the take the time necessary to protect their workforce why because they were in a hurry to get it done and the contractor of course had fee had to make its money and so the workers you know took in the teeth basically i mean figure you know figure it really as well as literally in this case people at this point workers feel like they've been misled you know this latest event they ordered people to stay inside their work areas not leave but they weren't calling it a take cover event because it's bad publicity i say you don't want have a takeover event they didn't claire any declare any kind of site emergency they were trying to keep the drama out of it and say oh everything's fine yet they had emergency vehicles and all the entrances and exits to busy area you know controlling access and there are workers next door at the tank farmers watching what what the heck's going on over there and we're getting phone calls saying you know what's happening over at p r f yes they've had a plutonium release what they are furious some companies you know directed its employees to not access that area so you know mission support n s a you know sent out of bullets in to its employees saying there's something going on over there you know don't access the plutonium reclamation facility but the hanford itself management was not declaring any kind of sight emergency or take cover or anything else and still have not even as more and more vehicles are contaminated they have stopped work at the at the facility that both our senators have written letters  and patty murray saying we hope you're not planning to stop work we hope you get to the bottom of this worker safety has to come first but with no mention of the fact that you know this has been going on actually for over a year now at the hampered site and not to mention that last time you're on we talked about it but the workers who were over at the were going to the tank farms are dealing with their own issues with toxic  and numerous people there have been sent to the hospital and have serious issues as well just from chemicals at the tank farm the as of the latest report that came out from department of energy there is they're estimating ninety one total p f b controlled government vehicles were potentially exposed and have tested forty six of those so far so it sounds like they're only halfway through on the initial count of  number of vehicles impacted yes and they care a lot about the vehicles because they are medium you know for contaminations bread but i what about the people out there and how well they how good a job they're actually doing because you know clearly the safety margin is gone the nuclear safety culture is all but disappeared used to be there to a degree at the hanford site especially when it came to workers health and safety but it's just been you know the cleanup has been is such a commodity now is so much money involved for these contractors they want it the government's anxious to get the job done and  is the state so they take shortcuts in unnecessary risks as opposed to doing it right going slow in wasted literally tens of billions of dollars at the reports that are two pages that they sent out on the december twenty second report talking about the survey the survey is when they go out and sample for contamination and release of no contamination discovered six thr government vehicles on december twenty first allowed c h p r c to lift its stop work on the use of government vehicles driven in the vicinity of the p s p between december fifteenth and december eighteenth so i'm wondering why they are back going back to december eighth when the first no contamination was noted any insights into why they're not expanding but yeah i mean they're trying to contract it down so they can finish the job and say it's over and again it's they're not acting conservatively they're not acting in a manner that is protective of the workers out there in i keep waiting for the department of energy which is the agency that owns the site as supposed to be regulating them well start doing their job and tell the contractor you know you're done out of the way we're going to investigate this and find out what happened and how bad it and bring in some outside experts because clearly this company can't get this job done it's totally failed to protect these workers and now the community has contamination i downtown because of these vehicles we don't know how much we don't know where you know it's not time to hit the panic button but i wouldn't i wouldn't be very happy if i lived in those communities of ridgeland can awaken pascoe not knowing contamination left the site then as well same facility plutonium finishing plant and it caused quite a bit of consternation to the point where the president who was obama at the time had to activate the nuclear emergency security team to go and track down these coolers which had been sent across the united states by truck to track them down in ohio and pennsylvania to assure that you know patani contamination wasn't being strewn about them people were unknowingly being subjected to this that was pretty quiet it happened at the time but they just have this nasty little habit this this contractor in particular the c h two of letting this stuff get out and shrugging their shoulders like it's no big deal and it is a big deal also in these reports it mentions that there were air samples taken and again you would kno from experience but it's interesting to watch how these reports morph over time they talk about air samples taken on the nineteenth and the twentieth on the december twenty sixth notice but on the december twentieth notice it's a little more specific washington state department of health took one air sample in december nineteenth and a second air sample on december twentieth results not interested until february twenty eighth teen so just one sample on a given day and a given location  what exactly is the department of health role here for those of us who live in washington state well the bureau the state of washington and it is supposed to monitor the air for radiation release is from event on an air monitor next to the highway and with contaminated with plutonium in amery c m and it took them two months to get that news out right so we found out about it way after the fact and part of that is it takes a while to get those things counted right these particles are very small you have to send it to a lab that has to be licensed and certified so we have to cut them a break on events off site there was another one it read a bridge in and before that i mention these coolers you know when i had some interaction with the department of health and i called up one of their officers  and i knew that plutonium had left the site on these coolers and i said so how's it going oh it's all normal is fine i said really because i heard that there's paternity contamination on coolers that left the site oh oh yeah yeah that i mean he just continued to like fish to see how much i knew before fessing up to anything and i said really because you know didn't leave the site and then you know they found it in his van and the coolers and didn't those coolers then leave for ohio and pennsylvania yeah i think so i think that happened really and they call the national emergency nuclear response team he goes yeah i think i'm not sure but i've heard that and where's the public announcement on it right and where they're going to say anything to anybody so i don't get it but it doesn't see it seems to be a pro hanford you know buddy buddy relationship as opposed to a you know i guess there's a term for it which is you know captured regulatory you know a captured regulator  and i would like to see them be more aggressive be more independent and actually feel like they're protecting us in these situations but as it is you know we are preparing to put up air monitors around  measures gamma and beta and you know we're going to set these things up so continuous air monitors just because we need to have some independent checking going on we'd lead love to put up dozens and dozens of these things we're going to a but they're taking a strong interest in the effort side as well so should department of health also appears to be the oversight group when the you know we folks were doing the testing of individuals houses that were potentially contaminated right so it doesn't seem overly inspiring there that you have the most aggressive washington state entity with those people doing the assessment well you know some of the people that work there are fine i think just as a bureaucracy they're really into assuring the public that things are ok no matter what so that's you know that disturbs me is that you know the pure x tunnel collapsed oh everything's fine right there was nothing happens at hanford that alarms them and i understand you don't want to panic the public unnecessarily and you want some truth right you want some credibility so i'd love to see that you know ethic get developed within the department of health and that we could actually rely upon them to you know do the right thing be good at their jobs you know be transparent and i don't really get the feeling that that's happening you know there have been other incidents at the you know it's other facilities around the hanford site where the part of health in my view is falling down on the job  perma fix you know how to put tony contamination incident and it's like yeah it's clean it up and move on know what happened you know a stop but contaminated place is pretty  billionaires and they're looking at the hanford site with a very jaded eye saying well this is expensive why don't we just put concrete the tanks and walk away as opposed to actually remove the waste from these tanks this is the worst stuff in the world right you really can't put concrete in the tanks and walk away you'd be turning the site into a high level nuclear waste repository has no license no monitoring and isn't qualified to be that so we've got quite a fight on our hands  into the future right and the other watching state entity that regularly appears at least from news reports involved as the department of ecology they write seem as robust a department of health they're a little better right so they've gotten better  talking with tom carpenter executive director of and for challenge and obviously this is a lot for anyone listening to consume in a short twenty nine minutes how can people connect to him for a challenge or find out more well you can look up on our facebook and for hanford challenge you know your gift is doubled if you give by the end of the year we have a very generous board member who is doubling our our gifts up to twenty thousand bucks for good and potentially some of that could go toward some more monitors over there at hanford yep more monitors and just our existence yet really is we have to pay the bills like everybody else gas fees for driving from here to there all right well with that we're at a time once again for community form and we are very lucky to have with us live in the studio this morning bert sax bert sax is a long time local seattle activist who has been on the show several times before and he is in this morning to talk about the martin luther king assassination trial and a and a workshop he'll be doing this coming monday at the m l k celebration here in seattle burt thank you very much for coming and spending time with us this morning i'm go mike thank you so start out tell us how do you first become aware of and get involved with around the m l k assassination trial i think there are three people that i need to credit for that the first one is jim douglas that people may be familiar with among your listeners used to live here worked on ground zero created ground zero and he's been writing about the assassinations of the sixty's for a long time the best book on the assassination of john f kennedy according to all of her stone was written by jim douglas called j f k and the unspeakable and that affected me really deeply and the second person once i got involved in this of it was william pepper who was a friend of martin luther king had responsibility for the pictures that he showed and ramparts magazine which got martin luther king to take the stand martin did riverside speech address which a lot of people think was part of the reason why he was assassinated and he is the attorney who filed the suit to put on the record what actually happened in the murder of martin luther king in one nine hundred sixty eight and the third person i will give out perhaps one u r l that people can go to look at and the person who's created this web site which is a remarkable website one of the best collections of important information i know is dave ratcliffe and some of that website is radical dot org but i'll shorten all of that to later so instead  radical it's a rat that's right because of the rat house but it's remarkable he has entire books posted on his website so if i were to begin to talk about the trial then i think i can't do any better than read the first two paragraphs of something posted on his website which comes from probe magazine and was written by jim douglas so let me begin with that  assassinated by a conspiracy that included agencies of his own government almost thirty two years after king's murder in the lorraine motel in memphis on april fourth one thousand nine hundred sixty eight accord circle of responsibility for the assassination beyond the late scapegoat james earl ray to the united states government i can hardly believe the fact that apart from the courtroom participants only memphis t v reporter one of the stacey and i attended from beginning to end this historical three and a half week trial because of journalistic neglect scarcely anyone else in this land of ours even those what went on there after critical testimony was given the trial second week before an almost empty gallery barber race u s correspondent for the lisbon daily news they the paper publico who is there are several days turned to me and said everything in the united states is the trial of the century o j simpson trial was the trial of a century clinton's trial was the trial of the century but this is the trial of the century and who's here to people for the whole trial and i will add already in preparation for what i want to say coming up the new york times was there for two or three days only of the three and a half weeks of testimony so let me jump ahead because obviously in the time we have i don't have time to go into even reading the names of the seventy witnesses would take up a good part of the time and it can be confusing especially at first hearing so let me jump ahead to speak about the conclusion of the jury by the one juror who agreed to testify to speak publicly after the trial the jury came to the conclusion after an hour or two that there was a conspiracy to kill martin luther king quote involving governmental agencies that is a momentous verdict so here's the one ver david morphy the only jerde to grant an interview said later we can look back on it and say that we did change history but that's not why we did it it was because there was an overwhelming amount of evidence and just too many odd coincidences quote everything from the police department being pulled back memphis police department were pulled back before the actual shooting to the death threat on redick who was one of the test people justified the black i think he was policeman he might have been the fire department i've forgotten to the two black firefighters being pulled off it was before the actual shooting of martin luther king their bosses went around and pulled them away from the fire station which was right near the lorraine motel right across the street so they wouldn't be there to the military people going on top of a fire station two military four allowed to go out their request on the same day that martin luther king was shot to photograph from their lorraine motel and the place where the actual shooter was to be and where he was to the point of cutting down the trees explained with thoughts about the minute who in their right mind would go and destroy a crime scene like that the morning after it was just very odd so let me compare this with the john f kennedy assassination people will know that in fact seventy over seventy percent of the people in the country don't believe the warren commission report and one of the easy things to see is to point simply at the magic bullet and people that understand what that's about we know immediately that that bullets don't behave the way that one had to in order to make the warren commission report hold together somewhat well there is no single magic bullet in the assassination of martin luther king what there is is a grouping of evidence testified to by the people  all of them the trial that all together put together big coincidence kind of impossible to believe so let me point to one of the central things there were three witnesses perhaps four depending on how you count that testified that they saw a man in the brushes these are big brushes that could hide a person one of them said they they saw guns rifle smoke coming out from the bushes and the other two reported that they saw a man there crouching in the bushes that's a likely zero and one of those men was earl caldwell earl caldwell was the new york times reporter who was sent to cover martin luther king this is the day of the assassination reported on it and his instructions from his editor were go nail dr king that's the new york times martin luther king well he heard a gunshot he was staying in the right motel also deliberately so he could be with martin luther king and he heard something that he thought was an explosion and he went out and he was one of the three people that reported seeing a man in the bushes that's interesting because there were people that said that's where the gunshot came from well what's another piece of evidence that indicates a conspiracy the next morning at seven o'clock in the morning the day after the six pm assassination of martin king the chief of police in memphis sent an order to the sanitation department to go to these bushes and clean them all out to sanitize the crime scene to make sure there was no evidence there of somebody being able to point and say see there was a shooter here well that's significant evidence those are the kind of witnesses that are reported in the trial and the kind of witnesses the new york times did not hear because they were not there in the trial so all of that very interesting to say it mildly that lead the jury within a couple two hours one or two hours to come to the verdict which they did so the trial lasted three weeks is that right three and a half weeks  and jim douglas one of the only two people who sat through all three and a half weeks there weren't involved as participants in the trial told me personally that the new york times there for only two or three days and in fact the new york times covered it and let me jump ahead to that because one of the questions is how is it possible that so few people in the country even know there was a trial i was saying conservatively probably ninety five percent of the people in the country never heard and you mike thought that's a low estimate maybe ninety nine percent i think you might be closer in part of what got me to want to do this is the times that i've been at the martin luther king event it's going to be on monday and i asked people do you know there was a trial in the assassination of martin luther king well there's some people that do and that's a very select audience but a great many people that are just there have never heard of the trial so i decided today is the of this month so far this year actually sixty eight is the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of martin luther king i would be very surprised if for a mainstream media as any reporting of this trial and that's something we should know because it says this is the state we're living in this is the way let me do something a little risky by giving you a u r l where you can read some of this and it's pretty simple i've shortened the your using something called  effect if you take a pencil and paper it might be good i'll repeat it one time later tiny u r l dot com slash and l k i've been trial hyphen one what the number one what that will do will get you to this report by jim douglas which you can read yourself it's one i printed out it's twenty four pages it's much easier to get through than the entire book of william pepper an active state but that's a very serious good reference william pepper remember as the attorney who who was who litigated the trial there's also  the complete transcripts of the trial at the king center which people can go online to exactly but it's the transcript actually now is no longer at the king center i took it off but this man who has this remarkable website you'll get to if you go and access his first your all that i've given you has the trial has the entire transcript of the trial which is very good more than that if you go and read this article from pro douglas the very first sentence is something like the verdict was read  f there was other concern other unknown conspirators was assassinated including governmental agencies that phrase is linked in a hyperlink to go to the actual trial and read the verdict that's done multiple times in this article and that's great it shows a respect for allowing people to go to read the sources and not have to rely on the judgment of the person who's writing the article now that's what good journalism good serious reporting should be about allowing people to go and read the sources of stuff well let me now go to the new york times because i think that's something we all need to know about i printed out the three pages of the new york times article that covered this report it was on page twenty eight below the fold the day of it was printed on the tenth the trial verdict was on the eighth so that's when it came out and if you take that u r l that i gave you in the district place the number one with the number two it will get you to read the new york times article in the new york times article fist such things as in the second  a vast conspiracy alleged but not proved is one of the descriptions the new york times give us well that's not correct according to the jurors the twelve men and women three six black six white who found that there was a conspiracy involving governmental agencies that conspiracy to their satisfaction was proved and it was proved not by lloyd jowers which if you go and read things to try and dismiss this trial like the new york times was the person who was nearing his death and according to andrew young who had this impression of him interviewed him  jars wanted to come clean before he died wanted to admit his own role in the conspiracy to kill king and he is the only one of the witnesses that had guilty connections with a conspiracy and he's the only one the new york times quotes except for their own reporter and they don't report of their own reporter caldwell that he saw a man in the bushes which is the most significant part of evidence that he gave so that's an example of the dismissive reporting the editorializing in the middle of what should be a news report and inadequate news report because they weren't there they were not there to hear all the witnesses that spoke that is the basis for the conclusion of the jury so people can read the report in fact it's a very interesting comparison to read the new york times coverage of this and then compare that with jim douglas reporting we sat there through all three and a half weeks and even went on to interview people afterwards like i think that quote from the jerk who spoke out was and william pepper again was the attorney representing the king family during the trial that's right and he has written multiple books related to the assassination and two of his books i believe he said that his further i'm digging into things discovered that there was eight or eight military people there four comprising four sniper teams that had been in town i don't think actually said they necessarily pulled the trigger but highly unusual that four military sniper teams are like located there potentially as as back up or you or i don't know the other thought is if king is because a great resource for our community he knows these things and very few people do and i'm here to try and bring the news because it's important news the next question i'd like to raise is why was king assassinated you can ask why was kennedy assassinated so if you take that same u r l read it to you once more tiny u r l dot com slash and a hyphen trial hyphen and replace the number one with in the bridge to which is the new york times with a number three and the number four will get you to two speeches by each of these great m the first one is the riverside speech address of martin luther king and anyone who's heard that will be stunned by some of the things that martin said in that speech in particular and you can just imagine what it would be like today it's also known as the vietnam war speech yes beyond vietnam you know beyond war i'll tell you how he has carried it we've carried it before that yeah ok you can i think online by this remarkable web site it radical these urals will get you to you can both read it and hear it and i think there's video of it also so you get your choice but it's important because if you read the speech or listen you'll hear dr king say i might not have it exactly correct but it's very close paraphrase the greatest source of violence in the world today is my own government can you imagine anyone today any major public figures saying that about our wars and what we are doing we are not the money we spend on our military and our willingness to go to war to do regime change whenever we feel like as illegal as that might be well that's a good reason a year to the day after he gave that speech that people in power whoever there might be whether officially or just with their money and their connections decided t king had to be assassinated in this plot that i'm describing to you is a real conspiracy not something the new york times imagines is unproven so judge for yourself giving you the evidence  which you can look for in the same way is john f kennedy gave a speech that's very unknown people know dr king's speech i have a dream but this riverside address ph beyond vietnam is when they need to know even more the kennedy speech just to conclude that is his american university commencement address lesson six months before he was assassinated in which it said he tried to end the cold war that's remarkable i'm old enough that i can remember what the atmosphere was like during the cold war i'm old enough to remember what it was like when dr king gave his talk it resides riverside church and i can say if you read these speeches it will give you some sense if you remember how out of place attacking our war effort in vietnam or trying to end the cold war was in the period of the sixty's in the period of the sixty's was a period of significant upheaval in change in the country and all four assassinations of the sixty's martin luther king john f kennedy robert kennedy and malcolm x are very significant  changing that attitude so perhaps the last thing i can say in the remaining five minutes or so is why does it matter this was fifty years ago what difference does it make well i have to we can we can just conclude without even looking at anything else but let me read you two quotes one from the trial and one from another source which are very interesting twenty year member of congress chaired the subcommittee in the seventy six seventy eight house elect committee on assassinations that investigated king's assassination the article on troy believe now believed quote ray did not fire the shot that killed king and was part of a larger conspiracy that possibly involved federal law enforcement officers and he added quote fault roy said that he kept silent about his suspicions because of fear for himself and his family here you have a member of congress it meaning to having fear from the people that likely killed martin luther king to speak out so one obvious thing that happens when this goes on and on and detected and spoken and resolved is people are intimidated they're intimidated either by this extreme fear of assassination or by character assassination or by ridicule and i think that's those are very real phenomena that keep rather well known public figures african american figures from being willing to speak about this and one of the best known african american public figures is or past president and here's w left ray mcgovern thank you exactly see i told you folks if you come on here you need mike mccormick to interview ray mcgovern who is pretty well connected with a lot of and significant people said this the i i speak about israel mcgovern and i know from a good friend who was at a small dinner party with progressive supporters that they asked him in being b why don't you do the things we thought you stood for obama turned sharply and said quote don't you remember what happened to martin luther king of course whether he had actually been threatened or not he's smart enough to recognize what happened to martin luther king and imagine somebody in the country we live in being president of united states who has that knowledge how will that affect what he does constitutional lawyer so the consequences of this should be clear now and why it's important that we resolve this and the other assassinations of the sixty's if we don't we carry that burden of dishonesty and we carry the false belief that we can keep going on and trusting our mainstream media to report things that need to be said so let me think for one moment if there's one minute left and i have anything  cite talking with bert sax his longtime local seattle activist and you're doing a one of the many workshops that are happening on monday that's correct nine thirty in the morning monday morning martin luther king day at garfield high school one and i'll have three times the time to fill in the details and answer questions because i didn't get to deal with what do we do now given all of this that's important all right wall with that we are unfortunately out of time when i thank you very much for coming and spending time with us this morning thank you mike my pleasure