JFK Assassination System Date: 12/6/201 Identification Form AGENCY : RECORD NUMBER : RECORD SERIES : AGENCY FILE NUMBER : Agency Information Peleased under the John FBI . Kennedy 124-10188-10394 Assassination Records ollection Act of 1992 NK (44 USC 2107 Note). ase#: NW 55509 Date: 12—-O7-2Z017 100-57235-27, 28 ORIGINATOR : FROM: TO: TITLE: DATE: PAGES: SUBJECTS : DOCUMENT TYPE : CLASSIFICATION : RESTRICTIONS : CURRENT STATUS : DATE OF LAST REVIEW : OPENING CRITERIA : COMMENTS : Document Information 00/00/0000 0 NAR Unclassified Not Assassination Related Withhold 08/01/1994 INDEFINITE am v9.1 HW 55509 DBocld: 32177310 Page 1
me HW 55509 FD-350 (tev. 6 The dd-7A) (Mount Clipping in Space Below) | ustite Agency Upholds Inquiry ByF. Bl. Into Murder of Dr. King By ANTHONY MARRO- Speclal to The New York Times. WASHINGTON Feb. 18—A major re- curity concerns—that resulted in the bu- as | view “py the Justice Department, has con-| reau’s “determination to discredit Dr. ‘ cluded that the Federal Bureau of. Investi- gation’ s inquiry into.the murder of the King.” 4 The: Justice Department investigation } Rev. .Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was| was ordered last April by then Attorney “thoroughly, honestly and successfully” conducted, and that the best available evidence suggests that James Earl Ray, the convicted murderer, acted alone. Yet the report made. no effort to offer conclusive evidence. on that point. “Proof that others were not involved is here Excerpts from the report, page I1. as elusive: and: difficult as it has uni- |Versally been In ‘criminal law,” it says. The Justice Department investigators, who. made~an: eight-month ‘review of the F.B.1.’s handling of the case, also conclud- | ed that ~-the-:buréauy might. have had } grounds for starting a,security investiga- “| tion of Dr. King, - but that: its six-year | surveillance was clearly unwarranted. The -investigators said in. a report i] released today that.the bureau never de- veloped evidence: that Dr. King had any ffiliation with the Communist Party, and hat it was a personal feud between him d :the ‘late J. Edgar Hoover, Director !~ the F.B.I—not legitimate national se- DoclIda: 327177310 Page 2? General Edward H. Levi after the Senate |: Select Committee on Intelligence dis- |' closed that the bureau had engaged in a six-year surveillance of Dr. King that had included the use of wiretaps, elec- j tronic bugs and paid informants, and that it had attempted to discredit the civil -) rights leader by circulating stories about his personal life. In light .of these disclosures, Mr. Levi ordered an investigation to determine |: . whether the. bureau ‘might have been in any.way involved in Dr. King’s assassina- || tion,. whether its investigation of the mur: |' der had been “thorough and honest,” and | whether there was any new evidence that ‘might warrant: ‘reopening ‘the case. Although: not specifically charged with seeking: evidence: 6f a conspiracy, the in- quiry had to address-the question whether the bureau had ignored such evidence in its: investigation. : A ‘After sorting - through more than 200,000 documents — and mere tl about 40 witnesses, a group of lawyer-in- > |. XCHED, ERIALIZED. SRL, aw eeeeeeeeeees ot ccse of cose |. CEer | _ NY TIMES LATE JERSEY EDITION! Edition: Author: EditoAeM. ROSENTHAL Title: Character: or ‘ ; n ' i | Classification: Submitting Otrice NEWARK NJ (2 Being Tnvestigaue rd a \ | LMS AES INDEXED FILED_V FEB 2 2 1977 ! FBI-NEWARK_
HW 55509 vestigators headed by Michael E. Shaheen Jz__a—Iustice Department attofey;-con- cluded that although the F.B.I.’s surveil- lance of Dr. King had become “‘twisted,” the bureau’s subsequent investigation of his murder had been a “‘credible and thor- ough job.” In a statement issued today after the release of the 201-page report, Clarence M. Kelley, the F.B.I. Director, said: “I noted with great satisfaction the conclu- sions of the task force that the F.B.I.’s assassination probe of the Dr, Martin Lu- ther King.slaying was ‘credible and thor- ough’; that there was no evidence of a conspiracy, and that the report clearly indicates no complicity on the part oi}\ the F.B.I. in this assassination.” The report is not likely to end all speculation that Mr. Ray was only one figure in a broader conspiracy to kill Dr. King. For one thing, the Justice Depart- ment investigators concede that it is still) not known where Mr. Ray obtained the money he needed to purchase the expen- sive equipment he bought and to do the extensive traveling he did before the as- ‘sassination and in the months between the murder and his arrest. Arrested 2 Months Later Dr. King was shot on a motel balcony in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Mr. Ray,’ who escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary in 1967 while serving a 20- year sentence for’armed robbery, was ar- rested at London Airport on June 8, 1968, 65 days after the King assassination. He pleaded guilty to Dr. King’s murder and, is serving a 99-year sentence in Brush Mountain Prison in Petros, Tenn. _ Attorney Genera] Griffin B. Bell sai jon a television news show last Sunday that the report left some questions unan- swered, “I think that if you read the re- port, you could lean to either side of. it,’ he said. “You could say that there’s no evidence of a conspiracy, but you could still wonder...if there happened to Today, however, Andrew Young, the United States delesatesio the United Na- tions, who is a former House member and aide to Dr. King and who was himself under surveillance by the F.B.I. at the same time as Dr. King, said that the re- port left some questions unanswered and hoped that it would not cause the House to abandon its investigation of the assas- -sination. . The investiga group followed an eatie investigation by the Justice De civil rights dered in November 1975. The report relea tion by Mr. Shaheen’s lier, less extensive partment’s civil rights divis: consideration should be : ayment to Dr. King’s famil ‘Xing Foundation as compensa i vielation of Dr. King’s civil rights. “The reason for this, the report said was that the statute of limitations proba- bly barred any criminal prosecutions, and that for the King family to file a civil suit might “be more embarrassing than \ helpful,” presumably because of the na- ture of the material in the F.B.I. files. A Justice Department spokesman said today that he did not know what, if any- thing, might come of this recommenda- tion. He also said he was not certain whether the department would follow a recommendation of the Shaheen group that Congress be asked to pass a bill ordering the destruction of the derogato- ry material on Dr, King still in F.B.I. files. The investigation by Mr. Shaheen’s volved a review not only of the so-called “Murkin file’ (“Murkin” is an acronym for “murder of King’), but also of F.B.1. records in 15 cities. It concluded that there were several weak spots in the bai- enough to challenge its conclusions th be a conspiracy.” : Moreover, the release of the report at this time could further cloud the future of the special House committee estab- lished to investigate the deaths of Presi- dent Kennedy and Dr. King, since oppo- nents of that investigation are likely to argue that a further study of the King assassination is likely to be duplicative and unnecessary. According to a number of House mem-} bers of both parties, the continued exist-; ace of the select committee has been spriously threatened in recent days iby i outbreak of an open battle between its chairman, Representative Henry 3. onzalez, Democrat of Texas, and its y chief counsel, Richard A. Sprague. DoclIda: 327177310 Page 3 reau’s investigation, but none serious My. Ray killed Dr. King. ( ‘The report said that the F.B.I. should , spokesman, <= changes had been made in the group's - save worked harder to obtain information ebout Mr. Ray from members. of his fami- ly who may have been in touch with him after Dr. King’s murder. And it agrees with some critics of the investigation that the question of where Mr. Ray obtained the money he needed to travel to Europe after the killing is still not fully an- swered. The F.B.I, was able to show that Mr. Ray received checks totaling $664 in 1967, when he was employed as a dish- washer and cook’s helper in Winnetka, ll, But the only explanation it has come up with for his having money for travel and expensive ‘equipment is that he ptobably committed several robberies or burglaries. ee division, which Mr. Levi or- sed today says that one recommendation that resulted from the icn’s study was that some given to a direct y or to the tion fof the group cost an estimated $200,000 and in- |. at | No Backing or.Payment As for a motive, the report relies heavi- ly on testimony from former prison in- mates that Mr. Ray was strongly biased against blacks and had suggested repeat- Ki that be Would be willing to kill Dr. Ing, particularly if som him to do it, y Pone would my eh report’s conclusion, however, is the best available evidence is that Ray killed Dr. King on his own, withSut the backing of or payment by others. “We acknowledge that the proof...that others were not involved is here as elu- sive and difficult as it has universally been in criminal law,” the report said. “But the sum of all of the evidence of Ray’s guilt points to him so exclusively that it most effectively makes the point that no one else was involved,” the report continued. “Of course, someone could conceivably have provided him with lo- gistics, or even paid him to commit the} crime, However, we have found no com-' petent evidence upon which to base such a theory.” Although the report concluded that some of the F.B.I. surveillance of Dr. King —which included illegal break-ins, unau- thorized buggings and the leaking of de- rogatory information about his sex life— was “very probably...felonious,” it said no agents who took part should be pun- ished. The report said that the persons who ordered the activities were either dead or retired from the bureau, and that the few agents still in the bureau who played ‘a role in Dr. King’s surveillance were wn- — derlings “far removed from decision sponsibility.” The report released today is a rewrit- ten, condensed version of the report given , to Mr. Levi before he left office last month. John Wilson ,a Justice Department . said, however, that nd — \ findings, and that it simply had been edit- d to delete what he termed “salacipys ; rsonal material” and certain classified’; lnformation from the F.B.1’s files. sagt y
FD-350 (tev. 11-11-75) (Mount Clipping in Space Below) | C$ Loe = | excerpts From Justice Department Report on a ” 58 bt C 3 eee ee De-King Assassiriation oo it was possible for the task force WASEENGTON, Feb. 18—The follow- to create a welledoeuntionted history of ing are excerpts from the report of the James Earl Ray from the moment of Justice Department Task Force that re- his escape to his capture in England, viewed the assassination of the Rev. Dr. using the investigation reports in the Martin Luther King Jr. F.BI. files and to corroborate and fill > . in essential details with Ray’s own newspaper, city and stute.) 47 ‘ statements (admissions) in his letters Critical Evaluation of th € to author William Bradford Huie. | Assassination Investigation From this chronology, from the labo- PAGE ll First, the task force has concluded ratory proof, and from Ray’s judicial a al “that the investigation by the F.B.I. to admissions it was concluded that he TIMES ascertain and capture the murderer of was the assassin, and that he acted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, was thor- alone. We saw no credible evidence LATE JERSEY EDITION oughly, honestly and successful con- probative of the possibility that Ray ducted, We submit that the minute de- and any co-conspirator were together tails compacted in this report amply at the scene of the assassination. Ray’s support this conclusion. assertions that someone else pulled the | At the very outset of the investiga- trigger are so patently self-serving and tion, telegrams went to all field offices so varied as to be wholly unbelievable. of the Bureau instructing the Special They become, in fact, a part of the Agents in Charge to take personal evidence of his guilt by self-refutation. supervision of the investigation, to Third, we found that conspiracy leads 4 check out all leads in 24 hours, and = (aliunde Ray’s versions) had been con- — noting that they would be held person- _scientiously run down by the FBI. ally responsible. (HQ-44-38861-153). even though they had no possible rela- The files we reviewed show that this tion to Ray’s stories or to the known directive was conscientiously followed. facts. . —_—— The Bureau sought first to identify and The results were negative. locate the murderer using the obvious We found no evidence of any com- leads. They checked out aliases, plicity on the part of the Memphis Po- | tracked the traces left under the Galt ice Department or of the F.B.I. - * alias and usedthe known fingerprints e acknowledge that proof of jhe from the murder weapon and the con- iw —— — tents of the blue zipper bag left on leati ie.. proof that others re ‘South Main Street [in Memphis] to garnwolved, is here as elusive and eliminate suspects. P ith iversally been in This backtracking ended in Atlanta. difficult as i has he sum of all of , Date: 2/ 19/ 77 At this point the Bureau initiated a the evidence of Ray’s guilt points to Edition: check of the crime site fingerprints him so exclusively that it most effec- Author: against the white male “wanted fugi- tively makes the point that no one else Aubhor: tive” print file. This produced the al- was involved. Editor: A.M, ROSENTHAL most “instant” discovery that the Of course, someone could conceivably Title: wanted man. Galt, was James Earl Ray, have provided him with logistics, 9T : an escapee from Missouri State Prisqn. even paid him to commit the cringe. . In fact the “instant” discovery wis However, we have found no competent 4 tedious hand search started in a file avidence upon which to base suchy4 Charact _ ~naracter:? : eory. f some 20,000 prints. That it took only or o hours to make a match is said 7 Classification: by the Bureau experts to be largely if 7 HISSTITC ANTON, sheer luck; it could have taken days. j Submitting Oltice NEWARK , NJ We accept the explanation that the fin- \ esa: ’ gerprint search was a normal next re- : (2 Being Investigated sort after normal lead procedures were \ é za exhausted. Second, the task force views the evi INDEXED dence pointing to the guilt of James: Earl Ray as the man who purchased ‘ the murder gun and who fired the fatal ° shot to be conclusive. * FBI-NEWARK 2, HW 55509 DBocld: 32177310 Page 4