Tom Jackson of the Washington Post was the only mainstream journalist to cover this - so far. - BK
Kennedy, King, Malcolm X relatives and scholars seek
new assassination probes
Their letter calls for a Truth and Reconciliation
Committee on the JFK, RFK, MLK and Malcolm X slayings.
PHOTO: The Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr., left, and Malcolm X smile for photographers in Washington on March
26, 1964. (Henry Griffin/AP) (HENRY GRIFFIN)
By Tom Jackman
January 25
Joined by relatives of Robert F. Kennedy, the Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, a group of more than 60 authors and
investigators have called for a new congressional investigation into the
assassinations of the three men and President John F. Kennedy, saying that the
four slayings were not resolved and “had a disastrous impact on the course of
American history.”
In a public statement,
they demanded a public tribunal modeled on South Africa’s “Truth and
Reconciliation” process to persuade either Congress or the Justice Department
to revisit all four assassinations.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former Maryland lieutenant
governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (D), two of Robert Kennedy’s children,
signed the statement, as did Isaac N. Farris, a nephew of King and former
president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Rev. James
M. Lawson Jr., a Memphis pastor and mentor to King. It is also supported by G.
Robert Blakey, the chief counsel of the former House Select Committee on
Assassinations; Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg; Robert
McClelland, the doctor who worked on President Kennedy after his 1963 shooting
in Dallas; and entertainment figures such as Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen, Oliver
Stone and Rob Reiner. The statement was issued Saturday, during the Rev. Martin
Luther King Jr. holiday weekend.
The 1960s assassinations have spawned conspiracy
theories and claims of governmental misconduct for decades. In each case, local
police, federal investigators and state and local judges have reaffirmed the
findings that lone gunmen killed both Kennedys and King, and that the three men
convicted of murder killed Malcolm X. But those official conclusions have left
many unsatisfied.
“The one thing you can say,” Robert Kennedy Jr. said
in a recent interview, “Sirhan Sirhan did not fire the shots that killed my
father.”
The son of the former senator revealed to The
Washington Post last year that he had visited Sirhan in prison in December 2017
and came away convinced of Sirhan’s innocence. He has continued to research
possible alternative theories into the June 1968 slaying of his father in Los
Angeles. He and others have noted that his father was shot at point-blank range
in the back of the head but that Sirhan was in front of Kennedy and was tackled
before ever getting his gun close to Kennedy.
Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.) shakes hands with people in a crowd while campaigning for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in Philadelphia, two months before his assassination. (Warren Winterbottom/AP)
Sirhan was convicted of first-degree murder at trial
in 1969, and a jury sentenced him to death, although the sentence was later
commuted to life. He remains in prison in California, and the state and federal
courts have rejected all appeals, saying the jury could have been persuaded by
the evidence that Sirhan was close enough to kill Robert Kennedy.
Blakey, whose high-profile investigation of the King
and John Kennedy assassinations in 1979 determined that Kennedy was the likely
victim of a conspiracy, said he remains deeply interested in the role of the
CIA in the JFK case. In fact, he has a federal Freedom of Information Act
lawsuit pending against the agency. He said that the FBI had fully cooperated
with his investigations, particularly into the King assassination in Memphis in
April 1968 but that the CIA has refused to open all its files to this day.
“All I’d like to do is see the stuff the agency has
on [John] Kennedy,” Blakey said Wednesday. “That’s all I want.”
Blakey said numerous credible witnesses told the
Warren Commission and his House committee that shots were fired both from in
front of and behind President Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963.
“If there were two shooters, there’s a conspiracy,”
he said. The CIA has also been implicated by some scholars in the death of
Robert Kennedy, most recently in a book published last month, “A Lie Too Big to
Fail” by Lisa Pease, one of the statement’s signers.
The Warren Commission first investigated the
assassination of President Kennedy and determined in 1964 that Lee Harvey
Oswald acted as a lone gunman. Many have criticized that finding, including
Blakey, who believes organized crime figures arranged to kill Kennedy.
President John F. Kennedy waves from his car in a motorcade in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, moments before he was fatally shot. (Jim Altgens/AP)
Questions have persisted about the killing of
Malcolm X, by multiple gunmen in a crowded New York City ballroom in February
1965, with criticism of the New York police investigation and the conviction of
two men who maintained their innocence, joined by a third man who admitted his
guilt. All three men were convicted of the murder in 1966 and sentenced to life
in prison; all three have since been paroled, and the New York courts have
declined to review the case.
Two books about the assassination, including one by
letter-signer Karl Evanzz, have identified other men as the shooters. Rodnell
Collins, a first cousin of Malcolm X and founder of a family foundation, also
endorsed the statement.
Evanzz said Wednesday that “one of my main concerns
about the assassination of Malcolm X is why the FBI didn’t move to indict some
of the leaders of the Nation of Islam who began plotting
to have Malcolm X killed within days of his ouster from the sect in
March 1964.” He cited a memo from an FBI wiretap in which "Elijah
Muhammad, then leader of the Nation of Islam, told Boston Nation of Islam
Minister Louis Farrakhan that it was ‘time to close his eyes,’ referring to
Malcolm X.”
Evanzz noted that after a blogger in 2011 exposed
the identity of the man he alleged had fired the fatal shotgun blasts at
Malcolm X, “the FBI refused to reopen its examination of the assassination,
saying that it lacked the resources to do so, and that no federal law had been
violated. That’s ludicrous.”
Two of Martin Luther King Jr.’s children told The
Post last year that they did not believe James Earl Ray killed their father, as
did Lawson and Farris, as well as Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and former Atlanta
mayor Andrew Young. Bernice King, the youngest of King’s four children and the
executive director of the King Center in Atlanta, told The Post, “It pains my heart
that James Earl Ray had to spend his life in prison paying for things he didn’t
do.”
But neither those children nor Dexter King, also a
child of Martin Luther King Jr. who believes in Ray’s innocence, signed the
letter, and they did not respond to requests for comment. Ray pleaded guilty in
1969 to killing King and received a life sentence, although he soon claimed he
did not fire the shot and was manipulated into being in Memphis by a man he was
subsequently unable to locate.
“The King case is basically over as far as the
family is concerned,” said William F. Pepper, who represented the family at a
1999 civil trial in Memphis, where a jury placed blame for the shooting on
government agencies and organized crime elements. Pepper said his investigation
showed that King was shot by a Memphis police marksman, not Ray, and that
marksman is still alive. But the former police officer has denied involvement
to The Post.
Followers tend to Malcolm X as he lies mortally wounded on the stage of the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem after being shot on Feb. 21, 1965. (WCBS-TV/AP)
Witnesses have provided statements to Pepper
indicating that the FBI helped finance and organize the King killing with help
from organized crime elements in Memphis.
“It’s time,” said Pepper, who signed the statement,
“that the American people are aware of the truth of this assassination.”
The letter calls on Congress to enforce the JFK
Records Collection Act of 1992, which mandated that all of the government’s
records related to the John F. Kennedy assassination be released by now. Some
of these records are still withheld.
The statement was written in part by Adam Walinsky,
a former top aide to Robert Kennedy, with input from other assassination
scholars. He cited the “wreckage” from the slayings as the reasons to revisit
them and hold those responsible accountable.
A news release and the full statement with a list of
signers is here.
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