Legacy of Secrecy (113 page)

on March 21, and Huie noted that King’s plans to be near Selma the fol-

lowing day were “reported in the New Orleans news media of March

21st.” Ray left New Orleans that evening, heading for Birmingham,

but claims “it was dark” so he instead “stayed in a motel . . . between

New Orleans and Biloxi, Miss.” Both cities were in the domain of Carlos

Marcello, who also had influence in Alabama.15

Ray told Congressional investigators that “the next morning [he] was

back on the road headed for Birmingham, but somehow he got lost and

wound up spending the night in Selma, Ala.,” on the night of March 22.

As in Los Angeles, Ray maintained he had no idea that Dr. King was

going to be near Selma, in the town of Camden. The investigators wrote

that Ray “strongly denies . . . that he was in Selma because Dr. King was

in the area; he says that he accidentally got off the main highway onto a

smaller road to Montgomery, and that he spent the night in Selma simply

because that happened to be where he was when it got dark.” But in an

exchange with William Bradford Huie, Ray essentially confirmed Huie’s

statement that Ray “spent the night in Selma, not because you got lost

but because you were stalking Dr. King.”16

In Selma, Ray may have been armed only with his pistol, since he

had not yet bought the powerful rifle that would be found after Martin

Luther King’s murder. If so, Ray was likely still attempting only sur-

veillance of Dr. King, trying to see firsthand the type of entourage and

security King had in the South. Also, the packed and hectic nature of Dr.

King’s schedule for that tour would have made planning an effective hit

difficult. Dr. King sometimes traveled by car, and other times in a small

Cessna plane, and weather problems caused him to cancel some appear-

ances in Alabama. Dr. King’s previously announced return to Memphis

on March 22 was canceled early that morning, before King had a chance

to leave for the city, because of a rare March snowstorm. Selma’s news-

paper reported that after his Alabama trips, Dr. King would return to

Atlanta. On the morning of March 23, Ray says, he headed for Birming-

ham in his Mustang to meet his contact before heading to Atlanta.17

James Earl Ray apparently arrived in Atlanta, a city he had never

visited, on the evening of March 23, 1968. According to Ray, his contact

was with him and directed him to a particular section of Atlanta. The

HSCA described the “neighborhood of Peachtree and 14th Street” as

being “inhabited by motorcycle gangs and narcotics dealers and [it]

seemed to Ray to be a bad choice.” However, that description is incom-

plete, and the area, known as Midtown, was then a unique blend of

fading affluence and Atlanta’s burgeoning hippie scene. The area had

been home to Atlanta’s governor’s mansion until the previous year, and

while some of the stately city homes retained their original residents,

others had been turned into rooming houses.18

Atlanta’s Midtown was a magnet for those in, aspiring to join, or

wanting to observe the emerging counterculture. Young people from

other neighborhoods and Atlanta’s exploding suburbs came to the area

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to buy an array of drugs. However, this was Atlanta in 1968, not Haight-

Ashbury, and those who looked “straight,” like Ray, were still a majority

in the area. Also, while integrated to a small degree, the area was still

overwhelmingly white. The number of people, apartments, rooming

houses, and crash pads meant that Ray wasn’t likely to make a memo-

rable impression on many people.

James Earl Ray said that “his contact was ‘familiar with the area,’”

and they found an appropriate rooming house for Ray on their third

try, at 113 14th Street. Ray said his contact wanted him in “that particu-

lar area,” rather than in that particular rooming house. After Ray had

found a place to stay, his contact left on foot, which tends to confirm

the contact’s familiarity with the area. Ray says his contact showed up

again the next morning and told him he might need Ray to drive him

to Miami at some point.19

Ray’s contact could have been familiar with the area because he lived

in or was a frequent visitor to the city, either as part of Marcello’s drug

network or Milteer’s racist activities. In fact, since Milteer would soon

help Ray escape from Atlanta after Dr. King’s murder—which involved

getting Ray back to his Midtown rooming house—it’s possible that

Milteer himself, or a close associate, may even have guided Ray to the

neighborhood. As a frequent visitor to Atlanta, Milteer would know it

well and could have had his own car parked nearby when he left Ray.

On March 25, 1968, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy both had

the assassination of John F. Kennedy on their minds. Dr. King was in

Manhattan that night, after an exhausting day spent planning the Poor

People’s March with advisors in New York City, followed by giving a

speech to a convention of rabbis in the Catskills. Back in the city at the

end of a long day, Dr. King baffled one of his advisors by wanting to

get out of their car and take a shortcut by walking along the Manhattan

streets in the cool night air. Harry Williams had worried about Bobby

Kennedy’s doing the same thing when they were together in New York

City, because he worried that the Mafia might shoot Bobby. Five years

later, Martin Luther King’s advisor was similarly concerned, and told

Dr. King it would be less dangerous to stay in the car, but King wouldn’t

be deterred. Martin Luther King explained his preference for walking

by saying, “If they couldn’t protect Kennedy, how can anything protect

me?”20

Dr. King accepted the risks involved in his work, and his attitude

about them ranged from quiet resolve to stoic resignation. Taylor Branch

pointed out that even “in the face of constant death threats,” Dr. King

“didn’t have a personal will.” One of the reasons his wife, Coretta, rarely

traveled with him was “to guarantee a surviving parent” in case he were

attacked. In the coming days, death and sudden violence would increas-

ingly be subjects Dr. King would have to confront.21

The day after Dr. King’s comment about JFK, King made it clear to

an advisor that Bobby Kennedy would have his support in the race for

the Democratic nomination against LBJ and Senator Eugene McCarthy.

Dr. King said that even though he was going to hold off on endorsing

Bobby for the time being, “we have to be realistic enough to see that if

there’s any possibility of stopping Lyndon, it’s going to be Kennedy.” He

explained that the patrician McCarthy didn’t have enough support from

“white working-class voters.” Dr. King said that another reason Bobby

“would be the stronger candidate to defeat Johnson [was] because he

would draw some black support away from Johnson, but McCarthy

would not.”22

Oddly enough, on the day following Dr. King’s remarks about Bobby,

private comments made by President Lyndon Johnson showed that he

had a similar assessment of Bobby’s chances. Unknown to the country,

the press, and most of his advisors, LBJ was thinking of withdrawing

from the race. One day earlier, on March 26, 1968, LBJ had received an

extraordinarily blunt and bleak assessment on Vietnam from a senior

team of advisors, informally called “The Wise Men.” They included

former JFK advisors, like McGeorge Bundy, Cyrus Vance, and Maxwell

Taylor, as well as distinguished military leaders, such as World War II’s

General Omar Bradley and the Korean War’s General Matthew Ridge-

way. All the Wise Men, aside from Taylor and Abe Fortas, told LBJ that

the US “must begin the steps to disengage” from Vietnam.23

Richard Helms’s decision to cut estimates of enemy strength in half

wasn’t known to most people in the meeting, but indirectly, it was a big

factor in Vance’s and others’ decision to push for withdrawal. Helms had

agreed to estimates asserting that there were 230,000 communist forces

before Tet, yet the US military also claimed that 80,000 enemy had been

killed, and another 240,000 wounded. The figures simply didn’t add

up—in the words of Arthur Goldberg, LBJ’s UN ambassador, “Who the

hell is there left for us to be fighting?” Yet the US commander in Vietnam,

General Westmoreland, was still asking for two hundred thousand more

American troops.24

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Realizing the bleak prospects for the war and his presidency, the day

after the meeting, LBJ discussed with advisor Joseph Califano the pos-

sibility of withdrawing from the race. In their talk, LBJ was surprisingly

positive about Bobby Kennedy, given their fractious past. After Califano

said he thought Bobby would beat LBJ’s vice president, Hubert Hum-

phrey, President Johnson mused:

What’s wrong with Bobby? He’s made some nasty speeches about

me, but he’s never had to sit here. . . . Bobby would keep fighting for

the Great Society programs. And when he sat in this chair he might

have a different view on the war.25

LBJ went on to say that while Bobby would have trouble getting his

programs funded by Congress, at least “he’ll try.” Califano was sur-

prised when LBJ ordered him to not say anything bad about Bobby. LBJ

told Califano to say simply that “you know him and he’s had a brilliant

government career.”26

It wasn’t as if the rift between LBJ and Bobby had healed, but appar-

ently the shared goal of the recent civil rights legislation, coupled with

the negotiations about a way to keep Bobby out of the race, had all had

a positive effect. Each man was starting to see the other in a different

light, in terms of the future. Then, too, LBJ knew that if he withdrew,

Bobby and Dr. King would be the most effective people to push for the

Great Society legacy he wanted to be remembered for.

Like the rest of the country, Bobby Kennedy didn’t know that LBJ

was considering pulling out of the race, and he was running as hard as

he could in late March, struggling to make up for getting into the race

so late. The Associated Press reported that on March 25, 1968, as Bobby

was speaking to students at San Fernando Valley College in California,

he was met by “a barrage of questions today on whether if elected Presi-

dent he would open the United States archives to reveal details of the

assassination of his brother, President John Kennedy.”

Bobby’s carefully worded response was “I would not reopen the War-

ren Commission report. I have seen everything that’s in there. I stand

by the Warren Commission.” Each of those statements is more or less

accurate, without really saying that Bobby believed all, or even most,

of the Report. It also didn’t address the students’ actual question about

opening the assassination material in the archives.

The students picked up on that, and kept asking the original ques-

tion. The AP says that Bobby “tried to ignore questions from students.

He became obviously more distressed as they persisted. Finally, he said:

‘Your manners overwhelm me. Go ahead, go ahead, ask your questions.’

A student shouted: ‘Will you open the archives?’”

Bobby’s response again ignored the actual question. But it reflected

his private struggle between protecting his brother’s legacy and Com-

mander Almeida while also quietly investigating his brother’s murder.

Bobby replied, “Nobody is more interested than I in knowing who is

responsible for the death of President Kennedy.” Those were his final

words on the subject, and the AP reported that Bobby never did say

“whether he would open the archives.”27

Chapter Forty-eight

On March 28, 1968, James Earl Ray was in Atlanta while Martin Luther

King was on his way to Memphis to lead the striking garbage work-

ers’ demonstration. Ray’s presence in Atlanta on March 28 is confirmed

by a signed money order he purchased for the Locksmithing Institute.

Because of the New York meetings described earlier, Dr. King had not

been in Atlanta since Ray’s arrival. William Bradford Huie believes Ray

had used the time to locate Dr. King’s home, office, and church, which

he marked on the Atlanta map found later in Ray’s room.1

According to James Earl Ray, his contact had returned, saying he

wanted Ray to buy a powerful hunting rifle in Atlanta, but Ray claims

he suggested going to Birmingham to purchase it so that he could use his

Alabama driver’s license under the name “Eric S. Galt” as ID. Accord-

ing to Ray’s later assertions, the hunting rifle purchase was part of the

gunrunning scheme, and Ray was to also price cheap foreign or sur-

plus rifles. Later, Ray and his contact would supposedly show the high-

quality hunting rifle to prospective buyers and tell them about the cheap

surplus rifles. If the buyers were agreeable, they would put in an order

for ten of the cheap surplus rifles, which Ray would then supply.