Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. & COINTEL PRO

Did COINTEL PRO & CIA "Back Pocket Agents" Kill Rev. King, Jr.?

By Iona Miller

Annapolis, Md. July 9, 2010. COINTEL PRO is the acronym used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for one of the FBI's domestic intelligence operations called Counter Intelligence Program.  Leutrell Osborne, Sr. former CIA Spy Manager and CI officer likes to tell it like it is. He renames it "domestic dirty tricks" because the FBI clandestine intelligence operation was not a Counter Intelligence (CI) operation but a Covert Action (CA) domestic dirty tricks operation aimed at US citizens and Native Americans.

The FBI used domestic CA operations from 1956 thru 1971. Their stated motivation at the time was "protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order." However, the evidence below disputes that mis-information.

Osborne's experienced opinion is that five very important insights need to be understood regarding past Government led “dirty tricks’ and illegal activities.

1. From 1956 to the early 1970s, the secret domestic intelligence operations of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) for the most part were performed without the upper level political leaders of the US Government knowing the truth. In other words, persons conducting these domestic activities even fooled them. Thus most of the campaign was unknown to the upper echelons like the Presidents and Attorney Generals while the key elements of the IC deployed dirty trick specialists from the FBI, CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) against so-called enemies of the state such as dissidents, the peace movement, and made secret war on select individuals and groups, particularly Blacks and Native Americans.

 2. The FBI was not alone in doing these dirty deeds. Other members of the National Intelligence Community (NIC) collaborated and conducted the dirty tricks along side the FBI’s COINTEL PRO.

3. COINTEL PRO was not a Counter Intelligence operation. It was a Covert Action Intelligence operation equal to if not better than what CIA could perform. 

4.  Most of the so-called adversaries were not really “bad” people but the nature of dirty trick operations by the US Government made these persons appear “dirtier” than they were.

5. Several CIA components performed illegal domestic dirty tricks intelligence activities in concert with the FBI’s COINTEL PRO.  As an IC activity, COINTEL PRO “neutralized” and fabricated threats against individuals and organizations. The NIC activities sowed distrust and disinformation utilizing a controlled system of informants and provocateurs against various individuals and organizations.

COINTEL PRO was unconstitutional clandestine activity meant to shape and manipulate the sociopolitical landscapeby preventing or disrupting the exercise of First Amendment rights and advocacy. They wanted to suppress speaking, teaching, meeting, writing and publishing.Vigilante-style domestic covert action and propaganda was used against American citizens.

Agents infiltrated, manipulated and disabled organizations, conducted “dirty tricks” psychological warfare, used the legal system, warrant less break-ins, stalking, assaults and beatings for harassment. They inflicted physical, emotional and economic damage, and did not stop short of using assassinations to “neutralize” their adversaries.

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIa.htm

Some of the main objectives of the secret so-called counter intelligence program COINTEL PRO were to prevent the rise of a “black messiah.” The Black Panthers, NAACP, Malcolm X, and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. as well as other Black nationalists were heavily surveilled. Andrew Young made the statement that he and Dr. King, Jr. knew that the government surveilled them and he commented about a mike even being discovered.

In Oslo for the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. King, Jr. himself on the day after the ceremony while attending the the US Ambassador’s reception for him told Leutrell Osborne, Sr. that he knew that the Government was watching him and his people in the USA. The legacy of this domestic spying continues today in the lies and continued persecution of political targets, such as former Black Panther, Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Osborne wonders why over forty years after the fact, CNN (April, 2008), validates disinformation by pointing the finger at James Earl Ray, restating the lies about the assassination of Dr. Martin Luthr King, Jr. Neither James Earl Ray nor Loyd Jowers did the killing but both had dirty hands, according to Osborne.

The King family brought a civil suit against Jowers because they refused to believe Ray was the killer. A jury determined the plot included “governmental agencies.” Pepper argued in Orders to Kill (1995) that King was the victim of an elaborate plot involving the Mafia, the FBI, the CIA, military intelligence - and the highest levels of the U.S. government.

“In an unlikely alliance, the King family was represented in the [Memphis wrongful death] case by William Pepper, who had been Mr. Ray's lawyer. The King family maintains that Mr. Pepper's version of the assassination is the one that gets at the real truth behind Dr. King's death, not the official version with Mr. Ray as the gunman. Mr. Pepper said federal, state and Memphis governmental agencies, as well as the news media conspired in the assassination.”http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E04EFDC1631F93AA35751C1A96F958260

Why doesn’t media get the truth and point the fingers in the correct directions at COINTEL PRO and organized crime? The 2008 CNN documentary continues pointing at James Earl Ray and Loyd Jowers. But the bullet has never been linked to Ray’s rifle. http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2008/black.in.america/. After more than 40 years, we need to focus on telling the truth of King’s untimely death. The full storystill hasn’t been told.

Truth At Last (2008) is a  book by James Earl Ray’s older brother John Larry Ray, claiming there is forensic evidence that exonerates his brother. He also says Ray was inducted into the CIA, then used as a patsy. He blames “white America,” but the perps may be fewer in number. The government is not the country.

"Martin Luther King Jr. was a man admired by millions, but my brother didn't kill him," John told the New York Daily News. "I believe my brother was not only misused by conspirators within our government but also greatly misconstrued as a 'racist' and a 'murderer' by

the media." http://www.globepequot.com/special/whokilledmlk/

Gary Revel was commissioned in 1977 to go undercover To find the King killers. Since then, he has not been fired, decommissioned, told the job was done, nor been paid. The stark reality is that the King killers have not yet been found. But the only offically appointed undercover investigator of the MLK assassination, Revel doesn’t mince words – he names names: Lyndon Baines Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover, Vito Genovese, Santo Trafficante Jr., Sam Giancana, Meyer Lansky, Joseph Colombo, Frank Costello, Don Carlo Gambino, Joseph Bonnano, Paul Castellano, Carlos Marcello, and the CIA's E. Howard Hunt.

http://leutrellosborne.50megs.com/whats_new.html

Revel previously advised Osborne about information that might lead to solving other related deaths to the assassination of King. When Osborne learned about the deaths of people associated with the investigation of King such as the two judges and six FBI Special Agents (SAs), Osborne said "There has to be fire where there is smoke."

Revel laid out these details to Osborne: Two of the judges in Tennessee, who were planning to give James Earl Ray the trial he never had, died of heart attacks just before their plans could be put into place. Six FBI officials, all of which were to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), were prevented from doing so because of their deaths. Revel said deaths of these FBI SAs could be more significant than what many realized because all six of these FBI SAs were identified to Revel as being important witnesses for the HSCA. "Is it likely that the stress of the planned testimony really brought on heart attacks to three of these people?" questioned Revel.

Osborne knows of eight people who died or were killed within a 6-month period. All eight were directly related to Revel’s investigation of the King assassination. When including other deaths during that year that were official suicides, accidents or deaths under unusual circumstances related to the work of the HSCA then a judicious person has to pause for thought. There is truth yet to be learned about unknowns who were directly involved in the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. as well as the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy, and Malcolm X.

 http://leutrellosborne.50megs.com/whats_new.html

Osborne is emphatic: “Let me frame one of the most important insights into the events surrounding the assassination of Dr. King, Jr that I, Leutrell "Mike" Osborne, Sr., am able to state as of 040910. First ignore every mention of COINTELPRO as a counter intelligence operation of the FBI. COINTEL-PRO was not CI.

"The FBI led domestic dirty tricks intelligence operation known by the acronym COINTEL PRO was a Covert Action intelligence operation equal to if not better than one led and directed by the CIA Clandestine Service Spy Masters that I worked with in the past."

“This may be the most important insight I have for you to understand. CA as I define it included both assassinations and collaboration with intelligence operation resources such as organized crime and international hit persons. That is the way CA used to be even though there are rules of the game that tend to state that the US Government doesn't participate in such activities today. We are discussing the past."

“Further, it is enlightening that much of the COINTELPRO or COINTEL FACTOR (as I prefer to call it) was not performed so that neither the White House nor the Attorney General knew in advance what was taking place. This observation is based on my research and reading so-called official documents. “

“Further many of the DOJ and FBI post investigations in my opinion confused matters and did not include persons doing the investigation who had a paradigm of a CIA Spy Master like me and others who understand the protocols and downside of CA intelligence operations. Plus many departments and agencies in the Intelligence Community collaborated both wittingly and unwittingly during the COINTEL FACTOR in the dirty tricks against US citizens, especially Blacks and Native Americans.”

“One more point and I will hold for now. Also discount the mis-information about James Earl Ray and the true COINTEL FACTOR professionals mostly out of the FBI and some of the US Army intelligence organizations on the contrary there used Loyd Jowers being the assassins. Perhaps the only true link is the coordinator and agent handler known as Raul.”

“In my opinion Raul had the attributes of a person trained by Spy Masters but Raul is not what I call a Case Officer, per se. However, he has the attributes that tend to resemble a "trained agent or asset who knows how to handle agents" or people like Ray and Jowers in this case. During my life I have been blessed to meet people who have first hand knowledge of COINTEL PRO and the related events concerning the assassination of Dr. King, Jr.”

Gary Revel suggests, based on his personal interviews of James Earl Ray, that there were several “Raul’s” or “Raoul’s” and all were covers. Revel’s opinion from deep within his own investigation winds up countering Pepper’s theory and naming former CIA officer and White House Watergate secret agent E. Howard Hunt once again holding the bag. Hunt died in January, 2007.

Osborne disagrees strongly and counts Hunt out of the still-shadowy picture of the hidden truth of the assassination. All agree there was a dark marriage of organized crime and clandestine government behind the trigger and media manipulation after the fact, including contemporary depictions. Osborne even wonders if CNN isn’t under “adversary control.” But then what 3-lettered acronym organizations aren’t? Perpetual suspicion, even of one another, goes with the territory.