The MLK Murder
The FBI repeatedly deceived Congress by destroying vital files relating to the assassination of Martin Luther King, a new book claims.
Leading King historian Stuart Wexler said that the bureau chose to cover up the potential role of a high level informant in the killing rather than tell the truth.
Wexler said that it could have been one of the greatest scandals in the history of the FBI – but now we may never know what happened.
By destroying the files the FBI disobeyed a direct order not to do so from a Congressional Committee which had been set up to investigate the killing of King and former President John F Kennedy.
Wexler told Daily Mail Online that the bureau’s actions were ‘disturbing’ and that his research had left him suspecting that agents had mounted a deliberate operation to bury the truth forever.
King was shot dead by James Earl Ray on 4 April 1968 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee in a killing which galvanized the civil rights movement.
Interest in King’s life has been renewed since the release of the Oscar-winning film ‘Selma’, about the historic march from the Alabama town, which was 50 years ago this year.
But Wexler said that there are still many unanswered questions about his death which he addresses in a new e-book called ‘Killing King’.
The FBI plot began when the House Committee on Assassinations was set up in 1976 – it would finish its inquiries into the killing of King and Kennedy in 1978.
Wexler said that the FBI appears to have been spooked after an investigative reporter called Dan Christensen published a number of articles about the Miami connection to both assassinations, articles which the committee were interested in.
Wexler said that, according to his research, in 1977 the MURKIN (murder of King) files were destroyed from the FBI field offices in Miami and Mobile, Alabama.
Crucially, both had information on Tommy Tarrants, a former high ranking Klan member from Mississippi.
Wexler said that something in that file made the FBI upgrade Tarrants from a little-known racist activist to major player in the King assassination to the point where they showed his picture to witnesses at major crime scenes.
What that something was, it now seems we will never know.
Also destroyed from the Miami field office was the the file on Joseph Milteer, a well-known racist who is known for a covertly recorded interview he gave in 1963 in which he talks about the Kennedy assassination and the King assassination before they happened.
Wexler said: ‘It’s entirely possible that Milteer was raising the bounty money for King’s assassination.’
The destruction of the files broke a key rule of the FBI’s record keeping; that it doesn’t get rid of information on people who are still alive.
Tarrants was alive then – and he still is today.
According to Wexler, every other field office investigation of the King murder was preserved, just as Congress ordered, and eventually transferred to the national Archives and Records Administration.
Wexler said: ‘I have no doubt this was done deliberately. They are not destroying everybody’s files, they are selectively destroying files.
‘They wanted Tarrants to give evidence to the committee, they didn’t want him to be a suspect.
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