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Chapter 6

The Assassinations of Robert Kennedy
and Dr. Martin Luther King
and Lyndon B. Johnson's Withdrawal in 1968






      The Power Control Group faced several dangers in 1968. While President Johnson had cooperated fully with their desires in Viet Nam and in other parts of the world, he had not met their requirements in other areas. He had gone too far in appeasing the blacks and had shown some signs of giving in to the young people in America in early 1968. Through threats to expose his role in covering up the truth about the JFK assassination or personal threats to the safety of his family, the Group forced his withdrawal from the 1968 election race. Their plan now was to install Richard Nixon as president at all costs.
      Robert Kennedy and Dr. King posed real threats to this plan. Dr. King was beginning a movement in the direction of a coalition with Malcom X followers and other black militant groups. He was speaking out against the Viet Nam war. His influence might help defeat Nixon at the polls. So the Power Control Group created an environment in which he could be assassinated by his arch enemies.
      The FBI and J. Edgar Hoover had become a vital part of the Power Control Group by 1968. Hoover had no love for King and was harrassing him in several ways. The Power Control Group undoubtedly let Hoover know that it wouldn't be a bad idea to have King out of the way before the election campaigns really warmed up. They also passed the word along to some of the groups who were out to murder King that the crime would probably not be stopped. Fletcher Prouty has described this approach in some detail.[1] The net result of these actions was the assassination of Dr. King by a group of wealthy white bigots who employed two of the intelligence community's own expert assassins. One of these men, Frenchy, had fired shots at JFK. The other, Jack Youngblood, was a soldier of fortune and CIA contract killer. They recruited James Earl Ray and set him up as a patsy.
      The FBI removed King's protection in Memphis and after the assassination they took the case out of the hands of the local police to control and suppress the evidence of conspiracy. Hoover did not know exactly who was going to assassinate King or where. He did not know in advance who the patsy was supposed to be. The best evidence in support of this is that from April to June 1968 the identity of the patsy was a mystery, first unidentified, then identified as Eric Starvo Galt, then as Raymond Sneyd, and finally as James Earl Ray. If Hoover had been in on the plan, Ray's identity would probably have been revealed immediately. In fact, the scenario might have been similar to the JFK case, with Ray being killed in a shoot-out.
      After Ray was identified and arrested in London, Hoover and the Justice Department had to manufacture some evidence to get Ray back to the U.S. They had no qualms about bribing one witness, Charlie Stevens, to do this. They forced him to say he had seen Ray. Then a new problem arose. Ray began telling the truth to his lawyer and a writer, William Bradford Huie. He almost revealed Frenchy's true identity. The Power Control Group, led by J. Edgar Hoover, solved this problem by getting rid of Ray's lawyer, Arthur Hanes, and they hired Percy Foreman to keep Ray quiet. They also were forced to pay off or frighten off author Huie who had by then become convinced Ray was telling him the truth. Huie had found several witnesses who had seen Ray and Frenchy together.
      The group got Foreman to talk Ray into pleading guilty and Huie to retract his conspiracy talk and publish an article and a book claiming Ray was the lone assassin. Ever since Ray was put away for 99 years, the FBI and the Power Control Group have been hard at work covering up the truth, bribing or influencing judges who have heard Ray's appeals for a trial, publishing disinformation like Gerold Franck's book, An American Assassin, suppressing evidence, and placing key witnesses in psychiatric wards. It is still going on. They have killed at least one reporter -- Louis Lomax -- who was getting too close to the truth. The local D.A., Phil Canale, was brought into the conspiracy along with Percy Foreman, Judge Battle, Fred Vinson (who extradited Ray, using Stevens' false affidavit), and local authorities who committed Grace Walden Stevens to a mental institution because she knew Charlie had been dead drunk and saw nothing.
      The mechanics of the assassination are as follows: Youngblood and Frenchy recruited Ray in Montreal for smuggling drugs into the U.S. from Mexico and Canada. They recruited him in the assassination plan in such a way as to make him believe they were smuggling guns to Cuba.
      Frenchy (Ray knew him as Raoul) set up Ray as a patsy by planting evidence with Ray's prints on it near the fake firing point. He persuaded Ray to rent a room opposite Dr. King's motel, to buy a rifle with telescopic sight, and a white Mustang, and park the Mustang outside the rooming house to wait for Frenchy to come out. Youngblood stationed himself on a grassy knoll beneath the rooming house where Frenchy was located. When King came out on his balcony, Youngblood killed him with one shot fired at an upward angle. Frenchy ran from his perch overlooking King's balcony. He made plenty of noise to attract attention, and dropped a bag full of items with Ray's prints on them in front of an amusement parlor next door to the rooming house.
      Frenchy must have had some anxious moments then because Ray had driven the Mustang to a gas station a few blocks away to have a low tire pumped up. Three witnesses remember his being there. When Ray returned, not yet knowing what had happened, Frenchy told him to drive away toward the edge of town where Frenchy got out of the back seat. Ray drove on to Atlanta with the intention of meeting Frenchy there.
      Meanwhile, Youngblood mingled with the crowd under King's balcony and then faded away. A false trail was created by another member of the team who drove away in a second white Mustang and then created a fake auto chase on the police band radio. Youngblood was tracked down by various reporters in early 1976 and began negotiating to tell his story for a very high price. Meanwhile, judge after judge and court after court keep turning down Bernard Fensterwald and James Cesar, Ray's new lawyers, who appealed for a new trial.
      All of the information above has been reported with factual evidence backing it up in several articles, one book, and at Ray's legal hearing for a new trial in Memphis in 1975.[2]
      After Dr. King was eliminated, the Power Control Group faced a much greater threat. Robert Kennedy began his quest for the presidency. There was little doubt in the minds of anyone in the Group that Kennedy would be nominated as Democratic candidate at the convention, and would have a very good chance of defeating Richard Nixon. This would be a near certainty if Eugene McCarthy decided to drop out and support Senator Kennedy. Robert Kennedy represented a double threat to the Group in that he would undoubtedly expose them after becoming president and seize control.
      The plan they adopted was again to create an environment in which it would be easy for an enemy like the Minutemen or the Mafia or certain local hate groups in California to assassinate RFK and get away with it by setting up another patsy. Available at the time was a CIA agent planted inside the Los Angeles police department. Strong influence was brought to bear on chief of police, Ed Davis, to remove all official protection for Senator Kennedy in the Ambassador Hotel. Arrangements were made for the Ace Guard Service to supply three extreme right wing, militant guards at the hotel to guard the Senator after his victory speech. One of these was Thane Eugene Cesar, a known Kennedy hater and friend of a group of Southern California Minutemen. He was also almost certainly a CIA contract agent or "blind" assassin. At the same time another group was recruited to hypnotize Sirhan Sirhan and to program him for firing some shots in Robert Kennedy's direction. Two hypnotists and at least three other people were involved in the framing of Sirhan.
      Cesar killed Robert Kennedy from behind while Sirhan was firing under hypnosis from in front of the Senator. His programmed signal was given by a girl in a polka dot dress and another young Arabic man with them in the pantry.
      After the crime, the FBI, the CIA agent (Manny Pena), the District Attorney's office (Evelle Younger and Joseph Busch) and the Los Angeles Police Department (Ed Davis, Robert Houghton and others), knowing the truth, all teamed up to suppress all other evidence except that which was aimed at framing Sirhan. The Power Control Group has since wielded its influence to keep the RFK case under wraps. They pushed legislation through the California legislature to lock up the evidence. They put Thomas Noguchi, the L.A. County Coroner who wouldn't keep quiet about the autopsy evidence which proved conspiracy, in an insane asylum. They arranged for the FBI report on the assassination to be classified and locked up. They killed at least one person who knew what had happened. They controlled the media on the subject, especially the Los Angeles Times through its owner, Norman Chandler, and his friend Evelle Younger, who became California State Attorney General.
      After Al Lowenstein, Jerry Brown, Paul Schrade, Vincent Bugliosi, Robert Vaughn, Tom Bradley and others began to try to expose the truth, the Group fought back by setting up their own expert ballistics panel and buying or frightening them into distorting the evidence proving there were two guns fired. The Group is certainly not through yet. More planted disinformation can be expected and more bribing of judges and expert witnesses. There may be more killings. Cesar's life and the lives of the two hypnotists won't be worth much if they ever start talking.[3]


__________

  1. "The Fourth Force" -- L. Fletcher Prouty -- Gallery Magazine -- December, 1975

  2. Frame Up: The Martin Luther King/James Earl Ray Case -- Harold Weisberg -- E.P. Dutton -- 1971

    "The Assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr." -- R.E. Sprague -- Computers & Automation December 1970

    "The Assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. -- Parts I to II" -- Wayne Chastain -- Computers & Automation, December 1974.

  3. Most of the above information has been published in a series of articles and in two books and one movie.

      "The Assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy" -- R.E. Sprague -- Computers & Automation -- September 1972 and October 1970

      RFK Must Die -- Robert Blair Kaiser -- 1970

      The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, A Searching Look at the Conspiracy and Cover-Up 1968-1978 -- William Turner and John Christian -- 1978

      The Second Gun -- Documentary Movie -- Ted Charach -- American Films -- Beverly Hills





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