Jonestown connections to Martin Luther King assassination cover-up

(Note: this posting is separate from my Jim Jones/Jonestown/Hilltown investigation, at, www.abovetopsecret.com...
because this section points out serious connections of Jonestown to the Martin Luther King assassination -- which is a subject in itself -- & the cover-up of the real assassin.)

John Judge’s editing of Dave Emory’s work, www.ratical.org... (includes footnote text referred to in [brackets].


NOTE: The Jonestown bank connections are discussed at www.abovetopsecret.com...

Lane was simultaneously the attorney for People's Temple and accused [MLK Jr.] assassin James Earl Ray. Lane and Buford also lived with and cared for a key witness in the Ray case, Grace Walden Stevens. According to some reports in the New York Times (2/4/79), Jones offered Mark Lane money to help free James Earl Ray. Later stories suggest that Buford and Lane were in collusion to bring Grace Stevens into Jonestown under an illegal passport (NYT, 12/8/79).

Connections of Jonestown to Martin Luther King assassination cover-up (1 of 2)

One of the persistent problems in researching Jonestown is that it seems to lead to so many other criminal activities, each with its own complex history and cast of characters. Perhaps the most disturbing of these is the connection that appears repeatedly between the characters in the Jonestown story and the key people involved in the murder and investigating of Martin Luther King.

The first clue to this link appeared in the personal histories of the members of the Ryan investigation team who were so selectively and

deliberately killed at Port Kaituma. Don Harris, a veteran NBC reporter, had been the only network newsman on the scene to cover Martin Luther King's activity in Memphis at the time of King's assassination. He had interviewed key witnesses at the site.

His coverage of the urban riots that followed won him an Emmy award.[228]

Gregory Robinson, a "fearless" journalist from the San Francisco Examiner, had photographed the same riots in Washington, D.C. When he was approached for copies of the films by Justice Department officials, he threw the negatives into the Potomac river.[229]

The role of Mark Lane, who served as attorney for Jim Jones,

is even more clearly intertwined.[230] Lane had co-authored a book with Dick Gregory, claiming FBI complicity in the King murder.[231] He was hired as the attorney for James Earl Ray, accused assassin, when Ray testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations about King.[232]

Prior to this testimony, Ray was involved in an unusual escape plot at Brushy Mountain State Prison.[233] The prisoner who had helped engineer the escape plot was later inexplicably offered an early, parole by members of the Tennessee Governor's office. These officials, and Governor Blanton himself, were to come under close public scrutiny and face legal charges in regard to bribes taken to arrange illegal early pardons for prisoners.[234]

One of the people living at Jonestown was ex-FBI agent Wesley Swearington, who at least publicly condemned the COINTELPRO operations and other abuses, based on stolen classified documents, at the Jonestown site. Lane had reportedly met with him there at least a year before the massacre. Terri Buford said the documents were passed on to Charles Garry. Lane used information from Swearingen in his thesis on the FBI and King's murder. Swearingen later served as a key witness in suits against the Justice Department brought by the Socialist Workers Party.[235]

When Larry Flynt, the flamboyant publisher of Hustler magazine, offered a, $1 million reward leading to the capture and conviction of the John F. Kennedy killers, the long distance number listed to collect information and leads was being answered by Mark Lane and Wesley Swearingen.[236]

With help from officials in Tennessee, Governor Blanton's office, Lane managed to get legal custody of a woman who had been incarcerated in the Tennessee state psychiatric system for nearly eight years.[237] This woman,

Grace Walden Stephens, had been a witness in the King murder.[238]

She was living at the time in Memphis in a rooming house across from the hotel when Martin Luther King was shot.[239]

The official version of events had Ray located in the common bathroom of the rooming house, and claimed he used a rifle to murder King from that window.[240] Grace Stephens did, indeed, see a man run from the bathroom, past her door and down to the street below.[241] A rifle, later linked circumstantially to James Earl Ray, was found inside a bundle at the base of the rooming house stairs, and identified as the murder weapon.[242]

But Grace, who saw the man clearly, refused to identify him as Ray

when shown photographs by the FBI.[243] Her testimony was never introduced at the trial. The FBI relied, instead, on the word of her common law husband, Charles Stephens, who was drunk and unconscious at the time of the incident.[244] Her persistence in

saying that it was not James Earl Ray was used at her mental competency hearings as evidence against her, and she disappeared into the psychiatric system.

[245]

Grace Walden Stephens took up residence in Memphis with Lane, her custodian, and Terri Buford, a key Temple member who had returned to the U.S. before the killings to live with Lane.[246] While arranging for her to testify before the Select Committee on Ray's behalf, Lane and Buford were plotting another fate for Grace Stephens. Notes from Buford to Jones, found in the aftermath of the killings,

discussed arrangements with Lane to move Grace Stephens to Jonestown.[247]

The problem that remained was lack of a passport, but Buford suggested either getting a passport on the black market, or using the passport of former Temple member Maxine Swaney.[248] Swaney, dead for nearly 2-1/2 years since her departure from the Ukiah camp, was in no position to argue and Jones apparently kept her passport with him.[249] Whether Grace ever arrived at Jonestown is unclear.

Lane was also forced to leave Ray in the midst of testimony to the Select Committee when he got word that Ryan was planning to visit. Lane had attempted to discourage the trip earlier in a vaguely threatening letter.[250] Now he rushed to be sure he arrived with the group.[251] A

t the scene, he failed to warn Ryan and others, knowing that the sandwiches and other food might be drugged, but refrained from eating it himself.[252] Later, claiming that he and Charles Garry would write the official history of the "revolutionary suicide," Lane was allowed to leave the pieces of underwear to mark their way back to Georgetown.[253] If true, it seems an unlikely method if they were in any fear of pursuit. They had heard gunfire and screams back at the camp.[254] Lane was reportedly well aware of the forced drugging and suicide drills at Jonestown before Ryan arrived.[255]

[edit on 18-6-2008 by counterterrorist]

[edit on 18-6-2008 by counterterrorist]

[edit on 18-6-2008 by counterterrorist]

Connections of Jonestown to Martin Luther King assassination cover-up (2 of 2)

Another important figure in the murder of Martin Luther King was his mother, Alberta. A few weeks after the first public announcement by Coretta Scott King that she believed her husband's murder was part of a conspiracy,

Mrs. Alberta King was brutally shot to death in Atlanta, while attending church services.[256]

Anyone who had seen the physical wounds suffered by King might have been an adverse witness to the official version, since the Wound angles did not match the ballistic direction of a shot from the rooming house.[257] Her death also closely coincided with the reopening of the Tennessee state court review of Ray's conviction based on a guilty plea, required by a 6th Circuit decision.[258] The judge in that case reportedly refused to allow witnesses from beyond a 100-mile radius from the courtroom.[259]

The man convicted of shooting King's mother was

Marcus Wayne Chenault.

His emotional affect following the murder was unusual. Grinning, he asked if he had hit anyone.[260] He had reportedly been dropped off at the church by people he knew in Ohio.[261] While at Ohio State University, he

was part of a group known as "the Troop,"

run by a Black minister and gun collector who used the name Rabbi Emmanuel Israel.

This man, described in the press as a "mentor" for Chenault, left the area immediately after the shooting.[262]

In the same period, Rabbi Hill traveled from Ohio to Guyana and set up Hilltown, using similar aliases, and preaching the same message of a "black Hebrew elite."[263]

Chenault confided to SCLC leaders that he was one of many killers who were working to assassinate a long list of Black leadership. The names he said were on this list coincided with similar "death lists" distributed by the KKK, and linked to the COINTELPRO operations in the 60s.[264]

The real backgrounds and identities of Marcus Wayne Chenault and Rabbi Hill may never be discovered. [265]

* * *

The idea that a large community of Black people would not only stand by and be poisoned at the suggestion of Jim Jones, but would allow their children to be murdered first, is a monstrous lie, and a racist insult.[266] We now know that the most direct description of Jonestown is that it was a Black genocide plan.

One Temple director, Joyce Shaw, described the Jonestown massacre as, "some kind of horrible government experiments, or some sort of sick racial thing, a plan like that of the Germans to exterminate Blacks."[267] If we refuse to look further into this nightmarish event, there will be more Jonestowns to come. They will move from Guyana to our own back yard.

[edit on 18-6-2008 by counterterrorist]

I think conspiracies theories exist because people cannot accept the reality of events. Jonestown was religious mental illness. Occam's Razor prevails. The simpler explanation with the less contingencies tend to be true: Jim Jones was nuts. End of conspiracy.

reply to post by Straight Razor

Jim Jones was nuts. End of conspiracy

(if you go here there are 5-6 videos www.abovetopsecret.com... and you won't have to read all the collected research if you don't have time.)

But, if you are inclined, also start reading after watching those movies, particularly the one proving he's a CIA asset, then why don't you read the entire page of posts -- and then read the 13 replies at www.abovetopsecret.com...,

that entirely PROVE CIA involvment with Jones and that Jones was a CIA asset working with MK-ULTRA and so on in experiments with black genocide and he himself was programmed as a sleeper-assassin.

And then, after reading those posts which document 300 articles by investigative journalists proving that premise, see if you still think: "Jim Jones was nuts -- that's it, end of conspiracy".

However, after your see those 300 footnotes, and you think all of those people who put in thousands and thousands of hours of reach and DOCUMENTED their work are all wrong, please let me know. Because if you watch the videos and read the posts, you will then be an expert on Jim Jones, and you can totally back-up and document your opinion.

If, on the other hand, you don't read the aforementioned posts, that's okay, too. Because you will have least of watched the videos ...

AND, most importantly, your opinion that Jones was nuts is, after all, totally true. But to assert he worked alone and didn't have partners in crime ... which is the definition of conspriracy ...I respectfully disagree.

If you have time to read the posts referenced above, you may enjoy them. If you do, let me know what you think.

[edit on 18-6-2008 by counterterrorist]

[edit on 18-6-2008 by counterterrorist]

I have a tape of Jim Jones, just pre-massacre, where he references the assassination of Martin Luther King...don't know if you're aware of this bit. I don't have a transcript, but I can quote it from memory, with some moderate accuracy, as follows:

Love - Love has just practically caused me to get you DESTROYED - If I had hated a little more, just a little more - We would have had a little less trouble - Cause when I look at my faults analytically - Sure you got LOVE! - Principal! And don't ever say "Hate is my enemy and I've got to fight it day and night - Love is the only weapon with which I've got to fight " - What is thou saying What hast thou uttered the line - " Love is the only weapon..." - #! BULL-#! - Martin Luther King DIED with LOVE! Kennedy died talking about some kind of generalized love, you couldn't even understand, and he never even backed it up, he was shot down -
Bull-#, love is the only weapon with which I've got to fight - I've got a hell of a lot of weapons to fight - I've got my GUNS! I've got my CLAWS! I've got my CUTLASSES! I've got DYNAMITE! I've got a hell of a lot of weapons with which to fight! I WILL FIGHT! I WILL FIGHT! I WILL FIGHT! I WILL FIGHT! I WILL FIGHT! I WILL FIGHT! I WILL FIGHT! I WILL FIGHT!

(it's hard to pick a stopping point, when it's all so good, but, uh, there - sadly, I pretty much know it by heart)

reply to post by nine-eyed-eel


Taken as an independant performance piece or poem, it does come off pretty good.

As I recall, one of these 5 or 6 videos has him &/or an actor saying those lines:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

John Judge’s editing of Dave Emory’s work, www.ratical.org... (includes footnote text referred to in [brackets]

Yeah so I've decided to take an interest in this thread (having read about half of the books on the subject, some years ago) and work my way systematically through the materiel, commenting as required.
Having just read the first subheading of the John Judge bit above, " You've Heard The Official Story"...I am forced to say..." Jesus, this is really a ludicrous piece of writing."
He is so much more concerned to enjoy the freedoms of unrestrained insinuation than to labor under any of the burdens of having an intellectual conscience. He thinks with his feelings, takes his feelings for facts, commits numerous vitiating logical fallacies, and periodically bursts into song in the form of omniscient, prophetic and/or utterly unsupported assertions.
I don't mean to be overly general here. If desired I will go through the piece paragraph by paragraph, nitpicking repetitively. That's the type of thing that it is in my nature to do, but if I just launch into it, people tend to recoil like " Calm down, dude "...so I'm holding back.
Having said all of this, all of his assertions about factual questions could be factually correct...just because he reasons badly doesn't mean he couldn't be right by accident. I'm going to continue on with his stuff...But seriously it is a grotesque reference. I would be so embarrassed to be him. Maybe somebody's cat wrote it using an ouija board. I'd feel a little better about that. You don't expect much from a cat, somehow, its eyes are too close together.

exterminate blacks? sorry, how many blacks lived in u.s. in seventies? i don't understand. why it should be so... complicated.
jim jones worked for other people more than 25 years. he loved blacks. well, later he got sick of abusing amphetamines - paranoid.
when i first had a chance to hear so called death tape i was surprised - i heard exhausted, ill man not evil manipulator.
i don't believe any of your word here. you know merely nothing about jones' mind. but it's ok.