The Bishop's Pawn (Cotton Malone #13)(103)
COINTELPRO’s abuses were finally exposed in 1975 by the Church Committee (chapter 14). Things came to light after the daring burglary of a local FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, on March 8, 1971 (chapter 14). A group of private citizens stole every file in the office and were never caught. That theft revealed myriad instances of corruption, including COINTELPRO and Hoover’s secret files, all of which found its way into the media. An excellent account of that little-known event is The Burglary, by Betty Medsger.
Hoover’s use of a possible communist influence in the civil rights movement as the basis for his illegal surveillance is historic fact. But that ran contrary to a 1963 internal FBI report (mentioned in chapter 21) which concluded that no such communist influences existed. As described in the novel, Hoover rejected that conclusion, and its author (William Sullivan in reality, Tom Oliver in the novel) changed the report, conforming its findings to Hoover’s predetermined (and false) belief.
The accounts of King’s assassination, detailed in chapters 16, 17, and 18, are taken from reality. The only addition is the presence of Benjamin Foster. The details of Eric S. Galt’s (James Earl Ray’s) activities (beginning in chapter 23) from the summer of 1967 until June 1968 are from historical accounts. The only addition was his secret observation and direction by the FBI. The shadowy figure of Raoul (chapter 36) was an invention of James Earl Ray, first mentioned after he recanted his guilty plea in 1968. Through the years the story of Raoul, who supposedly used Ray as a patsy for the murder, changed many times. As did the man’s physical appearance. Even the spelling of the name is clouded in doubt. I used Raoul, but other variations appear in print. No one knows if such a person ever existed. Here, I made him Juan Lopez Valdez.
It is well documented that Ray purchased a rifle in Alabama (chapter 26), then returned it the next day, exchanging it for a more powerful weapon. Ray ultimately claimed that it was Raoul who ordered the switch. To this day, why Ray made the change in weapons remains a mystery.
Ray did in fact stalk King beginning in late March 1968, traveling to Selma, Alabama, on what appeared to be a reconnaissance mission (chapter 44). He then followed King back to Atlanta, where he kept close tabs. An Atlanta city map found among Ray’s possessions after the assassination showed two spots circled. King’s home and the Ebenezer Baptist Church.
Ray was no trained marksman, yet the rifle he used to kill King contained but one shell and only one shot was fired, which struck King in the face. The bullet disintegrated on impact, making it impossible to match the slug to the rifle (chapter 34). Whether the rifle found near the assassination, the one Ray bought in Alabama, was in fact the murder weapon has never been determined. And consider this, as noted in chapter 34: Ray possessed no discernible motive. No fingerprints of his were found in the rooming house where he supposedly stayed. No fingerprints were found in the white Mustang he was driving. An accuracy test on the rifle showed it consistently fired both left and below the intended target. And the only eyewitness to place him at the scene was blind drunk at the time, and never made a positive ID until years later.
In addition, Ray’s trip out of Memphis bordered on the miraculous, considering the police sweep that occurred immediately after the murder. The false CB radio report of a car following Ray’s white Mustang, and a gunfire attack on that car, happened (chapter 34). No one knows who orchestrated such a ploy, but it definitely diverted law enforcement and aided Ray’s escape.
Despite one of the largest manhunts in history, Ray managed to stay on the run for two months, finally caught in London’s Heathrow Airport. Ultimately, and never explained to anyone’s satisfaction, Ray pled guilty to murder on the eve of trial (chapter 34), but recanted three days later, starting twenty-one years of ranting in which he maintained his innocence and alleged a grand conspiracy. All of the groups detailed at the end of chapter 34 have, at one time or another, been implicated in those conspiracies.
Nothing has ever been proven.
The Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) stood front and center in the civil rights movement. King served as its president until his death. The civil suit King v. Jowers happened in 1999, the trial far more spectacle than an actual legal proceeding (chapter 18). Its outcome was never in doubt, the finding of an official conspiracy to kill King inevitable considering the slant of the evidence from both sides. No true adversarial court proceeding has ever seriously considered the King assassination. Twice Congress has investigated, but both efforts were tainted by politics. To this day, countless questions remain unanswered.
The operation known as Bishop’s Pawn is all my creation. Except for the two mentioned earlier from chapter 27, the FBI memos (which start in chapter 23) are mine. But I utilized the style, and some of the wording, from actual memos. One phrase that is repeated a lot in those is a confidential source who has furnished reliable information in the past (chapter 27). We now know that those words meant the information came from an illegal wiretap, the nomenclature a covert way to shield that fact. In the context of this novel, it means Benjamin Foster. All of the information contained in the memos from chapter 27 and the conversations in chapters 58 and 61 accurately reflect King’s own words and thoughts. What happened to Jimmie Lee Jackson, James Reeb, and Viola Liuzzo (as described in chapter 61) is fact. We tend to forget, these so many decades later, that people died during the civil rights movement.
J. Edgar Hoover hated Martin Luther King Jr. It was a deep, visceral, personal hate, which seems to have started in 1962 when King openly criticized the FBI for having no black agents and for showing partiality to southern law enforcement (chapter 21). King also challenged Hoover’s belief that communists were involved in the civil rights movement, eventually calling on Hoover to resign. When Hoover tried to schedule a meeting with King and talk their differences over, his calls went unanswered. Not intentionally, but only because King was terrible at returning calls (chapter 46). No matter, the rebuff was perceived as deliberate and Hoover set out to destroy King.