30 YEARS AGO IN WW
Three conspiracies, three trials
By V.
Copeland
One of the most remarkable coincidences in all history took
place last month--at least, it did if we are to believe the
U.S. ruling class and have confidence in its court system.
The "coincidence" was not a double but a triple one. Three
important assassination trials were going on simultaneously:
one in Memphis, one in New Orleans and one in Los Angeles. And
each of these trials was finding that there had been no
conspiracy involved in the respective assassinations they dealt
with.
Three of the most famous men of the United States were
assassinated. The first was a president. The second was the
best-known Afro-American in the country, a religious leader,
but primarily a political figure who was regarded by white
racism as a threat to the American Way of Life. The third was a
highly promising candidate for president and the brother of the
first.
All three were in the same political party and closely
associated on several planes.
In the case of Martin Luther King, almost every single one
of the 25 million Black people in the country is convinced that
there was a conspiracy. And this is not just because of
sympathy and identification with the victim. It arises from the
experience of whole generations of persecution and familiarity
with sudden death.
We are asked to believe that King was casually slain by a
man with a prison record who knew he was vulnerable and would
be hunted--and that he was not aided morally and financially by
others.
James Earl Ray, the confessed assassin, himself interrupted
the state prosecutor's cover-up after the deal for a 99-year
sentence had been made to say he "could not accept" the theory
that there was no conspiracy behind the assassination!
How could there have been a clearer signal for a new
investigation to uncover the other conspirators and the real
forces behind the murder?
And yet no eager district attorney moved for a new trial; no
judge thundered out against collusion between the state and the
defense; no big newspaper demanded to know why the judicial
cover-up. It was as though nobody heard what Ray had said,
although a hundred million newspaper readers and TV watchers
read and heard about it.
The cover-ups in the cases of John F. Kennedy and Robert
Kennedy are equally suspicious, although not perhaps as obvious
as in the King case. The late president was apparently killed
by a man who was in turn killed by a man who asked to see the
chief investigator, Chief Justice Earl Warren, alone and was
denied the request--and shortly afterward died himself.
The big question in all three cases at this particular point
is not so much who killed King and the Kennedys as it is why
the courts show such a lack of interest in finding out.
How quick they are to shout conspiracy when they are framing
the oppressed in cases where they fear a movement for real
justice may overtake them! How many Black Panthers are accused
of conspiracy!
The courts see a thousand conspiracies where there are none;
but they cover up the biggest of conspiracies with blank
reassurance and platitudes when the interest of the ruling
class is at stake.
The "coincidence" of three whitewashes, then, is not a
coincidence at all, but a powerful proof that the venal courts
which are bought and sold daily by different corporate
interests in ordinary civil suits are completely at the service
of the ruling class itself. They are more than willing to hush
up any rifts or faction fights in that class.
--Excerpted from Workers World of March 30, 1969
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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