Gerald McKnight, the FBI, the MPD, and the MLK assassination

[David Guyatt]

This started out as an interesting thread before it was derailed into the ditch.

I noticed in William Pepper's AN ACT OF STATE that Hoover is only mentioned a handful of times. The larger scenario at work is that of the Pentagon (specifically army intelligence) worrying about MLK leading a poor peoples' march on the capitol and having it turn into the Russian Revolution. After all the riots across the US during the previous year, and with all the troops in Vietnam, there just weren't enough available to put down any large scale violence that might threaten the Federal Government itself.

This was a much bigger problem for the Army than it was for Hoover. Army officers, with their rigid anti-Communist mindset, were certain that only they stood in the way of a Communist Revolution. In their view, they had a duty to the country to keep that from happening. They could either massacre thousands of protestors in the capitol with the whole world watching, or simply take out the leader of the movement with one bullet - for the "good of the nation." What if the Czar's military could have killed Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders before they took over? Surely no good American military man would let this happen.

So they used their assets in organized crime, the MPD and the CIA to do the dirty work, with military snipers present as backup.

Ever since I read Pepper's book, I've felt that it made sense that the Pentagon were the sponsors of the MLK hit. I also harbour suspicions that they were the principal sponsors of the JFK hit too - because of his meddling in their cold war strategy, plus the oh so precious military industrial complex that had been developed in WWII.