INVESTIGATIONS: The King Assassination

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But what of a more serious concern—that the FBI either bungled the whole investigation because of Hoover's hatred for King, or may even have helped plan the murder? As part of its own fresh investigation of the King case, TIME has learned that a Justice Department review of the FBI's work will conclude there is no evidence of any kind that the FBI 1) helped arrange the killing, or 2) failed to do everything it could to run down the sniper and any conspirators. Since the FBI is an arm of the Justice Department, of course, that will carry little weight with most critics of the FBI's role. A more independent review would be required to still all doubts, and in fact Justice officials apparently will urge that a special prosecutor or independent commission be named to make a separate inquiry.

Raise Doubt. Ray is now pushing for a trial, claiming that he was coerced into pleading guilty by his lawyer at the time, Percy Foreman. An expensive and flamboyant attorney, Foreman believed that the case against his client was so strong that only a guilty plea could save him from execution. Moreover, Foreman argued, a Southern jury, in the aftermath of national revulsion over the John and Robert Kennedy assassinations, would want to show that the South did not tolerate such acts. Nevertheless, one state witness, who claimed to have seen Ray leaving the rooming house after the shooting, seemed unreliable. The bullet that hit King was too fragmented to be conclusively linked to Ray's rifle by ballistics tests. No one saw Ray shoot. A sharp lawyer presumably had a chance to raise reasonable doubt in the minds of a jury about Ray's guilt. On the other hand, the lawyer would have had to explain Ray's thumbprint on the weapon, his purchasing binoculars and a rifle, and the fact that Ray rejected a room in the Memphis rooming house where he stayed in favor of one with the assassin's view.

Among the experienced writers who spent years researching books on the assassination, most (including McMillan, Gerrold Frank and William Bradford Huie) have concluded that Ray acted alone. Even if they are right, their work is unlikely to dispel all doubts in a period when, with some justification, many people are unwilling to reject readily any conspiracy theory.