Alex Jones Interviews Dr. William Pepper

audio (mp3)

ALEX JONES: Well, William Pepper has seen quite a bit.  He’s a top American Human Rights lawyer.  He’s also barrister in England, he’s friends with Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, advisors to ‘em — if I tried to go over everything he’s done it’s quite a life.  His book, Act of State, The Murder of Martin Luther King [An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King, by William F. Pepper, Verso 2003 - 362 pp.] was out in hardback, it’s just come out in paperback, it’s excellent — I’ve read it — open and shut that they killed him, had a patsy as they always do.  We have government documents, like Operation Northwoods, describes how to frame patsies — it’s very disgusting — how they do it, how they kill who they want, how they do it, how they do what they want, always wrapping themselves in the flag, when they’re the ones destroying our name, our currency, our future.  It’s disgusting.

But I want to get him to discuss the murder, you know, condensed version, in the fifty minutes we’ve got with him, of — Martin Luther King, which he’s the expert on it, he didn’t even believe it for a while — he had to learn the evidence and go thru it, but he’s the preeminent expert on that — interviewed many times James Earl Ray and many others, but then, now it’s coming out open and shut, BBC, NBC, everybody admitting — three CIA section bosses there, at the Ambassador Hotel, the coroner report — and, we always knew this, but now it’s admitted, the government killed Bobby, it’s — I mean, they’re just admitting it.  So — I also want to get his take on, “what is it like”, Mr. Pepper, Dr. Pepper, to see — all of this unfolding, to have lived long enough to now see — uh, you’re not being called a conspiracy theorist now — ?

WILLIAM PEPPER: Well, I think they probably will still — heh — they’ll still, Alex, they’ll still use that kind of condemnation as we go forward in the Bob Kennedy case.  I have agreed to become lead counsel for Sirhan, having gone through that file very carefully in — in — over the course of the last year, and after his former lawyer died, Larry Teeter died, I came on.  I discussed the case with Larry many times, and of course encouraged him.  But as you rightly say, I think it's pretty much opened up, and — that doesn't mean there's going to be any less obstruction.  In fact I'm finding more and more obstruction in the state of California from the Department of Corrections to some basic work that we have to do with — with Sirhan, and, uh, they're going to make it as tough as they can.  But, I think, from my reading of the evidence at this point, this is actually an easier case than Martin's assassination.  At this point in time I think it's an easier case to open up, in, in — just in terms of the factual evidence and the forensic evidence.

ALEX JONES:  Using the conspiracy theory label, I've seen how the White House is calling it "exaggerations", "conspiracy theories", with Scott McClellan.  We don't need Scott McClellan to tell us that they lied about WMDs, and engaged in deception and propaganda knowingly and willfully, because we have all the documents, we have the executive orders, we have the White House memo — the Downing Street Memo, we have the CIA assessments where Bush blacked it out, so we know they lied.  We don't need Scott McClellan to tell us this, but the fact that they would say that he's lying now, it's — it's just incredible.

WILLIAM PEPPER: Yeah — yeah, well I'm afraid we've — you've got a gang of criminals there.  And, uh, the crimes they've committed are the worst imaginable.   When you — when you look at international law, international human rights law, we see a whole range of crimes against humanity, war crimes, crimes of war.  And of course, the number one Nuremberg crime: that of waging a war of aggression.  So these people have got to be held accountable at some point in time.  And I've asked some of my colleagues at Oxford, and some over here, to begin to put together a bill of indictment related to everything that's going on with respect to  — to the  —  to extraordinary rendition, and torture, and aggression, and all of these things.

ALEX JONES:  Well, look at Vincent Bugliosi.  He's coming out with a book saying Bush is a murderer and you could convict him right now.

WILLIAM PEPPER: Yeah.  I think there's a groundswell of that kind of opinion, and I think that as soon as these people are out of office there should be an attempt to have them prosecuted — which will not get very far in this country, but frankly, there are a lot of treaty signatories in other states that, uh — I think are just waiting for the opportunity to commence prosecutions. 

ALEX JONES:  Well, we look forward to that, or we'll never get our good name back.  I think that's what's most important.  It's kind of like Germany — had the Nuremberg trials, and to some extent, you know, then they could move on.  I mean, we are now anathema: we are seen right now globally as the Nazis, and unfortunately, rightfully so, we've killed over a million Iraqis.  And people say, "well, not in my name";  well, they did it in our name.  And, so, we've gotta do something about this.  Uh, your take on that sir —

WILLIAM PEPPER: Well, yeah, my take on it is exactly that, I lamented that there was never accountability for what happened in Vietnam.  You know, I was a journalist over there in '66.  And my observations led ultimately to my being able to convince Martin King to oppose the war, which he did on April 4, '67 — and of course they killed him a year later.

ALEX JONES:  Well, see, that's what I hate about this interview, is the time we've got — I've got to have you back again, because I want all your opinions, your take, you've seen so much, it's amazing, and I know you don't like to talk about yourself,  but, let's get into Martin Luther King, let's get into Bobby, but spend a few minutes first talking about how instrumental you've been, the things you've seen, what Martin Luther King was like behind the scenes, what Bobby Kennedy was like, what — you know, the — all these other — I mean, you've really — been part of history.

WILLIAM PEPPER: Yeah, well, there's a sadness there, because the history I've been a part of has been on the decline in terms of the  — in terms of democracy in this republic.  Martin was, like many of us, a believer in this system, and a believer in the hope of American democracy, and he gradually became alienated and frustrated with it, particularly as it affected the slaughter of the innocents and  — and, as a result of American foreign policy.  And when he saw the photographs that I put in front of him on — when I came back from Vietnam, I — I published nothing and developed nothing when I was over there.  I held it all till I came back.  And when — he read the Ramparts piece that came out in January '67, and then I opened the files to him, he actually wept.  The devastation, the burning, the mutilation of just scores and scores of children and women in village after village was — has never been — has never been acknowledged, and there has never been accountability.  And I felt desperately about that, particularly when My Lei, which was just one of hundreds of villages, when the My Lei Massacre came out, and Sy Hersh eventually got the — uh, got it published, and brought it out, I thought that might trigger some serious prosecutions of the aggressors in this country that had led that, that kind of devastation, but it didn't.  And it all passed away.  And I'm determined to do what I can do, anyway, with respect to what we have done to this ancient civilization in Iraq, and that beautiful people, you know, we've just destroyed it, and destroyed them, and as you rightly say, killed over a million, and displaced another couple of million, and just devastated a country and a people, and for what?  On the basis of lies, and the hunger and the desire for oil, I mean, it clearly seems that's what's been behind it.

But Martin was gradually coming in the late Sixties to the awareness that he had to confront Power with the massive power of  — uh — of people, and that was what got him killed because he was — this was non-negotiable for him, he was bringing about half a million people to Washington in Spring of '68 to live in Resurrection City, and to go visit Congress people.  And the army believed, I think quite rightly that, there would — there was probably going to be a revolution, because they weren't going to get put back into the budget the social programs that had been taken out; instead that mass of humanity, impoverished humanity was going to become increasingly angry, and then we would have had probably a revolution in the nation's capital that they didn't have enough troops to put down, and Westmoreland wanted 200,000 more, and they didn't have those for him, they didn't have the troops to put it down, and so the army knew that the only way to stop this from happening was to — was to kill King.  And, uh —

ALEX JONES:  Sir, I would tell you today — we have the government documents, I've interviewed the Marine Corps officers, they have been training for decades, a long strategic plan, starting back under Reagan, but carried by Clinton and others forward, for Martial Law, these Urban Warfare Drills they do, Marines running real checkpoints, is to acclimate us — Bush, in the John Warner Defense Authorization Act says it's for Martial Law, and then in his PDD51, which as you know, the Homeland Security [Committee membership] isn't even allowed to see, in Congress, but the cover sheet says he is the government, I mean, I see them owning both parties, obviously the NeoCons being a particularly virulent expression of this, but I see the Military Industrial Complex knowing they're doing things through globalization that are gonna hurt Americans — I can see them heading off, not just to pass, by killing Martin Luther King or Bobby Kennedy, a peaceful revolution, I see them now in their own revolution against us.

WILLIAM PEPPER: Yeah, I think the country is probably closer to Martial Law than it has ever been in my lifetime, and they have all of the — as you rightly say, they have all the mechanisms in place.  And it's only a question of something to — that could trigger.  And there is only one party, that's also evident.  You're not gonna have any serious — not gonna have any serious opposition. So I think that's right — we live in very perilous times. And I think as the economy gets worse and worse, and from all the economists with whom I speak, there's no question in the minds of many that we're going right back to 1929-1930.  As that, as that happens, there doesn't seem to be any way to reverse this downward plunge, because it make — it permeates ever aspect of economic life in this country.

ALEX JONES:  Corruption!

WILLIAM PEPPER: Well, yeah, corruption — [theme music]

ALEX JONES:  It's just corporate looting and raiding, and they're all leaving the country.  Dr. — Pepper's just amazing, Dr. Wiliam Pepper.  We're gonna come back and get in — to Martin Luther King's murder, and get into Bobby's murder.  So important, tell everyone you know to tune in right now.  His new book is out in paperback, Act of State, dealing with the murder of Dr. King.  We'll be right back. 

[BREAK] [11:51] [Jimmie Vaughn, "Shackles"]

ALEX JONES:  That's Jimmie Vaughn — [music: "Don't want no shackles/Don't want no shackles on me"].  That's right, my friend.  [music: "I say down with Big Brother..."] Mr. Pepper, Dr. Pepper, has agreed to stay with us, about 15 minutes into the next hour, so we have plenty of time to talk about everything that's happening.  We've got a quick break that's coming up here in a minute, we've got a long segment — but sir, let's go ahead and — you've got the floor.  You want to cover Martin first, Bobby first, I mean, of those two what do you want to cover first?

WILLIAM PEPPER: Well, I mean, I suppose we could summarize Martin King's, would be — his assassination was first in time.

ALEX JONES:  OK

WILLIAM PEPPER: Um — uh [laugh]  — it's a long story, as you know.  The case has been an involvement of mine for over thirty years.  And I met him when I came back from Vietnam — he'd read a piece I wrote in Ramparts and saw the photographs of burned children and mutilated civilians, and asked to meet with me, and I did, and opened the files to him, and he was very moved and upset, and asked me to work with him that last year, and we formed the National Conference for New Politics, which was designed to promote a King/[Dr. Benjamin] Spock ticket, and top of that he was planning to bring half a million people to Washington, to protest the removal of funds from the social programs.  So I only knew him, and only worked with him that last year.  Then they killed him, and I just sort of walked away — from politics. 

Bob — Kennedy was — had a suite in Atlanta.  And the night we buried Martin he asked me and some others, Spock and Julian Bond, those, to come up and talk with him about his presidential campaign, and ask — he had asked me to work on it.  I had been Bob Kennedy's citizens' chairman in Westchester County as a very young guy in 1964 when he ran for the senate.  I just decided I wasn't gonna do that, and after they killed Martin I just began — I just walked away from politics.  Nine years later [King's former second-in-command of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Ralph] Abernathy called me to go to the prison and interrogate James Earl Ray in his presence, and [laughs] I thought he'd gone 'round the bend.  I never knew anything about the case, assumed they had gotten the right guy, and like many Americans, just blindly accepted the government's explanation, as we are raised and trained to do, you know.  So I went up, after about six months it took me to try to prepare for that, I read everything I could on the case, then went and spent five hours putting James under enormous stress, and we came away from that five-hour interview convinced — this was in August of '78 — convinced that he was not — he was not guilty of the murder: we didn't know what other role he might have played.  I began — he raised so many questions that I just began to quietly go into Memphis and live an alternative life off and on in the streets to try to get as much shoeleather information as I could.  James agreed to several more interviews —

ALEX JONES:  So you did a bunch of detective work for a long time, drifting around?

WILLIAM PEPPER: Oh, yeah, no, this was — it was really a — at one point, at one point I had twenty-two investigators working for me, and on very specific pieces of the case, they didn't even know each other, and what they were doing.  Uh, uh, I had a team.  But I plowed a lot of — a lot of resources ov— I put about a million dollars of my own money that I earned, you know, practicing, over — over — over twenty-five years.  I guess I put about a million dollars into trying to get to the bottom of it. 

James kept asking me to represent him and I kept refusing, "until", I said, "until I'm sure you had no knowing involvement, I won't do that, I won't represent you".  Finally in 1988, I got to the point, that was now over ten years later, that I became convinced of his total innocence, and had known that he was an unknowing patsy used by the government.  So I agreed to represent him.  I took his case up to the Supreme Court where we were denied certiori [sic — s/b "certiorari"] and, uh, then, I just continued —

ALEX JONES:  By the way, let's be clear, you didn't just believe Ray over a — decades, you spent over a million dollars researching it, track it all back.  Stay there!  [music]  Dr. William Pepper, an amazing individual.  He has lived history, he is living it right now.  We really appreciate him spending time with us today.  Long segment, Doctor, when we come back, plenty of time to break out and tell the story of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King.  And again, folks, love Dr. King, hate him, the point is, this was a black op, this is the shadow government, they're running things today, and they're a danger to all of us.

[BREAK] [17:17] [music — Blue Oyster Cult, "Don't Fear the Reaper"]

ALEX JONES:  The men that killed Martin Luther King, JFK, Bobby — they told the army commandos, and the hired hitmen that were doing it, the FBI officers that were carrying it out, the agents, that it was all for the good of the country.  But now, look what they've done to the country.  The very same sons, and daughters, the same crew, is anti-free market, anti-liberty.  And, we're at the crossroads, ladies and gentlemen.  We're either gonna get out of this tyranny or go deeply into it. 

We can't stand still, there is no sitting on the sideline, there is no sitting on the bench.  Infowars.com, PrisonPlanet.com are the websites.  By the way, the Infowars moneybomb coming up Saturday.  I'll do a special live show, eight to midnight here.   We'll have some special guests joining us. 

Dr. William Pepper is our guest.  This book came out in the hardback, now it's out in paperback, and we'll tell you more about that dealing with the murder of MLK, before he leaves us.  Rigbht now we're getting into MLK.  Then we'll get into Bobby's murder.  And then he's also friends with Hugo Chαvez, has a book coming out about his conversations with him.  So we'll get his take on who Cha — Hugo Chαvez really is, there's a lot of questions about that, and we'll get his perspective before he leaves us, for a few minutes, then when the book comes out soon, hopefully he'll come back for an hour then. 

OK, sir, uh, go ahead, and continue with kind of a synopsis of what you cover in Act of State.

WILLIAM PEPPER: Yeah, well, it — it — as James's lawyer we were frustrated in going thru the court system, and he seemed blocked.  Some — some media colleagues from England suggested to me, why don't we try to do a television trial, a mock trial, unscripted but highly credible, in order to put forward the evidence that we had of James's innocence, and also of course allowing a prosecutor to seek to convict him.  So there was a television trial done in 1993, and it was aired — it was produced by Thames Television of England, who was eventually put out of business by Thatcher, and HBO in the United States. And it ran in England and in the United States for four hours, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Martin's assassination, on April 4th, 1993. 

It took the jury seven and a half hours to find James Earl Ray not guilty.  It was a jury chosen at random, with regular objections, from all over the country.  The judge was a former Federal judge, and the prosecutor was Hickman Ewing, who had been US Attorney in Memphis, and who was quick to remind me that he had won 200 straight criminal convictions — [laughs] — as we prepared to go to trial.  I thought Hickman was gonna have a heart attack when the jury came back, and he saw, for the first time on film, he saw the jury verdict of not guilty, which was kept from everyone at the time. 

So that opened the floodgates.  People started coming forward with information, that never had before, and the investigation took on a whole new life, and the picture started to become increasingly clear.  There was a Memphis Commercial Appeal article by a fellow called Steve Tompkins, former Naval Intelligence officer, who had done an investigative piece on the involvement of military intelligence in surveilling black Americans going back to Martin King's father and mother in the early 20th century.  And in that long piece, there was a tiny little paragraph which said that there was an eight-man sniper unit in Memphis on the day of King's assassination — an Alpha 184 unit, and no one ever explained what they were doing there, because sniper units are not used to suppress riots, or rebellions, they are rather there to kill — that's their function.  But there was just that one tiny reference that Steve put in that piece.  And so I went to him, and badgered him, and he didn't want to have anything to do with going back and talking to those guys — two of them had fled the country, afraid they were gonna be cleaned up, so they went to Mexico.  Finally I convinced him —

ALEX JONES:  Remember we've got an audience that may not know these terms.  That means, y'know, there's a practice to generally kill assassins later, especially if there's an investigation. 

WILLIAM PEPPER: Yes, that's right.  So these — two of these guys had fled.  They, um — for a year and a half, Steve carried messages and questions to them.  He went to Mexico.  They trusted him — they would not meet with me, as I was James Earl Ray's lawyer.  But they would meet with him, and they agreed to answer the questions.  So slowly they put together a picture of what they knew. 

They were a backup unit.  They didn't know that at the time, they were a backup unit, and they came from Camp Shelby in Mississippi, and what happened was, they were briefed at 4:30 in the morning, and they were shown two photographs, one of King, and one of Young, Andrew Young, and who was the second target, that people don't know, in fact Andy was shocked when I revealed that to him.  And they then drove into Memphis and they took up their appointed positions.  There were two sniper units with two spotters, two snipers prepared, but ordered not to fire until they were given the orders.  And what they didn't know was that there was a civilian hit operation that had been developed, and there was a sniper on the ground in the bushes, behind a place called Jim's Grill, which backed onto the Lorraine Motel.

ALEX JONES:  By the way, for those who don't know, studying many other cases, you learn, they always have overlapping, not just for backup and redundancy and fail-safe, but also, if there's an investigation, it gets confusing, and the average simple mind goes, "why would they have a whole bunch of different hit teams?"  And then like JFK, it turns into "Was it Mafia, was it, uh, Pentagon, was it FBI, was it Dallas police, was it Cubans?"  Well, that's how intelligence works: they use everybody.

WILLIAM PEPPER: Yeah, yeah.  And, uh, so Martin was shot, James was manipulated into, he was — he, he — he was profiled and allowed to escape from prison almost a year before the assassination, kept under control, handled by a guy called Raul, who gave him money.  James wanted desperately to leave North America, get out of the country.  And he was a approached by this guy at one point in a bar in Montreal, and was convinced that he would get travel papers, but he had to hang on, and do some jobs for this guy — the guy would give him money, a fellow called Raul would give him money, and so he ran James around the country, kept him under control, kept him in Los Angeles for a long time.  Martin was to have been hit in Los Angeles.  That was the original target city.  They're much more comfortable in some cities than in others because of the degree of intelligence involvement with the local police.

ALEX JONES:  And from what I know, New York and LA, but LA really first, SWAT teams developed, Darryl Gates has been a CIA police force, I've been told by sources they were the first. 

WILLIAM PEPPER: Yeah, yeah.  I think that may be right.  They're certainly well embedded there.  But the snipers indicated that, at the last minute the city, the place was changed, and Memphis was chosen, and then James was moved into the South, into New Orleans, then Birmingham, where he was told to buy a gun.  And they brought him into Memphis, and he was told to rent a room, which he did, and then he was told to get lost, because they, uh, they used the room as a staging ground, and James was kept out of it, and uh — for the duration of the afternoon, as they prepared. 

So anyway, Martin was shot at 6:01, as he stood on the balcony, getting ready to go have dinner with a local preacher.  And that's a whole nother story who that local preacher is, because he's lied over the years about many things. But anyway, they took him down, there were a group of local Black Panther activists who were working with him to help develop the march.  They were told to get out at about twenty minutes to six, about twenty minutes before the killing they were told to remove themselves.  They couldn't understand why, because they had been working cooperatively, and they were just told, well, SCLC wasn't gonna pay your bill anymore, you have to leave, so they just got disgusted —

ALEX JONES:  So let's be clear, you're saying there were operatives inside King's entourage.

WILLIAM PEPPER: Oh, yes, definitely. 

ALEX JONES:  Can you spend a little time on that?

WILLIAM PEPPER: Well, it was a very interesting situation, because when I interviewed each of the Invaders — that was the black group, and they had two rooms there, and I interviewed them, of course, many years later, and they said they couldn't understand why they were being told to leave.  And when one of them asked the matron of the hotel who came up to tell them to depart, "who was it who gave the order" to leave, they were told, well, it was Rev. Jackson.  And they said "Jackson?".  Well, they had nothing to do with Jesse Jackson.  They had been working with Hosea Williams and others but not Jackson.  They couldn't understand why all of a sudden he had inserted himself into the situation requiring that they leave, and when Harrington told me as he looked over her shoulder, he saw Jesse down in the parking lot, looking at his watch.  And, anyway, they just left.

ALEX JONES:  Boy, Jesse Jackson is a real piece o' work, idn't he?  And they gave him all the media attention, and made him the man, and he plays the race politics with them, and divides —

WILLIAM PEPPER: Exactly.

ALEX JONES:  He's somethin' else, idn't he?

WILLIAM PEPPER: Yeah, he went up, I mean, Mrs. King didn't speak to him for about twenty years, I believe, she — because he — he went up and put Martin's blood on a shirt that he then was able to use on the Today show in Chicago the next morning — they spirited him out of there.  Y'know, when I confronted Jesse with that, he just didn't remember anything — anything about it.

ALEX JONES:  Oh, sure.  Do you think they told him to do that, or he just thought up that little bit of theater himself?

WILLIAM PEPPER: I, I have — you mean the blood, and the —

ALEX JONES:  Yeah

WILLIAM PEPPER: I just don't know — I just don't know which way that fell, but it left a very bad feeling with a lot of people, y'know he, he developed and pushed himself that way, but, the incident that's much more sinister is the removal of the Invaders, because they were a loose cannon type of group, they were unpredictable, and they had to be taken out of there, as did one of the black surveillance detectives who was surveilling King, who was primarily a community relations — guy, and they had him in, they removed him from the fire station where they had the balcony under surveillance, and they removed two — the only two black firemen from the fire station were told not to report to work that day.  So they set the stage very well for a sharpshooter, who w—

ALEX JONES:  Yeah, that's key evidence that you just mentioned that blacks in the government apparatus, y'know, anybody who'd be responding in emergency services, they were removed.  That is a key piece of evidence.  Please continue —

WILLIAM PEPPER: Yeah, they took them — they took them all out, took them all away; they removed the police guard from the hotel, and moved it up — uh, stationed it up at the police station — at the fire station, rather, just to have it out of the area.  There was always a team of four black detectives who were protecting Martin King when he came to Memphis.  That team was always in force.  They were not called into duty that day.  So he was left without those four black detectives as well.

So y'know, when you have a cumulative amount of these kind of events, there are no coincidences, this is — this is pretty clear.  So, there was a sharpshooter, who lay in the bushes, and alongside him was a fellow called Loyd Jowers, who was there to take the rifle from him as soon as he fired the shot, which Jowers did.  Jowers ran Jim's Grill, which was the place in the bottom floor of the rooming house that backed onto the bushes.  So Jowers took the gun, ran inside, broke it down in front of a woman who had been his mistress, who worked in the Grill, called Betty Spates, and it took Betty — my goodness, she finally told me the story in 19— December of 1992, she'd kept it all those years, for various reasons, fear possibly, and also she'd been a — Jowers' lover, didn't want to turn him in, so she told the story, others came forward, we really boxed Jowers in with his involvement and he finally broke. 

And that's how we began to get the picture of the local operation, which was planned in his grill, and he was given substantial money by a local mob guy called Frank Loberto, who was one of [JFK killing-involved New Orleans boss Carlos] Marcello's guys.  Marcello had taken a contract on King's life, not knowing about the military backup, but he had taken a contract, and he was — he used his local guys and their connection with the police to carry it out. 

So Martin was felled by a single bullet, the guy who shot him went down over the wall, was picked up in a Memphis police car in traffic, and was taken — uh — taken to safety, and the FBI's role in that case was to — as it is in many of these situations, was to cover up.  They weren't involved in the organization of the actual killing, their job was to control the investigation, which they did.  They controlled the investigation.  And managed a coverup that has persisted, I have to say, Alex, it's persisted to this day, because the official story is still the one that gets put forward all the time, there is a museum, a Civil Rights museum that has James Earl Ray's throwdown gun which has never — it was not the murder weapon, it was a throwdown gun with his palmprint on it so they could nail him, has it in a big cabinet [laughs] as though 't was the murder weapon, they perpe— and that museum is controlled by some of the people who have benefited from King's death.  So it's a — a, uh, the official story is still out there.  The book you're talking about —

ALEX JONES:  An ongoing — an ong—

WILLIAM PEPPER: The book you're talking about has never been reviewed in America.  And the book before it, Orders to Kill, has never been reviewed in America.  There's a fringe review of Act of State with a book of Dexter King's in the Post, but it's never been reviewed, and mainstream corporate media, whether it's television, radio, or the print media, will not deal with this story.  The Times book editor, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, was going to do a review of Orders to Kill in 1995, and he told the  — one of the editors of the publisher, he was told to pull the review, first time in 25 years he'd been ordered to pull a review. 

ALEX JONES:  Well, the Church Committee came out and proved that the CIA is in control of the major publishing industries [Operation Mockingbird, q.v.], or — or can steer a lot of it, and they have key people in the media everywhere, and I've talked to a lot of authors who have had New York Times bestsellers who've been told, because their book is anti-establishment it's not gonna be published by a major publisher, and again, people who think this is a supposed "free society" need to understand, that there's this larger program going on, these fables, these narratives, these dogmas continue.  But the good news is, and I'd like to get your take on this briefly before we go to break, is that regardless of their attempt to cover it up, I would say it's failed, major polls, 80+% believe the government killed King, 90+% believe they killed JFK, 90% believe they killed Bobby.  What's your take on that, Mr. Pepper, Dr. Pepper?

WILLIAM PEPPER: Well, I think the pe— yes, I think you're right, I think the people closer to it at this point in time were all — I think there is this enormous skepticism that — late in coming but that is there, with respect to people being in  —

ALEX JONES:  OK, stay there, stay there, gotta break, I want to come back and talk more about that and get into — Bobby.

[BREAK][35:53 music: Sting "Every Breath You Take"]

ALEX JONES:  Secretly, in every US city, it's now declassified somewhat, but I knew about it a decade ago, it freaked me out, when I found out that the military was training to break up our families, take our children, confiscate our firearms.  And now they do open — quote — "drills" that go live and search our vehicles, and take us to jail, and — we're gonna be covering that in the next hour.  Dr. William Pepper is our guest, and Act of State is his book, now out in paperback, about the murder of RFK.  There's also a companion website, it's, uh — oh, Martin Luther King, excuse me, we're about to talk about Bobby Kennedy in a minute.  Um — he, um — well, we'll just go over all that coming up.  Finishing up with Martin Luther King, sir:

WILLIAM PEPPER: Yes, well, the new evidence, it brought the King family in full flame into the case, and they called for a trial for James, and supported that effort.  A judge, Joe Brown, a very independent black judge in Memphis, decided that he was gonna hear evidence, started moving in the direction, and just as he, in my view, was on the verge of giving a new trial, for James, uh, ordering a new trial for James, he was in the shadows, so he was taken off the case, the court of — the Criminal Court of Appeals removed him from the case, and that effectively ended that possibility.  James died in 1998 of liver disease.  I had arranged a liver transplant for him at the University of Pittsburgh hospital and pleaded for the right at no cost to the state to take him there for that transplant and save his life, and was denied by the courts in Tennessee, which was, they were effectively giving him a death sentence at that point in time.  And so he died in '98.  In 1999 I counseled the King family to bring a lawsuit against Loyd Jowers for the purpose of bringing out all the evidence that we had developed over the previous quarter of a century, uh, just about a quarter of a century. 

So the family sued Jowers, he had admitted to Dexter King and myself, and then to Dexter and Andy in separate interviews exactly how the killing went down.  And so we could bring action against him.  We got around the statute of limitations because there was new evidence that was never available before.  And we sued him in civil court in Memphis in 1999.  I represented the King family against Loyd Jowers and others which included government agents — uh, unnamed government agents.

It took the jury — the trial went on for thirty days, Alex, 4,000 pages of transcripts and exhibits, it's an amazing history of the entire assassination of Martin King, and how it went.  In fact, seventy witnesses laid out the whole operation.  It was coordinated by the military, by a Colonel in the 902nd Military Intelligence Group in the bowels of the Pentagon, he coordinated everything.  He had a working relationship with the Mafia.  He also brought Psychological Operation teams on the roof of the fire station to photograph everything that was going on.  They even shot the shooter as he was lowering his gun.  He had military intelligence groups throughout, he had Army Security Agency people recording everything, they had all the rooms bugged —

ALEX JONES:  Stay there, we're gonna come right back in seventy seconds, Dr. Pepper, right here on the GCN radio network, we still got two hours, folks, other guests coming up.

[BREAK][music: John Williams The Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme) from "Star Wars"]

ALEX JONES:  It's not his official website, but he says he likes the work that the gentleman is doing, its actofstate.org, about his newest book, now out in paperback, Act of State, The Murder of Martin Luther King.  I want to get in to Bobby here in a minute, a little bit about Hugo Chαvez.  We’ve got this segment and part of the next.  We really appreciate Dr. Pepper spending time with us.  OK William, please continue.

WILLIAM PEPPER: All right, well just very quickly, it took the jury in the civil trial 59 minutes to find that Martin King was killed as a result of a conspiracy involving agents of the government of the United States, State of Tennessee, and City of Memphis.  70% of the liability went to those official government agents, and 30% liability went to Loyd Jowers, so that effectively, y'know, brought the King case full circle in terms of what happened.  There's some ongoing that's going out, there's a third book on it that will come out in about a year that will just — all the new evidence just supports it, but it will give more details as to what happened.  But it was a sad, sad day that we had to reveal details of the involvement of the government of the United States.

ALEX JONES:  What was it like to have trusted your government before and then, not even be an excited participant, but to have to look into it, and then find out that this is the case?  I mean, how did that change your world view about how things really work?

WILLIAM PEPPER: Well, of course, it made me terribly cynical in terms of electoral politics and of the possibility of changing this Republic, and the present circumstances.  I'm very much a Jeffersonian, in terms of the belief that you need radical reconstruction of the political/economic structure every twenty years in order to sweep it clean and to get rid of all the special interests that dominate every aspect of life.

ALEX JONES:  I'm certainly in the same boat as you, and — and, sometimes I wish things weren't conspiracies, or weren't corrupt or weren't bad, and I go investigate, and it's almost always worse than I thought, Doc.  Uh, I mean, it's insane! Your take on 9/11 and how it's been used to turn us into a furtherance of a police state, $7 trillion looted ($4 trillion missing from the Pentagon, $3 trillion from the war), the pension funds gone, I mean, they're now openly engaging in corruption that dwarfs anything previous.  I'm wondering what the next wave's gonna look like.

WILLIAM PEPPER: Well, I think we're on the road to the, to the end of democracy in this Republic, unless there's some drastic changes, and it could be, with the economic downfall of this system, that the forced reconstruction of the Republic will finally come about, because it's gonna hit everybody, right in their living rooms and their kitchens.  The people at some point will have had too much, and we may then see drastic reconstructive efforts.

ALEX JONES:  Well, I agree with you.  I don't think the thugs out there and some of the authoritarians who like all this who are low level — do you understand, it's Liberty and Free Market and Freedom, and we're not perfect but we're better than other places, that's given us all this.  And this tyranny, this corporatocracy, or crony capitalism, that isn't real capitalism, it — it has — it's like a cancer, and it’s just growing, growing, growing, growing, and either they're gonna totally take over, or we're gonna somehow use their collapse.  I mean, I agree with you: I think they're out o'c— I don't think they're in control, Dr. Pepper.

WILLIAM PEPPER: Well, I think they're — I think we're — No, they're not in control of this now. It's spiralling downward, and it is out of control.  There's no question.  They may well not be able to salvage it, and it's questionable whether the type of reforms that happened during the New Deal will ever be sufficient again to restore this system.

ALEX JONES:  Well, you and I could probably even argue about what form of system we like as far as largesse and the public treasury, but at the same time, we know that corporate Fascism destroys Freedom and Wealth, and so we're no doubt in agreement against that system.

Let's come back briefly and get into Bobby, and a little bit about Hugo Chαvez, who you're personal friends with.  An amazing interview, Dr. William Pepper.

[BREAK][music: John Williams The Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme) from "Star Wars"]

ALEX JONES:  Got Richard Gage, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth coming up in the next hour.  Got the fellow running the Infowarsmoneybomb.com popping in here in about seven minutes, when Dr. Pepper leaves us.  And, uh, we'll also take some calls when Gage is on with us.  I got a bunch of other news we're gonna be covering.  Uh, Doc, getting into Bobby, I mean I know that you mainly focused in on what happened with Martin Luther King, but now looking at the Bobby Kennedy's assassination, we always had the coroner in LA saying "they shot him from behind", multiple times in the back, back of the head, it wasn't Sirhan, we always had witnesses, we always were told all these CIA guys were there, now they've released all this film footage, BBC, of them in the crowd, and of the witnesses, and the guy working at the big spy plane base, y'know, who shoots — who reportedly was the one, Mr. Caesar, that shot Bobby in the back, (a) when did you wake up to this, (b) why did they want Bobby dead, and then a synopsis of how they did it.

WILLIAM PEPPER: Well, I mean, they wanted Bobby dead because he was going to be President of the United States, and he was going to reopen the investigation of his brother's assassination.  Bobby was one of the original conspiracy buffs.  He believed that his brother was the victim of a conspiracy, and he had never gotten satisfactory answers, and he at one point had told a major magazine editor that was a friend of his that he needed the White House in order to open this investigation and get to the bottom of it.  So that was a part of it.  but it went beyond that.  He was also going to cut the Oil Depletion Allowance, as was his brother, and take hundreds of millions of dollars over a period of years out of the pockets of the major oil companies.  He was going to withdraw the troops from Vietnam and end that war once and for all, which he had become convinced was a mistake.  He was treading on all of the powerful toes.  His position was going to the bottom line of the major corporations in America.  So, he had to be taken out.  And it was, uh, I believe he probably knew that.

In terms of the details, Tom Noguchi's, the medical examiner's report, as you correctly said, did indicate that Bob was killed with a bullet that hit with — was fired less than an inch from behind his right ear.  There were four other shots fired at him — three other shots fired at him, four in total, all from the rear and at close range.  One went thru a shoulder pad, one lodged in the neck, one went thru the chest cavity, in addition to the one that hit him behind the ear.  So there was no question, also in terms of the witnesses, there, about nineteen witnesses, all saw Sirhan never get closer than three to five feet to the front of Bob Kennedy, and his shooting arm was pinned to a steam table after he got off two shots, so he was just firing blindly. 

So that's — the answer to your first question, that's why they killed him, and, you're right, he was shot from the rear, and, you're right, there was a medical report, an autopsy report that indicated that right from the beginning!  But you know, Alex, Bob Kennedy's assassination was never properly investigated.  There was never a defense put forward for Sirhan.  His lawyers pled him guilty, and this is even in exchange for the plea, to get a reduced sentence.  It was incredible!  They stipulated guilt, and then they argued over what the sentence should be, rather than having agreement on that.  And Sirhan remembers virtually nothing about the critical times related to that assassination.  He has all the indications that he was under hypnotic suggestion, that he was controlled, and that he was put on cue, and to this day, he has never been brought out of that, that, uh, hypnotism.  So I think it's pretty clear that the defense just totally didn't do their job early on.  Grant Cooper the lead counsel was subject to a pending indictment — um, a Federal indictment!  They had — they had him!  And he was going to do what he was required to do.  I became aware of this —

ALEX JONES:  Have you seen this new BBC documentary?

WILLIAM PEPPER: Sorry?

ALEX JONES:  Have you seen the new BBC documentary?

WILLIAM PEPPER: Yeah, I saw Shane O'Sullivan's work, and I talked to Shane at length about it.  He's not satisfied me, with it, and he's not satisfied himself with respect to two of the CIA people he thought was there, but one he is quite convinced about, and that is this fellow, Frank Morales, who has at various times indicated that he was in Dallas, and he was also in (Humble Texas[?])

ALEX JONES:  Well we now have E. Howard Hunt's deathbed confession — by the way, I have video footage that hasn't been seen yet, it's gonna be in a film, not just the audio.  In fact, I keep forgetting [addressing staff] We've gotta get that on YouTube — we've been authorized, it's dangerous to have that, let's go ahead and get that out now (I just don't have the staff it's so crazy up here.  I'm like sitting on top of a giant stick of dynamite)

What do you think about E Howard Hunt coming out, and saying "yeah, I was there, yeah, I ran the operation"?

WILLIAM PEPPER: Well, yeah, I mean, it's a — yeah.  I'm not familiar with all the details of Hunt's, uh, of Hunt's statement, but he clearly was a guy very much involved in the mix of all of these things. 

ALEX JONES:  Well, lemme just let the Feds know, so they don't have to break in here, or do anything.  And you'll see it.  We're so busy, but I'm just gonna go ahead and hav it put out.  Been meaning to.  He just says the exact same thing he said in the audio tape that's online, and that you see in the Rolling Stone magazine, just that [imitating Hunt] "I was a bench warmer; Cord Meyer didn’t like Kennedy, and so he hired the team.  It was gonna be in Miama, but was in Dallas".  So he just ba— Dr. Pepper, have you heard that, uh, tape?

WILLIAM PEPPER: No, I haven't.  No.  Haven't.

ALEX JONES:  Yeah, well I have the video of it, too, before his dad died.  It's absolutely amazing.  And to tell you how busy I am and how crazy all my evidence is, that's like at the bottom of the stack, with all the insanity we have.  No, it's E. Howard Hunt.  And it's not that I would believe E. Howard Hunt, but we have everybody at Dallas saying it.  We have the Dallas Times Herald, Dallas Morning News taking photos of him as a tramp.  We know he ran black-op murders, assassinations, overthrows all over the world.  And so we always knew it was him doing it, and that came out.  And then he just admits it.

WILLIAM PEPPER: yes

ALEX JONES:  I mean, it — it's incredible.  But he admits it, his son said, because he's proud of it! 

WILLIAM PEPPER: It's interesting, yeah.

ALEX JONES:  Y'know, he'd joke around the table, "I can't wait till we get that little bastard, Bobby" — "finish the job, get the little one".  And then after he was killed he was making jokes around the dinner table.  But he wasn't part of killing Bobby.

WILLIAM PEPPER: No, I  — he doesn't seem, it doesn't seem as though — but, you know, I've just begun on Bobby.  I've agreed to represent Sirhan, because his lawyer died, whom I knew, and consulted with him over the years, and when that happened, and they brought the file to me, and the new ballistic forensic evidence that Bob Joling and Phil van Praag have come out with, that clinched it for me.  I don't know how familiar you are with —

ALEX JONES:  Yes, one of them is the head of the forensic society.  We've had 'em both on — uh, two — and, yeah, no, I mean they — clearly, two different guns,  and when you got, twenty-something shots, which is more than double what his gun can shoot.

WILLIAM PEPPER: Yeah.  No, there's no question that from the ballistics, from the forensics side, that Sirhan has been cleared of the murder of Bob Kennedy.  The problem is, they have five other charges of attempted murder against him, which should never have been allowed.  And —

ALEX JONES:  But to be clear here, you're gonna be trying to represent him, and get him a new trial?

WILLIAM PEPPER: Yeah.  Yes, we're going to be pressing for that.  I must say, we're running into obstruction already.  I — I — I —  it's a mixed blessing when I get involved in a case like this, because — they then start to batten down the hatches, and they make things ever more difficult.

ALEX JONES:  Dr. Pepper, we're out of time.  We're going to break in about two minutes, and I've already held you over     aqlonger than you said, but, just, uh, come back in a few months when your new book about Chαvez is back, please, but in the minutes we've got left, so, Hugo Chavez is for real, according to you?

WILLIAM PEPPER: There's no question about it.  He's a, he's a, he's a guy that is totally, totally committed to alleviating poverty in his country, and dealing with 80% of the people being impoverished.  He's got 20,000 medical clinics in villages that have never before seen a doctor, he's been pouring enormous sums of money into education.  It's free from cradle to — all the way to the grave of graduate school.  He's democratizing the country at the grass roots, each local village has its own council, they have their own budgets —

ALEX JONES:  There's no doubt, he's doing what Communists have never done, he's a Socialist.  He's taking big government land, breaking it up, giving it with the deeds to the people.  I mean, I wouldn't even call that Socialism, I would — I — I

WILLIAM PEPPER: It's not Socialism.  He's made a mistake with that, I have to say, and I told him this.  He — what he's doing is not Socialism, because the State is not involved in running these operations.  It is more aptly called Cooperativism, because the dominant entity in the country there now is the cooperative entity.  For example the sugar factory is run by the workers and the investors and the management.  The participate on the Board, they run the operation together.  The State does not run it, so he's — he's, I'm afraid, [laughs] made a mistake calling it Socialism.

ALEX JONES:  When is your book coming out?

WILLIAM PEPPER: Well, I mean, we're still finishing up — it'll  — it'll probably, Alex, it'll probably be about nine months to a year.

ALEX JONES:  Oh!  We can't wait that long.  Can I have you back in the next month, and then we'll have you back when the book comes out, to — to — to — to talk about Hugo Chavez, I know you know him personally, he's attended one of your classes at Oxford, and he's a big fan of you, and you really know him well.  Can I have you back on, so we can really get, y'know, William Pepper's take on Hugo Chavez?

WILLIAM PEPPER: Yeah, sure.  I have probably prevented his death on two occasions, I must tell you that — two assassination attempts by the American —

ALEX JONES:  Oh, my gosh, well, how soon, we don't want to wait. They could do it any time.  Can I get my producer to call you back, and like, maybe set you up in the next month?

WILLIAM PEPPER: Yeah, we could try to set that up, sure.

ALEX JONES:  OK, I'm gonna have — in fact, no time like the present, Doctor, we're gonna let you go now, I'm gonna have Trey call you  — right now, let's look at your book to get you set up to come on about Hugo Chavez, OK?

WILLIAM PEPPER: OK, delighted.

ALEX JONES:  OK.  The book, ladies and gentlemen, is Act of the State — Act of State, and actofstate.org is a website you can check out and find out more.  Uh, thank you, Dr. William Pepper for coming on with us.

WILLIAM PEPPER: You bet.  My pleasure, Alex.