Complete Crap
This book is complete made up crap...written by a hairdresser (yes I said a hairdresser not a writer or author or someone with intelligence) The publisher who took on this must be the biggest morons on the planet...the Lyons Press, it just goes to show that there are alot of 6th rate publishers with such a low caliber of talent....they don't deserve even to be on Amazon.
Complete trash
You certainly do get another side of the story with this book. It is written by convicted assasin James Earl Ray's brother, and boy, does he lay out some whoppers. You would have to believe in about three different major conspiracy theories to wind up with the conclusion that John Ray comes up with. The cia warped Jame's mind with LSD, hired the mob with FBI approval to get a hit man to kill MLK jr and use James Earl as a patsy.
Why did James leave finger prints all over the place and his gun behind? Because he was a not too bright con man.
Unsubstantiated allegations, assertions with no proof or facts to back them up. If there was another gunman as stated, what evidence is there to back it up? None is provided.
Whatya expect, it's his brother. Not likely he's going to come out and admit James Earl killed one of the most important and influential Americans of all times.
I kept reading this like one would a bad sci-fi book - just to see how outlandish the author dared to be. That's the only value this book had to me. Frankly, I'd skip it altogether.
Another Side of the Story
John Larry Ray's oldest brother was James Earl Ray (p.1). John spent 25 years in federal prison and now lives in Illinois. John claims he was imprisoned because he knew too much about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr on April 4, 1968. Lyndon Barsten is a historian who frequently lectures about the assassination. This is a very readable book that is fast-paced like a novel, except it is based on fact. John begins by telling about the Ray family history and culture, and debunks the stories reported in the Corporate Media. John gives the facts as he witnessed them. The Ray brothers were often in trouble and in prison. John claims his brother was a "patsy" like Oswald. He tells what he knows and what he was told by his brother James.
John says there was "no evidence that Jimmy killed King" because the Feds didn't use it in the extradition proceedings (p.128). James had to plead guilty to escape the death sentence (p.129). Was there a conspiracy to murder Martin Luther King (p.131)? A famous lawyer takes a criminal case for "free advertising" (p.134). Should James have gotten a new trial (p.135)? Were there mysterious deaths associated with this case (p.136)? Chapter 8 tells of John's conviction for conspiracy (summarized on page 149). William H. Webster was both the FBI and CIA chief after convicting John (p.151). Do you have to "bend the Constitution" (p.153)? Did two journalists, Bill Slater and Louis Lomax, die under suspicious circumstances (p.158)? Both investigated the King assassination.
In October 1974 James got an evidentiary hearing in an attempt for a new trial. Herb MacDonnell testified as an expert witness to say the shot that killed King could not have come from Ray's room (p.162). Did the King family question the Federal version (p.164)? Are the mentally ill recruited as assassins (p.165)? Would a Federal judge be bumped off for political reasons (p.168)? James was never tried for his escape attempt (p.173). There was a problem about James' money during 1967-68 (p.175). Is reality irrelevant (p.179)? John says he was the victim of a "Federal Vendetta" (Chapter 11). Was he convicted for "not picking up someone on the highway who was found not guilty of robbing a bank" (p.190)? Does greasy food destroy your liver (p.191)?
The importance of this book is its presentation of a counterpoint to the Establishment Media version. "Only one in five people believe the mainstream media." If the rifle bought by James did not match the bullet that struck Dr. King (p.115) that would establish James as a "patsy". The 'Bibliography' lists the articles, books, and other references to this event.
RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "JAMES EARL RAY: CIA/FBI/MAFIA "PATSY" OR MARTIN LUTHER KING ASSASSIN?"
I must start off this review by stating for the record that I have never been one of those "CONSPIRACY NUTS". In fact I have never even paid such claims a second thought. I even made fun of Oliver Stone. But the detail provided in this book by James Earl Ray's brother, John Larry Ray and Lyndon Barsten, a lay historian is quite compelling! John takes the reader all the way back through the entire history of the Ray family, "warts" and all. In fact the "warts" (criminal activity) are an essential element that adds veracity to the conspiratorial intersection of the CIA, FBI, Mafia and the United States Government. Aiding John's real-life firsthand knowledge regarding the people, organizations and events that culminated in Martin Luther King's (MLK) assassination is Lyndon's expert use of the "FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT" (FOIA) which freed up TENS OF THOUSANDS OF NEW PAGES OF NEW MATERIALS ON THE MLK ASSASSINATION.
When James went into the Army he became a military policeman "for a year and a half in the 382nd MP Battalion. Later, he joined a new organization largely formed out of the old OSS, (Office of Strategic Services) which had been the Army's wartime intelligence service", but after 1947, the outfit was generally known as the CIA. "When James joined the Central Intelligence Agency, he was given a new U.S. Army serial number." James involvement in the Army with the OSS/CIA and his civilian criminal contacts would haunt and control him for the rest of his life. James would later say: "When you join the OSS, it's like joining the Mafia, you never leave." According to the authors, the CIA is probably the closest thing to a worldwide Mafia that ever existed. James was assigned a "handler" that would manipulate and direct him the rest of his life. "James would frequently say that when he joined the Army, it put him on the road to ruin. From the time he left the service in 1948 until his death in 1998, James Earl Ray spent forty-three of those fifty years in prison." In my opinion, if it wasn't for the FOIA the things I'm about to tell you would seem like science fiction. "Documents clearly indicate that the CIA was busy trying to reprogram people, and it was doing it in 1948. Several thousand mostly financial documents on mind control, drugs, and many other subjects the public would consider crazy survived a document-destruction project ordered by the director of Central Intelligence, Richard Helms, and Sidney Gottlieb, head of mind control studies, as they left the CIA in 1973. Today you can get the surviving several thousand pages of CIA mind control documents on three CD's that detail the bizarre experiments done in the name of "national security." The Army had their own programs that paralleled the CIA's: tens of thousands of surviving government documents detail, among other subjects, how they endeavored to create HUMAN ROBOTS to be used as killing machines. The CIA's own documents say it best. This document, "Hypnosis and Covert Operations" (written May 5, 1955) is released through the FOIA by the CIA as MORI 428311." "The CIA's MK-Ultra brainwashing program included feeding Army soldier's mescaline, sodium pentothal, depressants, amphetamines and LSD both on base and at local bars."
On many of the occasions that the post-military James was ordered to report to his "handler" he was directed to smuggle weapons in and out of Mexico. The potential reader should be made aware that the CIA and FBI had a very close working relationship with the Mafia. "They used the Mob for clandestine operations so that they could maintain plausible deniability if the operation went wrong." Just a few of the documented examples are Lucky Luciano in World War II and the planned assassination of Castro in Cuba. So because of James's relationship with certain mob figures, when he met his "handler" in the time leading up to the MLK assassination he was led to believe he was going to be a "wheel-man" in a diamond heist. (In fact one of the hardest things for the government to cover-up was the money they gave James to keep him available and indebted to them when the conspiracy was questioned years later.) He was even directed to buy the rifle that the government would attempt to say killed MLK. The flophouse bathroom that the government said James shot MLK from was proven to be too narrow to fit the length of the rifle in at the proper angle without James either making a ten-inch-deep hole through the wall or hanging out of the window.
It gets more insane from there as FOIA documents later proved that while James was given a lawyer from a government approved list, the FBI was secretly giving an author bogus incriminating evidence about James to be published in "LOOK" and "LIFE" magazine before James ever got his "fair" trial. By this time Coretta Scott King "was now openly and publicly beginning to discuss her suspicions of government conspiracy in her husband's death and in the death of her brother-in-law." Add to this, Judges about to approve an appeal dying of heart attacks, new lawyers handling James's case dying of heart attacks, and witnesses dying of heart attacks. NOTE: "One of the most common methods used by intelligence agencies for murder is HEART ATTACKS!" There is so much more documented detail in this expose that even if you start reading this book with a closed-mind... by the end of this book it will be opened to the possibility that...???
(4 reviews)
