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<http://www.versobooks.com/books/nopqrs/nopq-titles/pepper_w_act_state.shtml>
An Act of State The Execution of Martin Luther King by William F. Pepper [Verso, 2003]
William Pepper was a young journalist, just back from Vietnam, when he first met Martin Luther King Jr. His photographs and first-hand accounts of the war prompted King's unflinching commitment to oppose it. On 15 April 1967 Pepper proposed an alternative to the re-election of Lyndon Johnson to a cheering New York crowd. Dr. Benjamin Spock was to be King's running mate highlighting an anti-poverty and antiwar agenda. A year later Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. The movement for social and economic change in the US has never been substantially, successfully revived.
Doubts raised from an initial ten-year investigation and hours of interrogations of James Earl Ray prompted Pepper to take up his case. The King family, persuaded by the growing evidence, joined his struggle in 1996. At the 1999 trial seventy witnesses under oath set out the details of the conspiracy and the jury took an hour to find for the King family. It was ruled that a wide-ranging conspiracy existed and that government agents were involved. The story was effectively buried.
An Act of State lays out, in detail, the facts of the case as it evolved. These tell a tragic story of King's powerful and significant radicalism, government plans for his execution that involved the military and the FBI, media cover-ups, and the corporate forces that were already claiming their hold on the nation's polity.
"One juror, David Morthy, said after the trial, 'We all thought it was a cut-and-fried case with the evidence that Mr. Pepper brought to us Š everyone from the CIA, military involvement, and Jowers was involved.'" - New York Times
"For a quarter of a century, Bill Pepper conducted an independent investigation of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. He opened his files to our family, encouraged us to speak with the witnesses, and represented our family in the civil trial against the conspirators. The jury affirmed his findings, providing our family with a long-sought sense of closure and peace, which had been denied by official disinformation and cover-ups. Now the findings of his exhaustive investigation and additional revelations from the trial are presented in the pages of this important book. We recommend it highly to everyone who seeks the truth about Dr. King's assassination." - Coretta Scott King
William F. Pepper is an English barrister and an American lawyer. He convenes a seminar on International Human Rights at Oxford University and maintains practices in the US and the UK. He is the author of three other books and numerous articles.