Latest / Conspiracy! The Show / That Time MLK's Family Sued the Government and Won
Transcript
- 0:10Speaker 1: Win True Insurance, gad, I'm True Truth. I'm a check
- 0:14Speaker 1: out Wurance Good True.
- 0:15Speaker 2: Thanks. Hey, everybody, welcome to Conspiracy The Show. I'm your
- 0:36Speaker 2: hostt Adam Todd Brown joining me his co host this week. Ooh,
- 0:39Speaker 2: my favorite host of all no co hosts. But I
- 0:42Speaker 2: do have a fantastic guest, Cory Robinson's here.
- 0:45Speaker 1: How's it going, man?
- 0:46Speaker 3: Hi, everybody, good to see you. Even though you can't
- 0:49Speaker 3: see me.
- 0:50Speaker 1: You all know him, you all love him.
- 0:52Speaker 2: He's been on the show before and a bunch of
- 0:54Speaker 2: other podcasts that we do. Corey, thank you for doing
- 0:57Speaker 2: the pod today. Oh No, we're talking about a thing
- 1:01Speaker 2: that I've brought up a bunch on this podcast, but
- 1:04Speaker 2: I've never really done a full episode about it. I
- 1:08Speaker 2: did write a Cracked article way way back in the
- 1:11Speaker 2: day about conspiracy theories that did actually happen, and boy
- 1:16Speaker 2: do people love to borrow from that article. But this
- 1:19Speaker 2: was one of the stories I included in that. We
- 1:22Speaker 2: are talking about the family of doctor Martin Luther King,
- 1:26Speaker 2: Junior and their lawsuit that they filed against the government
- 1:31Speaker 2: of the United States and a man named Lloyd Jowers
- 1:35Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety seven. I believe they filed it and
- 1:39Speaker 2: the verdict came down in nineteen ninety nine, and the
- 1:43Speaker 2: verdict of that trial was Lloyd Jowers conspired with government
- 1:48Speaker 2: agencies to kill Martin Luther King Junior. Had you ever
- 1:52Speaker 2: heard anything about this lawsuit?
- 1:54Speaker 3: I heard about the lawsuit just in passing and just
- 1:57Speaker 3: as both a black man and a comedian. People just
- 2:00Speaker 3: gonna throw random facts out at you and be like,
- 2:02Speaker 3: did you know that Martin Luther King his family sued
- 2:05Speaker 3: the government and won? And I was like, not really
- 2:07Speaker 3: and that I looked it up and like, oh shit,
- 2:08Speaker 3: they sued the government in one because I didn't really
- 2:11Speaker 3: look into the specifics of it, but I just googled
- 2:13Speaker 3: it to see if he was just saying any bullshit
- 2:15Speaker 3: or whatnot. And I was like, get out of here. Yeah,
- 2:18Speaker 3: And it's in line with everything that was happening with
- 2:20Speaker 3: the FBI and whatnot in the sixties and seventies and
- 2:23Speaker 3: systematically taking out the black panthers, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X,
- 2:28Speaker 3: just about everybody important in black history.
- 2:30Speaker 2: Oh yeah, just anyone who was even sort of progressive
- 2:33Speaker 2: got it in the sixties.
- 2:35Speaker 3: Bred and mc garver's, the Kennedy's.
- 2:38Speaker 2: What a fucking time to be alive or not? Yeah,
- 2:42Speaker 2: exactly what a time to be unalive? Yeah, James Earl
- 2:48Speaker 2: Ray is historically the person who killed Martin Luther King Junior.
- 2:53Speaker 2: That is what history has always taught us. But he
- 2:57Speaker 2: has maintained his innocence all the way up until he died.
- 3:01Speaker 2: But starting about a year after the killing of doctor King,
- 3:06Speaker 2: James Lray changed his story and said his confession was
- 3:10Speaker 2: coerced his lawyer pressured him into it. Also in that
- 3:15Speaker 2: he was actually innocent. And that's one of the things
- 3:19Speaker 2: that bothers me about this theory, and we'll get to
- 3:21Speaker 2: it more later, but just the fact that he changed
- 3:24Speaker 2: his confession. A lot of people now when they look
- 3:28Speaker 2: at this story in this new version of events, they're like, yeah,
- 3:32Speaker 2: but he already confessed once. And we have decades and
- 3:35Speaker 2: decades of the police coercing confessions out of people. By now,
- 3:40Speaker 2: we see him do it in true crime shows. We
- 3:42Speaker 2: know how they do it.
- 3:43Speaker 1: So I don't give a shit if he changed his story.
- 3:45Speaker 3: But who would ever think the police would would force
- 3:47Speaker 3: someone to do something that wasn't true to get a
- 3:50Speaker 3: confession and whatnot? That doesn't happen at all. Also to
- 3:54Speaker 3: change your confession from killing Martin Luther King as a
- 3:58Speaker 3: white man in the nineteen sixties, you have to be like,
- 4:02Speaker 3: I won't say you're innocent, but if something's up, because
- 4:05Speaker 3: that's one of the few things you can go to
- 4:07Speaker 3: jail for in the South, and you might be better
- 4:11Speaker 3: off in jail than out on the streets because that's
- 4:14Speaker 3: like killing pedophiles around gang members like they're gonna treat
- 4:17Speaker 3: you like a king. They love you for that. If
- 4:19Speaker 3: you kill Martin Luther King, the person that was trying
- 4:22Speaker 3: to get equality for black people but unify all people,
- 4:25Speaker 3: and you're racist. You just did d D. You ain't
- 4:28Speaker 3: never gotta pay for soups, honey buns and nothing. So
- 4:31Speaker 3: we got you over here.
- 4:32Speaker 2: Yeah, I bet he was flush with ramen noodles till
- 4:34Speaker 2: the day he died. I do wonder if he was
- 4:38Speaker 2: living like Escobar in prison, just fucking eating steak and
- 4:42Speaker 2: shit because all those racists thought he killed Martin Luther King.
- 4:45Speaker 3: Yeah, the KKK is cut by and just drop by
- 4:48Speaker 3: tribute every few seconds, you know some of the Yeah,
- 4:50Speaker 3: every bland food you can think of, help yourself.
- 4:53Speaker 1: So everyone should know the official version of events. But
- 4:57Speaker 1: if not. The short one is James L.
- 4:59Speaker 2: Ray is alleged to have shot and killed doctor Martin
- 5:02Speaker 2: Luther King while he was standing on the balcony of
- 5:06Speaker 2: a motel in Memphis called the Lorraine Motel. And starting
- 5:11Speaker 2: around nineteen ninety seven, Mlka's family, including his widow, Coretta
- 5:16Speaker 2: Scott King, began voicing their concerns about James Eorlray having
- 5:21Speaker 2: been set up and started demanding a new investigation. And
- 5:26Speaker 2: here's my question about James Olray and how he was caught.
- 5:30Speaker 2: And this is for any skeptics out there who are
- 5:33Speaker 2: like the government would never lie to us. Of course,
- 5:35Speaker 2: James Olray is the person who did the shooting. He
- 5:39Speaker 2: is often described as a career criminal, but he's a
- 5:44Speaker 2: career petty criminal. He wasn't a violent criminal, but still
- 5:48Speaker 2: a career criminal. He was caught because he left the
- 5:52Speaker 2: gun at the scene wrapped in a towel or a
- 5:55Speaker 2: blanket or something or paper, and it had his fingerprints
- 5:59Speaker 2: on it. What a career your criminal do that? Or
- 6:01Speaker 2: would they know to take the fucking gun with them.
- 6:04Speaker 2: I don't get it.
- 6:05Speaker 3: I don't understand why you leave a gun wrapped in
- 6:07Speaker 3: a towel. That's not conspicuous at all. Also, just as
- 6:11Speaker 3: a side note, every time I read or hear James
- 6:15Speaker 3: Earl Ray, I think James Earl Jones, And that's a
- 6:18Speaker 3: much funnier version of events. Someone where at someone deep
- 6:21Speaker 3: voice leaving the scene of the crime.
- 6:24Speaker 2: That would be funny if James Earl Jones actually did
- 6:27Speaker 2: it and they just fucked up the name somehow.
- 6:30Speaker 3: That was like James Old Jones, Rest in peace, rest
- 6:32Speaker 3: in power. It was also a very prominent black man
- 6:34Speaker 3: as far as just being an actor portraying important people.
- 6:37Speaker 3: So if he was one to kill Martin Luther King,
- 6:40Speaker 3: that just that's like a whole as a plot twist
- 6:42Speaker 3: nobody saw coming.
- 6:43Speaker 2: Yeah, that would be a turn of events for sure.
- 6:46Speaker 2: And so, like I said earlier, one of the big
- 6:49Speaker 2: sticking points with James Earl Ray is that he confessed
- 6:52Speaker 2: at first, and that reminds me of whenever I bring
- 6:56Speaker 2: up the possibility that Kurt Cobaine was murdered instead of
- 7:01Speaker 2: having committed suicide. The pushback I've gotten on that is, well,
- 7:04Speaker 2: you're ignoring decades of depression or years of depression, and no,
- 7:10Speaker 2: I'm not not every person who's depressed commits suicide.
- 7:12Speaker 1: For one thing, but.
- 7:14Speaker 2: Also that's what people are ignoring here when they're like, oh,
- 7:17Speaker 2: well he confessed, so he did it. It's like, again,
- 7:21Speaker 2: we have so many coerced confessions on the books now,
- 7:25Speaker 2: such a long history of people being exonerated and let
- 7:29Speaker 2: out of prison because we found out their confessions were coerced.
- 7:33Speaker 2: So that doesn't do shit for me. But also, let's
- 7:37Speaker 2: talk about Acham's raiser. It's a thing you hear all
- 7:41Speaker 2: the time with conspiracy theories, and it's basically, whatever answer
- 7:45Speaker 2: doesn't require the most leaps in logic, that's your answer.
- 7:49Speaker 2: And if you're one of those people out there and
- 7:51Speaker 2: you're thinking, ah, the government said James Alreay did it,
- 7:54Speaker 2: it's probably that James Alrey did it.
- 7:56Speaker 1: What's more likely.
- 7:57Speaker 2: That a career criminal with early discernible political leanings just
- 8:02Speaker 2: up and decided to escalate his crimes to political assassination,
- 8:07Speaker 2: or that the agency that had been surveilling and harassing
- 8:10Speaker 2: MLK up to and including sending him a letter telling
- 8:14Speaker 2: him to commit suicide eventually just decided to go ahead
- 8:17Speaker 2: and kill him.
- 8:18Speaker 3: Yeah, they had already made like the equivalent of a
- 8:20Speaker 3: sex tape to try and discredit him, during that whole
- 8:23Speaker 3: time frame, and leaping ahead a little bit, they were
- 8:27Speaker 3: found at least civilly liable for the assassination of Martin
- 8:31Speaker 3: Luther k. So the evidence is there, and honestly, there's
- 8:35Speaker 3: not a big enough outcry of that, Like we have
- 8:38Speaker 3: on the records proof that the federal government is responsible.
- 8:42Speaker 3: They're not saying they've killed him, but they are responsible
- 8:45Speaker 3: for his death, and it's not a big enough deal.
- 8:47Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 8:48Speaker 2: I know, I definitely am old enough that if this
- 8:51Speaker 2: was big news in nineteen ninety nine, I would have remembered.
- 8:55Speaker 1: I was already in my twenties by then.
- 8:58Speaker 3: I was just getting out of high school and that
- 9:00Speaker 3: was like.
- 9:00Speaker 2: Pre Internet, so if we were I mean not pre Internet,
- 9:04Speaker 2: but like very early internet, pre social media.
- 9:07Speaker 1: Yeah, when we weren't really getting our news from the Internet.
- 9:09Speaker 2: So yeah, I feel like we both probably would have
- 9:12Speaker 2: heard about this if it was a bigger deal. And
- 9:15Speaker 2: that's one of the things people bring up about it
- 9:17Speaker 2: is that this happened and no one talks about it.
- 9:20Speaker 2: We're gonna talk about some of the debunking of this
- 9:23Speaker 2: idea later. A lot of it just boils down to yeah,
- 9:26Speaker 2: but yeah, but nothing A jury found the fucking government
- 9:31Speaker 2: complicit in killing Martin Luther King Junior.
- 9:34Speaker 1: There's no yeah, but about that.
- 9:36Speaker 3: Not just complicit in responsible for It's like the same
- 9:40Speaker 3: thing as like, look, OJ was not guilty of murder,
- 9:43Speaker 3: but he was absolutely guilty in that civil trial. Yeah,
- 9:46Speaker 3: and had to pay like or it would have been
- 9:48Speaker 3: if not for his pension being covered, he would have
- 9:51Speaker 3: had to pay like hundreds of millions of dollars in
- 9:53Speaker 3: restitution to the families. But that's the point. Look, we
- 9:55Speaker 3: can't get you on murder, but we know you did it.
- 9:58Speaker 3: So here's a way to be f silly responsible for
- 10:01Speaker 3: their debts.
- 10:01Speaker 2: OJ is actually a great point because by the reasoning here,
- 10:05Speaker 2: you could just as easily say no, OJ didn't murder
- 10:09Speaker 2: in Cole Brown Simpson, he went to court and he
- 10:11Speaker 2: was found not guilty, and then someone is going to
- 10:14Speaker 2: bring up, yeah, but the civil trial, and you're like,
- 10:17Speaker 2: it's a civil trial, No one cares about that.
- 10:19Speaker 1: It's like, oh that matters too.
- 10:20Speaker 3: I've had that exact same argument when I want to
- 10:22Speaker 3: piss off white people. So yeah, like the same beats verbatim,
- 10:28Speaker 3: and yeah, like I may be and I'm talking out
- 10:30Speaker 3: of my ass each time that it's an apt comparison.
- 10:33Speaker 1: So why does the King family doubt James L. Ray
- 10:38Speaker 1: was the killer? Let's talk about that.
- 10:41Speaker 3: I would assume Alcam's razor. It poses the least questions,
- 10:44Speaker 3: And what proof do they really have of him caring
- 10:47Speaker 3: said rifle from the scene. Nobody saw him actually lead
- 10:50Speaker 3: with it. The question you posed earlier, does it make
- 10:53Speaker 3: more sense that the government that was proven to be
- 10:55Speaker 3: complicit in his murder might have had something to do
- 10:57Speaker 3: with it than it does that this one guy just
- 10:59Speaker 3: happened to shoot him. Now, granted, there is a lot
- 11:02Speaker 3: of motive to just being a white dude shooting Martin
- 11:05Speaker 3: Luther King. That's he But I'm sure his family thanksfull. Yeah,
- 11:09Speaker 3: that's easy. It's got to be more to it than that.
- 11:11Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 11:12Speaker 2: I want people out there to imagine if a woman
- 11:16Speaker 2: was being stalked and the police had documented all this
- 11:21Speaker 2: evidence of her being stalked and followed. They know who's
- 11:24Speaker 2: stalking her, they know who's following her, and then one
- 11:27Speaker 2: day she's mysteriously murdered and they find some stranger's fingerprints
- 11:32Speaker 2: on a soda bottle near her, and instead of going
- 11:36Speaker 2: after the people who'd been stalking her for months and
- 11:38Speaker 2: months and months.
- 11:39Speaker 1: They're like, Oh, it's probably the soda bottle person that
- 11:42Speaker 1: did it.
- 11:42Speaker 2: No, it's probably the people who've been so focused on
- 11:46Speaker 2: him for years before this.
- 11:48Speaker 1: We have so much.
- 11:50Speaker 2: Documentation of the things they did to surveil him, harass him,
- 11:55Speaker 2: stalk him. And I don't remember which resource I was reading,
- 12:00Speaker 2: but one of the things people point to, Oh, it's
- 12:03Speaker 2: actually a book by William Pepper, who was James Alray's lawyer.
- 12:07Speaker 2: At the beginning of that book, he points out the
- 12:10Speaker 2: thing that probably got MLK killed above everything else, was
- 12:15Speaker 2: right near the end of his life, he came out
- 12:18Speaker 2: in opposition to the Vietnam War, really strongly opposed to
- 12:24Speaker 2: the Vietnam War. I could see that being a thing
- 12:27Speaker 2: that would put the American government over the edge because
- 12:31Speaker 2: Vietnam was already such a huge sticking point with people,
- 12:36Speaker 2: and MLK already had such a huge following. You get
- 12:40Speaker 2: those two things together and that was going to be
- 12:43Speaker 2: big problems for the United States. So yeah, it stands
- 12:47Speaker 2: to reason that it would have been the FBI over
- 12:50Speaker 2: some loan wacko. And it brings me to a thing
- 12:55Speaker 2: I talked about on last week's episode, which is whenever
- 12:59Speaker 2: there's a story like this, you inevitably get some kind
- 13:03Speaker 2: of conspiracy expert who gets in the newspapers or on
- 13:08Speaker 2: TV and is just like, look, this is just people
- 13:11Speaker 2: trying to make sense out of a world that doesn't
- 13:14Speaker 2: make sense. And no, sometimes people just want answers and
- 13:18Speaker 2: they're not getting them. And I think it's really offensive
- 13:22Speaker 2: that they use that pushback. Here specifically, we'll link to
- 13:27Speaker 2: a Washington Post article where they interview an MLK biographer
- 13:32Speaker 2: named Dave Garo, so old white dude, and he lays
- 13:37Speaker 2: that fucking explanation on the King family. Here's what he
- 13:41Speaker 2: told the Washington Post. Quote, the King children are part
- 13:45Speaker 2: of a larger population of American people who need to
- 13:48Speaker 2: believe that the assassination of a King or a Kennedy
- 13:53Speaker 2: must be the work of mightier forces rather than victims
- 13:56Speaker 2: of small fry lifetime losers. People need to see something
- 14:01Speaker 2: of a balance between effect and cause, that if something
- 14:04Speaker 2: has a huge evil effect, it should be the result
- 14:07Speaker 2: of a huge evil cause.
- 14:09Speaker 1: End quote.
- 14:10Speaker 2: Notice how he called them the King children. Koreta Scott
- 14:13Speaker 2: King has been suspecting that the FBI did this since
- 14:17Speaker 2: the day her husband died.
- 14:18Speaker 1: Obviously, like, it's not.
- 14:20Speaker 2: Just the kids, So it's weird that he called them
- 14:23Speaker 2: the King children in that moment. They're the King family
- 14:27Speaker 2: like his wife.
- 14:28Speaker 3: Also, this line about the King children needed to be
- 14:32Speaker 3: more than just some wacko It makes sense from a
- 14:35Speaker 3: writer's standpoint, but it doesn't make sense from a logical standpoint.
- 14:40Speaker 3: And with what you said about Martin Luther King opposing
- 14:43Speaker 3: the Vietnam War, it's funny to me that because Martin
- 14:46Speaker 3: Luther King was assassinated, for lack of a better term,
- 14:48Speaker 3: white America has whitewashed his legacy so deeply that all
- 14:53Speaker 3: we as Americans tend to remember is that I have
- 14:56Speaker 3: a dream speech. Yeah, but even in that very speech,
- 15:00Speaker 3: he was calling for much more than can't we all
- 15:02Speaker 3: just get along? You know what I mean? Like people
- 15:04Speaker 3: love to take those little sound bites of a black
- 15:06Speaker 3: man who's been oppressed and be like, can't we all
- 15:09Speaker 3: just get along? Or I dream of a day where
- 15:11Speaker 3: my kids and your kids play together. Were content of
- 15:15Speaker 3: our character, not the color of my skin. Yeah, they
- 15:17Speaker 3: love doing that sound effect, but they never go back
- 15:19Speaker 3: to he opposed the Vietnam War, or the nonviolence was
- 15:23Speaker 3: just a strategy to get the world to see how
- 15:26Speaker 3: evil the people against him were, and after a few
- 15:30Speaker 3: ass weapons, like, all right, we ain't doing this shit
- 15:31Speaker 3: in the world's get some security. And also he was
- 15:34Speaker 3: staunchly about reparations, and personally, that's what I thought got
- 15:38Speaker 3: him killed was the fact that there's a speech out
- 15:39Speaker 3: there where he's like, we're coming next time we go
- 15:41Speaker 3: to Washington, We're coming to get our check. People tend
- 15:43Speaker 3: to make Martin Luther King as just this altruistic saint
- 15:47Speaker 3: instead of a black man that wanted, like he wanted
- 15:50Speaker 3: ultimately everyone to be able to live in harmony. But
- 15:53Speaker 3: he was also more about just hey, black people are
- 15:56Speaker 3: getting destroyed over here and this ain't right. And also
- 16:00Speaker 3: patriotism is interesting. It went all over the Midwest this
- 16:03Speaker 3: summer doing comedy and you see like people that just
- 16:06Speaker 3: kind of believe that American dream is love the flag
- 16:09Speaker 3: and God, family and football and all that stuff. But
- 16:12Speaker 3: we don't take into account like the Vietnam War was
- 16:15Speaker 3: mostly US just fighting a proxy war with Communism, but
- 16:18Speaker 3: then we got directly involved in a whole country that
- 16:22Speaker 3: barely had anything to do with that got bombed to
- 16:24Speaker 3: the goddamn Stone Age. Fuck you, Henry Kissinger, CIA has
- 16:28Speaker 3: toppled governments just because of either American interest or billionaire interests.
- 16:34Speaker 3: That's what the word term banana republic comes from. And
- 16:37Speaker 3: it's not displaced by Khakis. And when we look past
- 16:42Speaker 3: all that, we know that we know this for a fact.
- 16:44Speaker 3: It's written down, It's in it like history's written by
- 16:46Speaker 3: the winterers. And it still got in the history books
- 16:48Speaker 3: that we did this right. And we just looked past
- 16:51Speaker 3: all that and just go to like you us say
- 16:55Speaker 3: we'reever in a direct military conflict, instead of thinking of
- 16:58Speaker 3: all the things our military does and the espionage of
- 17:00Speaker 3: our government does. That's really some shady shit. Like America
- 17:04Speaker 3: is a second and a half world country.
- 17:06Speaker 2: Yeah, not just corrupt, but I think second and a
- 17:10Speaker 2: half world country is a good way to put it.
- 17:12Speaker 2: Another thing I bring up all the time is freedom
- 17:15Speaker 2: of the press in this country.
- 17:17Speaker 1: Like we love to think that we are.
- 17:20Speaker 2: Just the freest nation on earth, and I mention all
- 17:24Speaker 2: the time we're like fifty one on the Press Freedom
- 17:27Speaker 2: Index fifty one. There are fifty countries ahead of us
- 17:31Speaker 2: where the press is way more free than we are.
- 17:34Speaker 2: But our press is better at being spun by the government.
- 17:38Speaker 2: I think our government controls the media better than any government.
- 17:43Speaker 3: We're good at controlling the media with misinformation instead of
- 17:47Speaker 3: just out run. If you go to North Korea or
- 17:49Speaker 3: Russia or China, if you just say the wrong thing,
- 17:52Speaker 3: or god forbid you even get it close to the airwaves,
- 17:54Speaker 3: they will just have you killed or disappeared. Let's just
- 17:57Speaker 3: outright zero tolerance. We don't even have to do that.
- 18:00Speaker 3: We get people to believe the propaganda so deep they'll
- 18:03Speaker 3: fight each other over that shit.
- 18:05Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so much detail to the James ear Alray
- 18:10Speaker 2: case and his claims that he is innocent. I will
- 18:14Speaker 2: make this a do your own research moment for people.
- 18:17Speaker 2: There's a book out there by William Pepper, who was
- 18:21Speaker 2: James Earl Ray's lawyer. It's called An Act of State
- 18:24Speaker 2: and it lays out the entire case against the FBI
- 18:30Speaker 2: basically as being the ones who did this. And the
- 18:34Speaker 2: short version of the theory is j Edgar Hoover, via
- 18:38Speaker 2: his longtime assistant Clyde Tolson, delivered cash to Underworld figures
- 18:43Speaker 2: in Memphis, and one of those figures hired a Memphis
- 18:47Speaker 2: police sharpshooter to fire the fatal shots that actually sounds
- 18:50Speaker 2: more believable to me than a lone gunman who liked
- 18:54Speaker 2: George Wallace a bunch decided to do.
- 18:57Speaker 3: It and not to mention it. The lone gunman idea
- 19:00Speaker 3: kind of sounds like the same dude like this kind
- 19:02Speaker 3: of sounds like the dude that took a shot at
- 19:04Speaker 3: Trump at his raelly, So alleged like that seems it
- 19:08Speaker 3: feels like they just checked GBT that story back through
- 19:11Speaker 3: a few more filters.
- 19:13Speaker 2: Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me at all. And so a
- 19:16Speaker 2: lot of why the Mlka family thinks James Ray is
- 19:19Speaker 2: innocent is because of a man named Lloyd Jowers. He
- 19:23Speaker 2: owned a cafe that was on the ground floor of
- 19:27Speaker 2: the fucking flop house that James Lray is alleged to
- 19:31Speaker 2: have shot from, which go watch your documentaries about this.
- 19:35Speaker 2: If nothing else that window he would have had to
- 19:38Speaker 2: shoot out of it would have been tough to get
- 19:41Speaker 2: a clean shot off because it didn't open that far,
- 19:44Speaker 2: so he would have almost had to end down but
- 19:46Speaker 2: also point up to hit doctor King. So that part's weird.
- 19:50Speaker 2: But Lloyd Showers owned a diner on the ground floor
- 19:54Speaker 2: of that flop house where he was staying called I
- 19:59Speaker 2: Think Jim's Cafe something like that, and for years and
- 20:02Speaker 2: years and years he claimed he had nothing to do
- 20:05Speaker 2: with it, but people did suspect him for some reason.
- 20:08Speaker 2: And then in nineteen ninety three he went on the
- 20:12Speaker 2: ABC news program Primetime Live and claimed he'd been paid
- 20:16Speaker 2: one hundred thousand dollars by a Memphis mobster named Frank
- 20:20Speaker 2: Leberto to help coordinate Mlka's assassination. And one important note
- 20:27Speaker 2: that ties him and James Earlray together. They both implicate
- 20:32Speaker 2: a strange Cuban dude named Raoul who. In James Earlray's case,
- 20:37Speaker 2: he says he met this Raoul guy in Montreal and
- 20:41Speaker 2: hoped he could help him get paperwork to get out
- 20:44Speaker 2: of the country, and in exchange, he decides to work
- 20:48Speaker 2: with this Raoul guy like smuggling guns. In James Earl
- 20:51Speaker 2: Ray's contention has always been I delivered a gun to
- 20:55Speaker 2: Raoul in Memphis that day, but I did not shoot
- 20:59Speaker 2: Doctor King. Lloyd Jowers also says he was working with
- 21:03Speaker 2: a guy named Raoul who paid him to hire the
- 21:08Speaker 2: hitman to kill Doctor King, and Lloyd Jowers is the
- 21:13Speaker 2: one who says he hired the basically local Memphis sheriff
- 21:16Speaker 2: who was.
- 21:17Speaker 1: A black dude.
- 21:18Speaker 2: I thought that part was wow interesting, which if that's true,
- 21:24Speaker 2: and I think I have his name, Sheriff Earl Clark
- 21:27Speaker 2: is the Memphis sheriff who was claimed to be the
- 21:31Speaker 2: shooter by Lloyd Jowers, And that would be an odd
- 21:35Speaker 2: detail for sure. But also think about Fred Hampton. That's
- 21:39Speaker 2: how it happened to Fred Hampton. It was a black informant.
- 21:42Speaker 3: Yeah did it.
- 21:43Speaker 1: I mean, he's not who did it, but he was responsible.
- 21:47Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly might as well who did it. And he
- 21:50Speaker 3: ended up killing himself. I'm not sure if it was
- 21:52Speaker 3: because of the guilt of that or whatever, but he
- 21:54Speaker 3: ended up comitting suicide.
- 21:55Speaker 2: So it was the night that news report aired about it,
- 22:00Speaker 2: immediately went out and I believe walked into traffic.
- 22:03Speaker 1: So probably because of that.
- 22:05Speaker 3: The nature of the show being conspiracy, if you were
- 22:07Speaker 3: being paid by the FBI and then it finally comes
- 22:10Speaker 3: out that you were the one, maybe the same way.
- 22:12Speaker 3: I don't want to keep red harrying everything before. Yeah,
- 22:14Speaker 3: it makes sense that you decide to unlive yourself right
- 22:18Speaker 3: as the heat's coming down, before anybody can ask you
- 22:20Speaker 3: any undue questions.
- 22:22Speaker 2: Yeah, that is about ninety nine percent of why I
- 22:27Speaker 2: don't believe Jeffrey.
- 22:28Speaker 1: Epstein committed suicide. I think Jeffrey Epstein was killed.
- 22:33Speaker 2: I wouldn't be surprised if Sean Combs dies in jail.
- 22:38Speaker 3: You know what's interesting about both of those situations. It's funny, true, true,
- 22:46Speaker 3: No one's gonna miss these guys. When Shawn Comb's allegedly
- 22:49Speaker 3: unlive themselves soon. It's one of those things where like
- 22:52Speaker 3: we knew of them, but we didn't know what they
- 22:55Speaker 3: were really all about. Jeffrey Epstein to a much lesser
- 22:58Speaker 3: extent because he's not a soelebrity, but he was famous
- 23:01Speaker 3: for being around people, for being this type of evil.
- 23:05Speaker 3: And we've all heard rumors about this shit in Hollywood
- 23:08Speaker 3: and in the music industry and whatnot for decades, and
- 23:12Speaker 3: now it's just like coming home to roost. To your point, though,
- 23:16Speaker 3: this happens so often that we laugh about it. Like
- 23:18Speaker 3: I said, it's funny, But you know, if Diddy dies,
- 23:22Speaker 3: and that's it's not gonna be funny because he's dead.
- 23:25Speaker 3: It's gonna be funny because I told you so, you
- 23:27Speaker 3: know what I mean. And it's gonna be funny because
- 23:29Speaker 3: oh wow, Look, that's all we really can do with
- 23:32Speaker 3: these type of things in America because we'll never really
- 23:35Speaker 3: know the truth.
- 23:36Speaker 2: And I don't know if this was the case with Diddy,
- 23:40Speaker 2: but it seems like maybe, but definitely with Jeffrey Epstein.
- 23:44Speaker 2: It wasn't just that he was a pedophile. He's holding
- 23:49Speaker 2: these huge parties and then gathering blackmail evidence when people
- 23:55Speaker 2: are also being pedophiles at his party, and that to
- 24:00Speaker 2: me implies that you're working for a government, probably because
- 24:04Speaker 2: it's one thing to blackmail powerful people, it's another to
- 24:09Speaker 2: do it if you don't have any extra backing. Who
- 24:13Speaker 2: the fuck is Jeffrey Epstein to someone else who is
- 24:15Speaker 2: also very rich. But if he's also very rich and
- 24:20Speaker 2: is like, also, I'm doing this for Israel or I'm
- 24:22Speaker 2: doing this for the CIA, So you can try to
- 24:25Speaker 2: push back, but that's not going to work. And I mean,
- 24:28Speaker 2: if that's the case, fucking yeah, you're a fed You
- 24:31Speaker 2: deserve whatever the fuck you get.
- 24:33Speaker 1: On top of being a pedophile, you're a fetophile. That's
- 24:37Speaker 1: worse government pedophile.
- 24:39Speaker 3: This is a shot in the dark. Did you ever
- 24:40Speaker 3: play any Grand Theft auto game?
- 24:42Speaker 1: A little bit?
- 24:43Speaker 3: You never played through the story mode? No, no, no, okay. So,
- 24:47Speaker 3: whether it's Grand Theft Auto three, San andre Is four
- 24:51Speaker 3: or five, at some point you go from being a
- 24:55Speaker 3: gangster that works it's just working local, and then you
- 24:59Speaker 3: go up a little more and now you're like the
- 25:01Speaker 3: bigger part of the city and then like the But
- 25:03Speaker 3: when you get to about three quarters through the game,
- 25:06Speaker 3: that's when you either start working with the police, the
- 25:11Speaker 3: some federal agency or both. And by the end of
- 25:13Speaker 3: the game you got to do this crazy high stakes
- 25:16Speaker 3: action set piece that involves like stealing from like the
- 25:19Speaker 3: Federal reserve or blowing up like the federal agency or
- 25:22Speaker 3: something like that. And I always say, there's a lot
- 25:25Speaker 3: of truth in fiction. And the reason why that trope
- 25:27Speaker 3: works and has been used so many times in the
- 25:29Speaker 3: Grand Theft Auto game is because the further up you
- 25:32Speaker 3: go and crime, you usually hit like a CIA or something.
- 25:36Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, that does make sense, and I need
- 25:39Speaker 2: to play more Grand Theft Auto.
- 25:40Speaker 3: That sounds funny. It's always great, especially when you live
- 25:44Speaker 3: in la is the most cathartic way to blow off
- 25:46Speaker 3: some steam, like it's the city you live in the
- 25:49Speaker 3: city they've modeled, so yeah, I can finally blow up
- 25:51Speaker 3: people on the prol five.
- 25:52Speaker 1: It's like, oh, yeah, this is what it was like
- 25:54Speaker 1: driving home.
- 25:54Speaker 3: Today, helicopters and gunshots.
- 25:57Speaker 1: And everything, and so it's important to know here.
- 26:00Speaker 2: Lloyd Jower's girlfriend at the time also came forward at
- 26:03Speaker 2: one point and said she saw him disassembling a rifle
- 26:07Speaker 2: and hiding it under the counter at his diner shortly
- 26:10Speaker 2: after the shooting. And with Lloyd Jowers again, I think
- 26:14Speaker 2: Okham's raisor why would he lie about this? Why after
- 26:18Speaker 2: all these years would you come out and say, oh, yeah,
- 26:22Speaker 2: actually I was involved in the murder of doctor Martin
- 26:25Speaker 2: Luther King. Because here's the thing, there's no statute of
- 26:28Speaker 2: limitations on murder. He's taking a legitimate risk by doing this,
- 26:33Speaker 2: and so I don't understand why he would lie about this,
- 26:38Speaker 2: which has been kind of the argument as oh, well
- 26:41Speaker 2: he's just lying.
- 26:42Speaker 3: It's like yeah, I don't know. Yeah, like it's I
- 26:44Speaker 3: keep doing this, but look similar to the guy that
- 26:46Speaker 3: killed too. But why would you come out twenty years
- 26:49Speaker 3: later and do that. There's no statute of limitations on
- 26:51Speaker 3: murder and the clout you get is just going to
- 26:54Speaker 3: put you in prison. Are you coming clean? Because you're
- 26:57Speaker 3: trying to make money off this because if so, I
- 26:59Speaker 3: don't see angle. And if you're coming clean just because
- 27:02Speaker 3: you got away with it, then pursue it.
- 27:04Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 27:05Speaker 2: I think his problem was he trusted the police because
- 27:10Speaker 2: that murder happened in Las Vegas, and at one point
- 27:14Speaker 2: he did an interview with the LAPD and they were like, yeah,
- 27:17Speaker 2: nothing you say.
- 27:18Speaker 1: We're not going to prosecute you over anything you say.
- 27:23Speaker 2: No, Dwayne Davis was, well, it depends on which version
- 27:27Speaker 2: of events you're talking about.
- 27:28Speaker 3: But oh, yeah, yeah, I'm talking. Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm
- 27:30Speaker 3: talking about the.
- 27:32Speaker 2: Notorious Big is the one who was probably murdered by
- 27:35Speaker 2: the LAPD. Gotcha, Tupac was probably killed by Diddy.
- 27:41Speaker 3: What makes it funny you killed Tubac on top of
- 27:43Speaker 3: all this? Oh, I can't wait to see you get
- 27:45Speaker 3: your come ups.
- 27:47Speaker 2: The guy who killed Tupac and then started going on
- 27:50Speaker 2: fucking podcasts and talking about it. The reason he started
- 27:54Speaker 2: doing that is he had this meeting with the LAPD
- 27:56Speaker 2: and they were like, all right, tell us everything you
- 27:58Speaker 2: know and we won't prosecute you for it. And dude,
- 28:02Speaker 2: you committed that crime in Las Vegas. The LAPD doesn't
- 28:06Speaker 2: have any fucking jurisdiction over that. So he got this
- 28:10Speaker 2: promise from the LAPD and was like, cool, I'm going
- 28:12Speaker 2: to go on YouTube and talk about killing Tupac, and
- 28:16Speaker 2: the Las Vegas PD was like, wait, what that's interesting.
- 28:19Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he was just dumb. He took the cops
- 28:24Speaker 1: word for it.
- 28:25Speaker 3: Don't ever trust the police. That's half the reason the
- 28:28Speaker 3: lawyers have jobs.
- 28:30Speaker 2: So the trial itself, it lasted four weeks. It took
- 28:34Speaker 2: the jury one hour to decide that Lloyd Jowers and
- 28:39Speaker 2: government agencies did conspire to kill doctor Martin Luther King Junior.
- 28:44Speaker 2: I'll link to a transcript of the trial. It's very involved.
- 28:48Speaker 2: We don't have time to go into all the details.
- 28:51Speaker 2: The verdict is the more important part. But if you
- 28:55Speaker 2: are a subscriber, you can listen to last week's bonus
- 28:58Speaker 2: episode where me and John Lewis cover a interesting part
- 29:04Speaker 2: of this story. After Lloyd Jowers gave that interview, in
- 29:07Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three, HBO held a mock trial of James
- 29:13Speaker 2: Earl Ray. And when I say mock trial, it was
- 29:17Speaker 2: actual lawyers. It was an actual judge, albeit a retired judge.
- 29:21Speaker 2: They selected a jury the way those lawyers would have
- 29:25Speaker 2: selected the jury in the case.
- 29:27Speaker 1: The only thing that wasn't legit was it was.
- 29:30Speaker 2: A mock trial, but otherwise it was very similar to
- 29:33Speaker 2: what a trial of James Olray would have.
- 29:36Speaker 3: Looked like, well, like a trial stimulation.
- 29:38Speaker 2: Yeah, and they even questioned James Olray from his prison cell.
- 29:43Speaker 1: So it's interesting.
- 29:45Speaker 2: It's I don't want to give it away, but listen
- 29:47Speaker 2: to last week's episode if you want more details about
- 29:51Speaker 2: this trial and the HBO mock trial. But the verdict,
- 29:57Speaker 2: it was a civil suit and the jury only a
- 29:59Speaker 2: ward did the King family one hundred dollars, But that's
- 30:03Speaker 2: because that's all the family was requesting. They didn't want
- 30:06Speaker 2: it to look like they were suing because of money,
- 30:09Speaker 2: which we'll talk about it more later.
- 30:11Speaker 1: But I feel like that was a mistake.
- 30:13Speaker 2: I do too, because one of the pushbacks you get
- 30:16Speaker 2: when people are debunking the idea that the government was
- 30:20Speaker 2: found responsible is, oh, well, they barely defended themselves because
- 30:24Speaker 2: there was nothing really on the line, And did they
- 30:28Speaker 2: barely defend themselves or could.
- 30:30Speaker 1: They not defend themselves?
- 30:32Speaker 2: So they just decided to barely defend themselves instead because
- 30:37Speaker 2: there was never going to be any especially with one
- 30:40Speaker 2: hundred dollars on the line. There was nothing really incentivizing
- 30:45Speaker 2: the government to tell the truth.
- 30:46Speaker 3: Here.
- 30:47Speaker 2: We're going to talk about another trial that's coming up
- 30:49Speaker 2: soon where it might be a different story.
- 30:52Speaker 1: But yeah, I think the one hundred dollars was a mistake.
- 30:54Speaker 3: I think it was a mistake just on a simple
- 30:56Speaker 3: fact that you're you're never gonna get the money that
- 30:59Speaker 3: you're that the Martin Luther King Junior state is truly
- 31:02Speaker 3: owed for the amount of times they have plagiarized his speech,
- 31:08Speaker 3: the amount of time they use him, use his name,
- 31:10Speaker 3: image and likeness. And Martin Luther King Junior today was
- 31:14Speaker 3: an NCAA football player, he would be worth hundreds of
- 31:18Speaker 3: millions of dollars. Yeah, So for that reason alone, they
- 31:22Speaker 3: should have gotten any money from the US government. Like
- 31:25Speaker 3: it's not like I understand the principle of the thing,
- 31:27Speaker 3: and you just want justice, because that's what Martin Luther
- 31:30Speaker 3: King is all about. But it's also justice from a
- 31:33Speaker 3: business standpoint, honestly, for the for the simple fact, and
- 31:36Speaker 3: I'm gonna talk about my own people for a second,
- 31:38Speaker 3: the fact that every Martin Luther King day, I see
- 31:41Speaker 3: these fucking club flyers that have Martin Luther King with
- 31:45Speaker 3: fade and the line through it. The way that we've
- 31:48Speaker 3: just been able to bastardize this man's image is like
- 31:52Speaker 3: the family should get something for all this shit.
- 31:56Speaker 2: That reminds me of the Marilyn Monroe shirts you see
- 31:58Speaker 2: all the time, where she'll have like a bunch of
- 32:01Speaker 2: tattoos and she's holding a.
- 32:02Speaker 1: Soccer ball flag behind her.
- 32:05Speaker 3: Yeah, like she's like on the back of a harle
- 32:07Speaker 3: Like she's on the back of the Kawasaki. And it's
- 32:09Speaker 3: like those didn't even exist when she was alive. What
- 32:11Speaker 3: are you talking about?
- 32:12Speaker 2: Yeah, she's wearing a Niners jersey and holding a gun
- 32:15Speaker 2: Like that is not her image at all. That would
- 32:18Speaker 2: be a bottle of pills in her hand, not a gun.
- 32:20Speaker 3: Damn. I'm pretty sure I was dated a girl that's
- 32:23Speaker 3: had a Marilyn No, I'm certain of dated a girl
- 32:26Speaker 3: that had a Marilyn been Road tattoo. But she had
- 32:28Speaker 3: a gold grill in her smile. I like that classy,
- 32:31Speaker 3: Like she was a classy lady.
- 32:32Speaker 2: By the way, Wait, did the girl have the gold
- 32:35Speaker 2: grill or did the Marilyn Monroe tattoo have the gold grill?
- 32:40Speaker 3: Yes? Like she wasn't wearing it when I met her,
- 32:43Speaker 3: But she did possess one.
- 32:47Speaker 2: And so yeah, like I said, there were four weeks
- 32:50Speaker 2: of testimony. It took one hour for the jury to
- 32:53Speaker 2: deliberate and find that Lloyd Jowers, as well as quote
- 32:56Speaker 2: others including governmental agencies, were with responsible for a conspiracy
- 33:01Speaker 2: to assassinate MLK. And at the time of the verdict
- 33:06Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety nine, Dexter King, mlk's youngest son said,
- 33:09Speaker 2: quote this is vindication for us end quote, and that
- 33:13Speaker 2: he hoped history books would be rewritten to include this
- 33:17Speaker 2: version of his father's murder.
- 33:19Speaker 3: All right, They wouldn't have done that if it was
- 33:22Speaker 3: in the judgment. That is, like the US government or
- 33:25Speaker 3: any this is a big bank take little bank, one
- 33:27Speaker 3: on one. At any point in time, when you win
- 33:31Speaker 3: a case against a large entity or a corporation or
- 33:35Speaker 3: a government, the first thing they make sure that they
- 33:38Speaker 3: put into that contract that they're paying you is that
- 33:40Speaker 3: they don't have to admit to any liability. They don't
- 33:44Speaker 3: have to. They'll owe you an apology. They don't have
- 33:45Speaker 3: to make any wrongdoing. It doesn't even matter. Like they
- 33:48Speaker 3: were found guilty, but they're not sorry. That's the first
- 33:51Speaker 3: thing you want to say, so, Yeah, you're thinking they're
- 33:53Speaker 3: going to rewrite the history books to put in Oh,
- 33:55Speaker 3: Martin Luther King was assassinated by the government. Sorry about that. No, Like,
- 34:01Speaker 3: we have states that have taken black history off the
- 34:04Speaker 3: history books and you want them to put something in.
- 34:08Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 34:09Speaker 2: They haven't even updated the Wikipedia page to say that
- 34:12Speaker 2: James Ray didn't do it, much less fucking history books.
- 34:17Speaker 2: I've mentioned a bunch of times that Snopes wrote an
- 34:21Speaker 2: article debunking the idea that the government was found responsible
- 34:27Speaker 2: for this, and it is one of my least favorite
- 34:31Speaker 2: articles on the internet.
- 34:32Speaker 1: I'm glad I was able to find it again.
- 34:35Speaker 2: My problem with their debunking speaks to something I say
- 34:39Speaker 2: about the media all the time, which is that they
- 34:42Speaker 2: just inherently trust the government. If someone says the government
- 34:48Speaker 2: did something, so many times the media will reach out
- 34:51Speaker 2: to the government and go, did you do this thing
- 34:53Speaker 2: that people are saying, And when the government says no,
- 34:56Speaker 2: they label it a conspiracy theory. That's not journalism helping
- 35:00Speaker 2: the government get away with shit. And this Snopes article,
- 35:04Speaker 2: to me, is just such a representative example of that
- 35:09Speaker 2: because all they refer to in debunking this is this
- 35:15Speaker 2: Department of Justice investigation that was done after this verdict
- 35:20Speaker 2: came out where surprise, the government looked into it and
- 35:24Speaker 2: found that none of these claims were credible and that
- 35:27Speaker 2: James Lay acted alone and was the only shooter. And well, yeah,
- 35:31Speaker 2: no shit, like no shit, they would say that, And
- 35:34Speaker 2: I again, I know a lot of times it's more
- 35:38Speaker 2: like democrats and liberal types who are so hesitant to
- 35:42Speaker 2: believe a theory like this, but at the same time
- 35:46Speaker 2: will fucking howl when there's a police shooting and the
- 35:50Speaker 2: police are like, don't worry, we're going to investigate. No, no,
- 35:54Speaker 2: you don't get to investigate.
- 35:56Speaker 1: You did it. And it's the same thing here.
- 36:00Speaker 2: But so many people in this case are like, see
- 36:03Speaker 2: the government looked into it and decided they didn't do it.
- 36:07Speaker 2: Of course they decided they didn't do it. Don't be
- 36:09Speaker 2: dumb real quick.
- 36:10Speaker 3: To that point about the police investigating the police shooting.
- 36:13Speaker 3: The one time I've seen the police shooting go the
- 36:16Speaker 3: way that the justice system should is when in Minnesota
- 36:21Speaker 3: when that I think he was Ethiopian or Kenyon or
- 36:24Speaker 3: something that was an Ethiopian immigrant police officer, black man
- 36:28Speaker 3: killed a white woman from Australia and they threw that
- 36:31Speaker 3: dude under the jail. Within a month they were convicted
- 36:35Speaker 3: of murder wrong or not murder. It was like the
- 36:38Speaker 3: worst kind of manslaughter possibly, Yeah, like fifteen years no
- 36:42Speaker 3: backing from the police union, and the city like immediately
- 36:45Speaker 3: gave that woman's family like twenty five million dollars And
- 36:48Speaker 3: I was like, huh yeah, wow, wow, how fast that works.
- 36:53Speaker 1: Well, they want white people to think they're still safe
- 36:55Speaker 1: from the police.
- 36:57Speaker 3: Obviously, thank you for saying the part that I could.
- 37:02Speaker 2: Yeah, Snopes. Throughout this whole thing, they're just citing this department,
- 37:06Speaker 2: which we'll link to the Department of Justice investigation too.
- 37:09Speaker 2: And I don't know why anyone would consider that journalism
- 37:14Speaker 2: or why anyone would look at this and go, oh, yeah,
- 37:17Speaker 2: well Snope said they didn't do it, so of course
- 37:20Speaker 2: they didn't do it. And another really frustrating thing about
- 37:23Speaker 2: their article is we mentioned that one hundred dollars in
- 37:26Speaker 2: damages before they bring that up in this Snopes article
- 37:30Speaker 2: as if to say, oh, well, that's all the jury
- 37:34Speaker 2: gave them was one hundred dollars. So this paltry award
- 37:38Speaker 2: and you think this lawsuit means something And Meanwhile, I
- 37:41Speaker 2: already mentioned it's what the King family asked for was
- 37:44Speaker 2: one hundred dollars. It's not like Trump versus the NFL,
- 37:48Speaker 2: where he sued the NFL and won, but the jury
- 37:51Speaker 2: was like, we're going to give you a dollar because
- 37:55Speaker 2: they hate you, and this is stupid. This is different.
- 37:58Speaker 2: They were just trying to like make a point by
- 38:01Speaker 2: not asking for money. And I think the way history
- 38:04Speaker 2: looks back on it now is, oh, one hundred dollars,
- 38:07Speaker 2: it must have been nothing.
- 38:08Speaker 1: There must have been nothing to it. And Nope, that's
- 38:11Speaker 1: not correct.
- 38:12Speaker 2: The only people who think there's nothing to this are
- 38:15Speaker 2: Snopes and the government that was found liable for doing this.
- 38:19Speaker 3: My comedian brain wants to think, wants to make this
- 38:22Speaker 3: this trial in like nineteen seventy for where one hundred
- 38:26Speaker 3: dollars was like ten grand. But even then that's not enough. Yeah,
- 38:32Speaker 3: they suited for one hundred dollars in nineteen to one
- 38:33Speaker 3: or two wood that was enough to buy a state.
- 38:37Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 38:37Speaker 2: On our episode last week, we talked about this MK
- 38:40Speaker 2: Ultra psychiatrist who the CIA gave him sixty thousand dollars
- 38:46Speaker 2: for his work that spanned a bunch of years.
- 38:49Speaker 1: Well, that doesn't sound like much in today's money. Six
- 38:52Speaker 1: hundred and ninety thousand dollars. Oh yeah, that is that's
- 38:56Speaker 1: quite It's pretty good.
- 38:57Speaker 3: But in today's money you would still be getting like
- 39:00Speaker 3: millions of dollars for a conspiracy theory. Oh yeah, you
- 39:02Speaker 3: gotta break me off, bro Oh yeah, eight figure is
- 39:06Speaker 3: no less.
- 39:08Speaker 2: But that one hundred dollars might have made this case
- 39:12Speaker 2: seem a little less legitimate in the eyes of people.
- 39:15Speaker 2: But now here comes the Malcolm X family lawsuit. I
- 39:18Speaker 2: am super interested to see how this goes because it
- 39:23Speaker 2: was filed last year and it seems like there hasn't
- 39:26Speaker 2: been a trial yet, so there's not a ton of
- 39:28Speaker 2: information about it other than that the family is seeking
- 39:32Speaker 2: one hundred million dollars.
- 39:35Speaker 1: From the government.
- 39:37Speaker 2: And this one is super interesting because if people haven't
- 39:42Speaker 2: been following the news, two of the three men who
- 39:45Speaker 2: were convicted of killing Malcolm X have been exonerated and released.
- 39:51Speaker 2: There was the and the one who hasn't been exonerated
- 39:54Speaker 2: was literally like caught with a gun in his hand
- 39:57Speaker 2: and beat by a crowd of people at the scene.
- 40:00Speaker 1: So he confessed.
- 40:01Speaker 2: But also when he confessed, he was like those two
- 40:04Speaker 2: other dudes you arrested.
- 40:06Speaker 1: That's not who did it. THO I had help, but
- 40:08Speaker 1: that's not who it was.
- 40:09Speaker 2: And all these years later, like immediately after he said that,
- 40:14Speaker 2: we released them forty years later or so, And that
- 40:18Speaker 2: means the other involved parties are either still alive or
- 40:22Speaker 2: lived out the rest of their lives, never having been
- 40:25Speaker 2: taken to task for what they did. But very important detail,
- 40:29Speaker 2: and the FBI themselves are the ones who have acknowledged this.
- 40:33Speaker 2: There were ten FBI agents in the room when Malcolm
- 40:37Speaker 2: X was killed. What Yeah, not just that, but the
- 40:42Speaker 2: venue where he was at. Again, this is the nineteen sixties,
- 40:46Speaker 2: and this venue where he was at was known to
- 40:49Speaker 2: hold events by black progressives very regularly, so you won't
- 40:54Speaker 2: be surprised at all to know it was normally swimming
- 40:58Speaker 2: with fucking police, normally police all around that building the
- 41:03Speaker 2: day Malcolm X was killed. There were two cops on
- 41:05Speaker 2: the roof and that's it. There were none at the door,
- 41:08Speaker 2: there were none inside, there were none patrolling, But there
- 41:11Speaker 2: were ten FBI agents in the room. Fucking Elijah Muhammad's
- 41:17Speaker 2: like second in command was an FBI informant.
- 41:21Speaker 3: Wow.
- 41:22Speaker 2: Yeah, so this lawsuit is going to be really fucking interesting,
- 41:28Speaker 2: and it's not nineteen ninety nine anymore. I think if
- 41:31Speaker 2: this goes not the government's way, we're gonna hear a
- 41:34Speaker 2: fucking lot about it, and I hope that would be good.
- 41:38Speaker 3: That is some crazy details you just dropped on me,
- 41:40Speaker 3: because what I know about Martin Luther kickup yet. But
- 41:43Speaker 3: Malcolm X's assassination was it looked like it was the
- 41:46Speaker 3: Nation of Islam. But if you tell me it's FBI,
- 41:49Speaker 3: I'm totally believing. You say there's ten agents in the
- 41:52Speaker 3: room when he died, and that's confirmable. They then that
- 41:56Speaker 3: was an assassination, like they sanctioned it because they were there,
- 42:00Speaker 3: did nothing to stop.
- 42:00Speaker 2: It, right, and even if no one in the FBI
- 42:04Speaker 2: pulled the trigger. I think the FBI does the same
- 42:08Speaker 2: thing to social justice and progressive movements that the CIA
- 42:14Speaker 2: does in other countries, where instead of being directly responsible
- 42:20Speaker 2: for what happens, they'll just send someone in pretending to
- 42:23Speaker 2: be part of that group who just starts putting shit
- 42:26Speaker 2: in people's ears about what they might want to consider doing.
- 42:30Speaker 2: And in other countries it's the CIA being like, hey,
- 42:34Speaker 2: you sure you don't want topple this government?
- 42:36Speaker 1: You're living under. We got people we can tell you
- 42:38Speaker 1: how to do it.
- 42:39Speaker 2: We don't want to do it, but if you want
- 42:40Speaker 2: to do it, we'll help you do it. And with
- 42:42Speaker 2: the FBI, all it would have taken was them getting
- 42:45Speaker 2: someone in the Nation of Islam to just keep suggesting,
- 42:49Speaker 2: you know, Malcolm X is becoming a bit of a problem,
- 42:52Speaker 2: and he was within the Nation of Islam, like there
- 42:56Speaker 2: was some conflict between him and Elijah Muhammad, So it
- 43:00Speaker 2: wouldn't have been hard for the FBI to just stoke
- 43:03Speaker 2: those kind of tensions to the point that someone fucking
- 43:07Speaker 2: shot Malcolm X.
- 43:09Speaker 3: You said yourself that Elijah Behammad's second in command was
- 43:12Speaker 3: an informant, So they already it's that's all I really
- 43:15Speaker 3: need to know, like they have, they're that high up.
- 43:17Speaker 3: Then what else is the of course they could do that.
- 43:19Speaker 3: Maybe that's the guy that was saying it.
- 43:20Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that wouldn't surprise me.
- 43:22Speaker 2: And so yeah, I'm fascinated to see how this trial
- 43:26Speaker 2: goes if it goes to trial.
- 43:29Speaker 1: Which it absolutely should.
- 43:30Speaker 2: I don't know how it can't now that two innocent
- 43:33Speaker 2: men have been exonerated in this killing. Fucking fire it
- 43:37Speaker 2: back up. Let's see who actually did it? Who you're
- 43:39Speaker 2: gonna frame next? Interested to see?
- 43:41Speaker 3: I can see how I could go not go to court.
- 43:43Speaker 3: I can see like how they can settle over like
- 43:45Speaker 3: seventy five million out of court, because, like we said
- 43:48Speaker 3: earlier in this episode, the Pentagon lost five trillion dollars
- 43:52Speaker 3: just you know, in the couch Cus from somewhere. Hey,
- 43:55Speaker 3: I never know, you know, they could have fallen up
- 43:57Speaker 3: a truck or something like that. But I mean, Budbo,
- 43:59Speaker 3: so like, it wouldn't be hard for them to just
- 44:02Speaker 3: if it keeps them from asking a lot of difficult questions.
- 44:05Speaker 3: I could see them just paying that money out and
- 44:06Speaker 3: be like, fuck it the same way did he was
- 44:08Speaker 3: like how much you want fifty million? Give it to it. Fuck,
- 44:10Speaker 3: let's avoid this as long as we can.
- 44:12Speaker 2: Yeah, and especially with the government, that's always a sign
- 44:16Speaker 2: that something is up, because otherwise the government will fight
- 44:19Speaker 2: the shit out of people who say they're doing wrong.
- 44:22Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 44:23Speaker 2: A good example is there's that Netflix documentary Wormwood, which
- 44:27Speaker 2: is about CIA agent Frank Olsen, who the official story
- 44:32Speaker 2: is still that the CIA gave him too much LSD
- 44:35Speaker 2: and oops he went crazy and jumped out a window.
- 44:39Speaker 2: It seems pretty likely that the CIA murdered him. He
- 44:43Speaker 2: did not jump out a window, and it wasn't Yes,
- 44:46Speaker 2: they gave him too much acid, but the acid didn't
- 44:49Speaker 2: make him crazy. It gave him a conscience. And what
- 44:52Speaker 2: they suggest in that documentary is Frank Olsen was going
- 44:55Speaker 2: to go public and tell people that we used chemical
- 44:59Speaker 2: weapons in Korea during the Korean War, and that whole
- 45:03Speaker 2: thing where if you watch the documentary, they like sequester
- 45:07Speaker 2: him for a few days, take him away from his wife,
- 45:10Speaker 2: and it's like they're just trying to talk to him
- 45:12Speaker 2: and trying to get him to change his mind, and
- 45:15Speaker 2: it seems like that's what was happening. They were like,
- 45:17Speaker 2: all right, so you're not actually going to say that
- 45:19Speaker 2: we used chemical weapons, and it seems like he, for
- 45:23Speaker 2: the most part, was like yeah, I am, and they
- 45:26Speaker 2: fucking tossed him out a window over it. And what's
- 45:29Speaker 2: interesting about that is when his family started complaining and
- 45:33Speaker 2: asking questions, the CIA immediately was like, yeah, you're right,
- 45:37Speaker 2: we gave him too much LSD and he jumped out
- 45:39Speaker 2: a window.
- 45:39Speaker 1: Got us, you got us?
- 45:43Speaker 3: Wait wait, wait, you're telling me, ma'am was agent. We'll
- 45:47Speaker 3: see those experiments for CIA. And then next thing you'll
- 45:51Speaker 3: know he has secrets about federal agency and finds his
- 45:54Speaker 3: way out the window. Sounds very Erosian to me. Exactly
- 45:59Speaker 3: was he running for office against Pulton?
- 46:03Speaker 2: And yeah, the fact that the CIA not only did
- 46:06Speaker 2: they accept responsibility for that part of the story, Oh yeah,
- 46:10Speaker 2: we gave him too much acid and he committed suicide.
- 46:11Speaker 1: Sorry.
- 46:12Speaker 2: They were also like, you want to meet the president?
- 46:14Speaker 2: You guys commit you want you meet Gerald Ford? And
- 46:17Speaker 2: when is the CIA ever like that?
- 46:20Speaker 3: Never right before they kill you?
- 46:23Speaker 2: Yeah, when do they even acknowledge that they fucking exist?
- 46:27Speaker 2: And in that case, they were like, ah, got us
- 46:30Speaker 2: help you use chemical weapons in Korea?
- 46:32Speaker 3: Probably remember that time the CIA busted for basically facilitating
- 46:39Speaker 3: drugs to be cracked to exist in America and went
- 46:44Speaker 3: all the way up to one of the generals in
- 46:45Speaker 3: the army and the sitting vice president at the time.
- 46:48Speaker 1: Didn't matter.
- 46:50Speaker 3: Rumors. We've only had six movies and two TVs multi
- 46:54Speaker 3: season TV series about this very same subject. Nobody seems
- 46:58Speaker 3: to care. It's just content.
- 47:00Speaker 1: It's just rumors. Corey.
- 47:02Speaker 2: Here's what was happening was inner city black people taking
- 47:06Speaker 2: very expensive flights to South and Central America, buying cocaine
- 47:10Speaker 2: and then easily smuggling.
- 47:12Speaker 1: It back across the border. That's obviously what happened.
- 47:15Speaker 3: Yeah, because no one checked black people's bag bags at
- 47:17Speaker 3: the airport.
- 47:18Speaker 1: No, No, that would that would go really smooth.
- 47:21Speaker 3: Yeah, and who and what what reason wouldn't some some
- 47:24Speaker 3: black guy from south central Los Angeles have to go
- 47:26Speaker 3: to Nicaragua or or or Columbia. He knows people out there,
- 47:30Speaker 3: come on exactly.
- 47:31Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 47:32Speaker 2: Yeah, the that CIA story is nuts, But it is
- 47:37Speaker 2: just another example of the thing I say all the time.
- 47:40Speaker 2: So what what are we gonna do about it? Like
- 47:43Speaker 2: it's the CIA? I say all the time. This is
- 47:45Speaker 2: essentially just a true crime podcast. But the criminal is
- 47:48Speaker 2: always the government.
- 47:49Speaker 3: Yeah, and you're right, what can we do because like
- 47:53Speaker 3: you're trying to, like you keep presenting evidence about the
- 47:57Speaker 3: government to the government against the government, expecting the government
- 48:01Speaker 3: to be like, all right, we did it.
- 48:03Speaker 2: Yeah, but never going to happen unless you come up
- 48:07Speaker 2: with a better cover story than the one they're telling.
- 48:09Speaker 3: The only way anything could happen is in some world
- 48:13Speaker 3: where America wasn't like a world leader in both finance
- 48:17Speaker 3: and military. If NATO or like the UN is able
- 48:22Speaker 3: to sanction us because there's otherwise it is. We're literally
- 48:25Speaker 3: you can't bully the bully. Yeah, like we're too powerful
- 48:29Speaker 3: for anything to happen.
- 48:30Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah for now at least.
- 48:33Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 48:35Speaker 1: Empires don't usually last this long.
- 48:37Speaker 3: Yeah. Rome wasn't built in the day, but it felt
- 48:39Speaker 3: pretty fast, didn't it.
- 48:40Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, did fall pretty quick. So yeah, I think
- 48:44Speaker 2: that's our episode. I just want to reiterate when people
- 48:47Speaker 2: say this story isn't as major as it seems, I
- 48:51Speaker 2: think that's propaganda. I think that's I mean, there's that
- 48:54Speaker 2: government report, the Department of Justice report. If you want
- 48:57Speaker 2: to take the government at their word over the killing
- 49:00Speaker 2: of malcl of Martin Luther King Junior, I guess, go ahead,
- 49:04Speaker 2: But that seems like a silly fucking proposition. This government
- 49:09Speaker 2: you trust to be telling the truth about this. Okay, Okay,
- 49:13Speaker 2: it's fine. We'll see how the Malcolm X trial goes. Corey,
- 49:17Speaker 2: thank you so much for doing the pod.
- 49:18Speaker 1: I appreciate it.
- 49:19Speaker 3: Thanks for having us fun.
- 49:21Speaker 2: What do we have to plug before we get out
- 49:23Speaker 2: of here? All I got is my solo podcast in
- 49:25Speaker 2: Broad Daylight. You can listen to it wherever podcasts are
- 49:28Speaker 2: or on YouTube at Adam Todd Brown Comedy and I
- 49:30Speaker 2: guess you can follow me on Instagram at Adam Todd Brown.
- 49:33Speaker 1: That's Todd with one D. Corey, what do you got
- 49:35Speaker 1: to plug?
- 49:35Speaker 3: Let's see. I will be in the Santa Cruz Comedy
- 49:38Speaker 3: Festival this week on the tenth up there in Santa Cruz.
- 49:41Speaker 3: Check the website Santa Cruz Comedy Festival dot com for
- 49:44Speaker 3: all that goodness I'm doing. I'm producing a show in Pleasanton,
- 49:48Speaker 3: California at Tommy T's on November twenty seventh, the day
- 49:51Speaker 3: before Thanksgiving. And other than that, I am just looking
- 49:55Speaker 3: for work out here in these streets. Follow me on
- 49:57Speaker 3: Instagram at Corey showtime.
- 49:58Speaker 1: All right, and let's get out of here. Corey say
- 50:02Speaker 1: goodbye bye.
- 50:03Speaker 3: Everybody, have a good one. Don't trust the government.
- 50:05Speaker 1: Goodbye, everybody. Definitely, do not trust the government. We love you,
- 50:09Speaker 1: and fuck the police.