JUSTICE DEPARTMENT HAS PROOF:

MARTIN L. KING RAN AN EXTENSIVE CAR THEFT RING

Ned Touchstone

(from The Councilor, April 20, 1968)

BIRMINGHAM—You can lift another eyebrow as a salute to the strange facts surrounding the death of Martin Luther King.

At the time of his death the Justice Department clutched absolute proof of a massive car theft ring involving Martin Luther King and other leaders in the so-called Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

More than 40 U.S. Congressman had been briefed by the FBI regarding King’s nighttime activities. The facts were cold. Brutal. Not the kind of stuff that the Councilor prints. But it was the kind that could cause a preacher to lose his job.

Southern congressmen wanted their Northern colleagues to “blow the whistle” on King regarding his connections with communism, personal life, and the car stealing racket which he headed. One of them looked across his desk at me months before the assassin’s bullet struck and said, “Ned, they’ve got to kill him. Everybody knows too much about King. You can’t have a tarnished hero, but you could have a tarnished martyr. This stuff about the white woman—it would be better if a Northern Member put it in the Record. They wouldn’t pay any attention to a
Southerner.”

“Congressman,” I asked my informant, “What about the car theft ring? My paper isn’t interested in the recordings the FBI says it has regarding this preacher and the white woman, But we ARE interested in why King and his boys haven’t had to stand trial for stealing all those cars in Georgia and South Carolina. We ARE interested in the American people being told the facts about his illegal dealings with foreign nations and the Soviet money he received in New York.”

“It’s in the Record already. Your paper printed the story a couple of years ago, and the whole car theft thing was put in the Congressional Record by Congressman Andrews. Nobody ever did anything. The Justice Department would hand you or me for accidentally taking a dime but the King image has protection from the White House.”(He referred to the item placed in the Congressional Record on March 30, 1966 showing that King was a car thief, and to stories in The Councilor on May 6 and July 28, 1966 about the car thefts.)

Because the FBI had informed so many congressmen about King’s sordid personal life and his connections with communism, there has been guarded speculation the FBI itself “may have” participated in the King assassination. The Councilor’s investigation discounts FBI help to the assassin.

Whoever killed King wanted (1) a martyr, and (2) passage of the 1968 civil rights bill.

FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover was no admirer of Martin Luther King. Nothing that the FBI had done—with possible exception of silly activities just before the Selma march—would hint that this bureau wanted King on a pedestal. The Justice Department coverup of King’s car thefts and Red connections I s nowhere mirrored in the FBI’s dealings with King, even though FBI is part of the Justice Department.

KGB, CIA?

The Councilor is not ready to discount the possibility that the CIA or some other secret KGB-type of organization carried out the assassination assignment.

King’s announced march on the U.S. capitol would have brought down the wrath of Congress. At least one of those members would be counted upon to tell the American public the true facts about MLK. In the trauma of the moment, these facts would have found an audience.

King began to lose his usefulness to the International Conspiracy shortly after the Selma march. Southerners erected billboards showing him at a Communist Training School (Highlander). Millions of copies of the contraband were distributed.

This effort hurt King in his first invasion of Chicago. Money quite coming from the “little givers: and the full cost of his activities fell back to the Warburgs, Soviet agents and the little gang of professional revolutionists who first launched King into national orbit.

The man was bull-headed. Like John Kennedy he often insisted on doing things his way. His way was sometimes the stupid way.

WHO IS ERIC GALT?

Americans have been treated to the sorry spectacle of what looks like a ghost chase. Day after day Attorney General Clark says, in effect. “We’re getting hot. We have a name. We don’t know who did it but we know he was a Loner like Oswald!”

How could he “know” the suspect was a loner? He might know that the suspect was part of an assassination-apparatus, but he could not possibly know in advance of an arrest that the man was a “loner.”

The name bannered in the daily newspapers is Eric S. Galt. But if there is such a person—and there may be—why hasn’t someone come forward who has known him since childhood? Or worked with him? Or dated him in high school?

Is it possible that an assassination apparatus used the two old gimmicks on which they build so many of their blood dramas?

(a) The expert assassin who assumes a false identity land lays low for months or years.
(b) The throw-away rifle which is always left at the death scene to give a hot trail to the fall guy.

King died at the very moment the Civil Rights Civil War need a martyr. At each time in recent history when a civil rights bill was “hung” in Congress, the nation saw a dramatic assassination, death, or shooting incident to whip up sympathy and win passage. It’s an old pattern.

The martyr was shot from a communal bathroom in a nearby rooming house, after he stepped out on a motel balcony. Consider the timing. If you were an assassin, how long would you stand in a communal bathroom with a rifle? Wouldn’t it attract attention of other guests?

Wouldn’t you have to know exactly when a man would step out of his comfortable room into the cold night air where you could get a good shot?

In photographs of King taken in the days just before the assassination he appeared to be drugged. One series on TV showed two of his associates practically dragging him as he stood with glassed eyes and frozen face. Is this our imagination? Or did you see it too? What was going on?

Several days after the assassination a Republican congressman (Martin, Ala.) disclosed the briefing he had received from the FBI. He specifically told of King’s connection to communism and the FBI’s allegations of gross immorality. Other congressmen have repeated the stories privately but Martin spoke for publication at a GOP meeting in Shreveport.

Future issues of The Councilor will contain photo documents concerning the Martin Luther King Car Theft Ring, pictures of King with communists, and copies of Abernathy’s correspondence with key Reds. Does anyone want to make a bet that we don’t have this material? And we’ve taken the precautions of making extra copies and placing them with other people. Just in case.

Now, why post a decades-old and scurillous attack on Dr. King? No, I do not think Dr. King ran a Car Theft Ring. Nonetheless, this is a most interesting article. Note that the author was Ned Touchstone, who had corresponded with Joseph Milteer, who, according to an FBI informant, had advance knowledge of the JFK assassination. Touchstone's newspaper The Councilor also featured the earliest articles about suspected JFK assassination conspirator David Ferrie.