Reno Approves Reopening King Assassination Probe

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno on Wednesday approved reopening the investigation into the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., focusing on doubts raised by the civil rights leader’s family that James Earl Ray acted alone in the shooting.

The inquiry stopped short of the national commission sought by Coretta Scott King, King’s widow, and other family members when Reno met with them earlier this year at President Clinton’s request.

Still, in a statement from Atlanta, King welcomed Reno’s decision “as a first step toward revealing the truth.

She added: “I hope this inquiry will open a wider investigation of all pertinent leads bearing on the assassination.”

In her announcement, Reno said: “We hope this review will provide answers to new questions that have been raised about a tragedy that still haunts our nation.”

A Justice Department news release said: “The evidence gathered by the inquiry will be followed wherever it may lead.”

But seeking to discourage what one department official characterized as “false hopes,” Reno’s announcement noted that even if the investigation into allegations by an ex-FBI agent and a former Memphis, Tenn., bar owner pan out, federal prosecutions may be barred because the statute of limitations on possible charges has run out.

Some government officials, speaking not for attribution, questioned whether the new inquiry is likely to cover ground largely that already has been plowed. They noted that aspects of the allegations to be reviewed have been discredited by other investigations.

Apparently reflecting the King family’s distrust of the FBI because of steps taken under former director J. Edgar Hoover to harass and discredit King, the new investigation will not be staffed by FBI agents.

Instead, it will be conducted by Justice Department civil rights division lawyers, aided by criminal division attorneys and investigative agents drawn from other agencies. Named to lead the inquiry was veteran civil rights prosecutor Barry Kowalski, part of the team that successfully prosecuted four Los Angeles police officers who beat black motorist Rodney G. King in 1991 during a traffic stop.

Federal civil rights charges were filed against the officers after a state court acquitted them of beating-related charges, verdicts that sparked the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

According to one Justice Department official, King and others presented Reno with a broad array of allegations that they believe show the civil rights leader was the victim of a conspiracy extending far beyond Ray, the convicted assassin, when he was gunned down on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. But Reno decided to limit the review to allegations raised by former FBI agent Donald Wilson and Lloyd Jowers, the onetime bar owner.

Breaking 30 years of silence, Wilson last March said that he had retrieved papers from a White 1966 Ford Mustang that Ray abandoned that included the name “Raul” and a telephone number.

The reference to “Raul” is potentially relevant because Ray, after initially confessing to killing King, later contended that he had been set up by a gunrunner named “Raoul.” The existence of such a person has never been established and Ray, who spent years futilely seeking a new trial, died in prison earlier this year.

Wilson, who said that he turned over his information to King’s family last year, said he had not given it to the FBI because he did not trust superiors to conduct a serious investigation and feared reprisal from Hoover.

An FBI internal inquiry this year found that Wilson’s role in the King investigation had been limited to searching with three other agents microfilm copies of cashed Western Union money orders. None of the 15 former agents interviewed in the inquiry recalled Wilson being involved in recovering the Mustang, processing it or even being at the murder site.

But a Justice Department official said Wednesday: “We did not do a thorough investigation into Wilson’s claims.”

Another department official said that the FBI investigation “is not necessarily dispositive of anything,” adding that Wilson maintains he was not supposed to be at the vehicle recovery facility where he claims to have found the papers.

At the time of King’s slaying, Jowers was operating a grill across the street from the Lorraine Motel. In 1993, Jowers said on an ABC television news show that he had arranged King’s killing at the request of a Memphis produce dealer who paid him $100,000. Jowers also said the gunman was not Ray.

Last March, Memphis District Atty. Gen. Bill Gibbons said he could find no evidence that Jowers was involved in the murder.

But his investigators did not offer Jowers the immunity he had demanded and did not interview him, a fact that Justice Department officials cited Wednesday.

Last April, an ABC news program again focused on Jowers, who submitted to a lie detector test. A retired FBI polygraph expert concluded that Jowers’ story “is a fabrication.”