Who Killed Martin Luther King?

In the preface to the now-deceased James Earl Ray’s 1992 book, Who Killed Martin Luther King?, Attorney Mark Lane wrote the following:

“I join in James Earl Ray’s call for the appointment of an independent federal special prosecutor to investigate the FBI’s involvement in the plot to kill Martin Luther King. The facts are clear that former FBI officials removed King’s defenses just before he was killed, transferred potential witnesses the day before the murder and tampered, `lost’ and destroyed key evidence. FBI written memos provide undisputed evidence that the bureau targeted King for harassment and `removal’ from the scene. This documentary evidence alone is enough to establish probable cause that the bureau, Director J. Edgar Hoover and his underlings conspired to assassinate the civil rights leader. Together with the testimony of former agents and Memphis police officers I am convinced that a federal grand jury presented with relevant evidence by an honest special prosecutor would conclude that Hoover and other FBI officials were responsible for the assassination of Dr. King.”

Next: 5,000 U.S. Professors On CIA Payroll In 1970s?

Protest Columbia University's Complicity With U.S. Imperialism: April 24-27,2008

To mark the 40th anniversary of the 1968 Columbia Anti-War Student Revolt against Columbia University’s complicity with U.S. imperialism,

http://www.archive.org/details/Columbia1969_2

veterans of the 1968 Columbia Student Strike will be converging at Columbia’s School of Journalism between April 24 and April 27, 2008. See the following link for the schedule of commemoration events:


Next: Who Killed Martin Luther King?

Civilian Casualties and Columbia's IDA Jason Project 1960s Work

Thousands of Indochinese civilians may have been killed as a direct result of the weapons technology development war research work that was done by IDA and its Jason Division during the period when Columbia University was an institutional member of IDA. As the book The Air War In Indochina by Cornell University’s Air War Study Group revealed in 1972:

“The figures show that during the intense phase of the North Vietnam bombing, 100,000 to 200,000 tons of munitions per year were dropped. This bombing inflicted 25,000 to 50,000 casualties per year, 80 percent of whom were civilians…

“Indochina…has…become the laboratory for the evolution of the electronic battlefield…

“For the period from 1965 to April 1971, the estimate of civilian casualties in South Vietnam is 1,050,000 including 325,000 deaths…

“…Special electronic techniques for improving nighttime interdiction has been under development by the U.S. Air Force through a project named IGLOO WHITE. Initial operation of some of the components began in December 1967, and since that time a whole family of electronic devices has come into being…Sensors are implanted on the ground or suspended in the foliage by air drop…Aircraft overhead receive electronic messages from them and relay the information to a central computer control station. Strike aircraft are then directed to the designated area.

“…American scientists and engineers—civilians as well as those working for the Department of Defense—have been deeply involved in the development of the electronic battlefield.”

Neither the Columbia University Administration nor the Pentagon has ever released much information on the number of Indochinese civilians who were killed or wounded as a direct result of the IDA and Jason Division weapons research work that Columbia University institutionally-sponsored in the 1960s. But at least 250,000 Indochinese civilians apparently lived near the “Ho Chi Minh Trail” area that the electronic battlefield developed by the Jason Division of Columbia’s IDA initially targeted in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Next: Protest Columbia University’s Complicity With U.S. Imperialism: April 24-27, 2008

Columbia University's IDA Jason Project 1960s Work--Part 15

By 1968, the electronic battlefield technology that Columbia’s IDA Jason Division had developed was being used in South Vietnam in the Battle of Khe Sanh. And, on Sat. Feb. 3, 1968, Columbia University Professor and Director of Columbia’s Watson IBM Labs Richard Garwin “traveled to Vietnam” with Henry Kendall and several other scientists “to check on the operation of the electronic barrier,” according to The Jasons by Ann Finkbeiner. The same book also observed:

“The sensors allowed such accurate detection of the enemy at night, in fog, behind hills, and in the jungle, that attacks on the enemy could be remote—that is, only artillery or air strikes—and would need no soldiers.

“…The electronic barrier turned into the electronic battlefield, the modern method for carrying out nonnuclear warfare, in particular on the urban battlefield…The relay to which the sensor talks is now a UAV, an unmanned aerial vehicle like the Predator or the Global Hawk, used in both Gulf wars and in Afghanistan…The responders are now bombs that are guided by lasers…”

Next: Civilian Casualties and Columbia’s IDA Jason Project 1960s Work

Columbia University's IDA Jason Project 1960s Work--Part 14

A “Status Report on Jason-East Project No. 2” of Columbia’s IDA was then sent to IDA President Taylor, IDA Vice-President Ruina and Harvard University Graduate School of Public Administration Associate Dean Kaysen on July 19, 1967, which reported the following:

“By the end of last summer, a group of Jason-East members had submitted a report to Secretary McNamara concerning certain communication problems in Southeast Asia. You are all familiar enough with the specifics of this problem, so I will leave them out of the present memorandum. The Group consisted of

Robert Duffy, Colonel, USAF (DDR&E)
Giulio Fermi, IDA
Peter Freck, IDA
Waulter Hausz, GE-Temp
A.G. Hill, M.I.T.
Norman Taylor, A.D. Little
George Wheeler, BTL

The report and its recommendations were accepted by the Secretary and by Mr. McNaughton (ISA) and Dr. Foster (DDR&E), accepted with some reservations by NSA, and received most enthusiastically by the Army Security Agency and its commander, Maj. Gen. Denholm, who immediately decided to do the job on behalf of Gen. Westmoreland, whose blessings they quickly received.

“In the manner of things pentagonal, the Air Force felt that it should have been chosen as the operating agency, and the ensuing fuss caused some delays in the project, but not by more than 2-3 months.

“Gen. Denholm managed to have assigned to ASA a number of Navy P2V’s, of which 5 have been completely refurbished, including the addition of two jet engines, and fitted with the proper electronic gear.

“These five aircraft were refitted by the Convair Division of General Dynamics at San Diego and for the past month have been undergoing operational field testing in the environs of Fort Huachuca. The performance of General Dynamics in this aircraft modification was an outstanding piece of work.

“Even more outstanding was organization within ASA, mostly under Lt. Col. Patrick Ulmen, in the organization of the entire project, in selling it to the Army, the Joint Chiefs, and COMUS MCVEE, and in the operational tests in and near Fort Huachuca, which were extremely worthy.

“Colonel Duffy, Dr. Wheeler and the writer observed some of these tests and the final special equipment early this month.

“It is now thought likely that the equipment and, more importantly, the men to go with it, will be in a full state of readiness in Southeast Asia in early July.

“Occasionally things happen.”

Next: Columbia University’s IDA Jason Project 1960s Work—Part 15

Columbia University's IDA Jason Project 1960s Work--Part 13

In early March 1967, I accidentally discovered that Columbia University was an institutional member of the Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA], that Columbia University President Grayson Kirk was a member of both the IDA board of trustees and the IDA executive committee and that Columbia University professors Lederman, Foley and Koopman were members of IDA’s Jason Division of U.S. university professors who engaged in secret weapons technology research for the war in Vietnam. In late March or early April 1967, the Columbia-Barnard chapter of Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] then first formally demanded that the Columbia University Administration resign its institutional membership in IDA.

But on April 7, 1967, Brigadier General Deputy Commander Wesley Franklin of the Department of the Army’s U.S. Army Security Agency wrote a letter to the head of the Jason Project No. 2 group, MIT Professor Hill, which stated:

“Dear Dr. Hill,
“As you are aware, the work initiated on the basis of recommendations from your study group of the Jason-East program is fast culminating in an operational system. General Dynamics is now in the systems check out phase of CRAZY CAT fabrication.

“I invite you to visit the General Dynamics plant in San Diego to be updated on our progress in implementing your recommended program…

“We would also like you to review our systems test program and to visit Fort Huachuca during the systems operational test phase, which is scheduled 1 May through 9 June.”

MIT Professor Hill then wrote a letter on April 13, 1967 to General Maxwell Taylor (a former president of the Upper West Side's Lincoln Center and a former U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam), who was IDA’s president at the time of the 1968 Columbia Student Revolt, which stated:

“Dear Max:

“…Last summer you were kind enough to express some interest in my part of Jason-East, and I thought you would like to know that the special aircraft for this exercise are even now being completed in San Diego.

“Our last conversations I believe concerned getting support from your member universities in finding good people and sending them to you…”

Next: Columbia University’s IDA Jason Project 1960s Work—Part 14

Columbia University's IDA Jason Project 1960s Work--Part 12

At the same time that Hill’s Jason-East Project No. 2 group of Columbia’s IDA was working with the U.S. Army Electronic Command at Fort Monmouth to develop the electronic battlefield weapons technology for use in Indochina, other members of IDA’s Jason Division were working with the Pentagon’s Defense Communications Planning Group to develop the other components required for Defense Secretary McNamara’s proposed electronic barrier project in Indochina. As The Jasons by Ann Finkbeiner recalled:

“The task force was called the Defense Communications Planning Group, or DCPG…Its adjunct Scientific Advisory Committee included…a reasonable fraction of Jasons: Richard Garwin, Murph Goldberger, Val Fitch, Gordon MacDonald, Henry Kendall, Charles Townes, Bill Nierenberg, Hal Lewis, and probably others; Kistiakowsky was the committee’s chairman. It reported directly to McNamara.”

One of the members of this Scientific Advisory Committee to the Defense Communications Planning Group in 1966-67 was Columbia University Professor and the Director of Columbia University’s Watson IBM Lab, Richard Garwin. Another member of this Scientific Advisory Committee was former Columbia University Professor of Physics Charles Townes.

For secrecy reasons, the “Defense Communications Planning Group’ that Columbia Professor Garwin worked with changed its name on June 13, 1967 to “Illinois City.” For secrecy reasons, it again changed its name in July 1967 to “Dye Marker.” Then, in September 1967, the Pentagon and IDA Jason Division-conceived air-supported sensor barrier project’s code-name was again changed; this time to “Muscle Shoals.” By June 1968, the electronic barrier project code-name had been changed yet another time, to “IGLOO WHITE.”

Next: Columbia University’s IDA Jason Project 1960s Work—Part 13