Phony ‘Spygate’ and conspiracies that could explain tragedies

Bill Knight column for Mon., Tues. or Wed., June 4, 5 or 6, 2018

Most of us are susceptible to conspiracy theories, with limits.

There are conspiracies and there are fantasies. People may consider JFK’s 1963 assassination, aviator Amelia Earhart’s possible seizure by Imperial Japan in the ‘40s, or the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby in 1932. But a global scheme to hide the fact that the Earth is flat or hollow, radio blowhard Alex Jones’s seemingly defamatory claim that the Sandy Hook killing of kids was staged, or President Donald Trump’s latest paranoid notion?

No.

Trump is claiming that the FBI improperly spied on his 2016 campaign to help Hillary Clinton, but Republican leaders are distancing themselves from the assertion after classified briefings on May 24. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), and U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) were briefed and don’t back up Trump’s “Spygate” claim that an informant talking to campaign personnel in an investigation about Russia interfering in the election was to harm him. Their silence says a lot, and even U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), who also was briefed, dismissed Trump’s complaint.

“When the FBI comes into contact with information about what a foreign government may be doing in our election cycle, I think they have an obligation to run it out,” the former federal prosecutor told CBS News.

Meanwhile, less hyperbolic questions persist about the murders of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy 50 years ago. In some ways, conspiracy-theorizing is wishful thinking, letting people deal with shock, fear or other emotions, often due to some inexplicable event, like those murders.

Five decades ago this week, RFK was shot at an L.A. hotel after winning Democrats’ California primary. Sirhan Sirhan was seized at the scene with a .22-coliber handgun and later confessed – adding that he had no memory of doing so.

RFK, Jr. thinks there was a second gunman, based on his research that 13 shots were reported (Sirhan’s gun held eight bullets), and that RFK was shot in the back though Sirhan was in front of him.

“I was disturbed that the wrong person might have been convicted of killing my father,” Kennedy told the L.A. Times. “My father was the chief law enforcement officer in this country. I think it would have disturbed him if somebody was put in jail for a crime they didn’t commit.”

King’s assassination and aftermath also convinced his family of a conspiracy to murder him. King’s convicted killer, James Earl Ray – who confessed and later claimed he’d been coerced by the FBI and his own attorney – may not have been responsible, according to his family and a 1999 lawsuit that found local, state and federal authorities liable.

King was cut down two months before RFK, shot as he emerged from a room at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis following a speech in support of striking sanitation workers. Police said Ray fired one round from a second-floor bathroom in the boardinghouse where he was staying across the street, dropped the rifle nearby, and fled to Atlanta, Canada and England before being arrested that July.

Ray grew up in downstate Quincy and was a lifelong thief with ties to gangs before, during and after serving time in prison, where he escaped months before the assassination. Ray’s family said he could have been manipulated by a stint in the military (after which his personality changed), or organized-crime figures, or a mysterious man named Raul (who instructed him to buy the rifle).

“James was not involved with the Mob for the purpose of being a willing participant in the murder of King,” wrote his eldest brother John Larry Ray in his book “Truth at Last.”

“He would have been scared and mystified and in the dark as to who was pulling his strings and where the puppet masters would take him,” he added.

Some skeptics of a plot to kill King concede that it’s unlikely Ray had the resources or motive to murder him, implying that at least he had help, whether government agents, organized crime or racists.

“I think the people of this country are entitled to know the truth,” said New York lawyer and Civil Rights activist William Pepper (author of 2016’s “The Plot to Kill King”). “I say that in the hope of creating an awareness of how this happened.”

That hope may be as unrealistic as Trump depicting himself as the victim of a vast, sinister Deep State. It’s understandable that we seek some sense to senseless tragedies, but in an era of vast communications and whistleblower leaks, one wonders how conspiracies have remained secret. For Trump and Jones, that’s easy; they’re phony. For others, such as assassination victims’ kin, that’s difficult and excruciatingly painful.