From Peter Dale Scott's Road to 9/11, Introduction end notes:

"Most of what Pepper writes about army surveillance of King is documented and corroborated (cf. Steve Tompkins, "Army Feared King, Secretly Watched Him. Spying On Blacks Started 75 Years Ago," Memphis Commercial Appeal, March 21, 1993 http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/1993/mar/21/army-feared-king-secret... ). Unfortunately, Pepper also transmitted the claim made to him that the 20th Special Forces Group had a sniper team in Memphis on April 4, 1968, to ensure that King was murdered. I believe from my own research that the sniper team story was disinformation from high sources in order to discredit Pepper. In particular, an alleged authorizing cable, citing Operation Garden Plot, is to a trained reader a self-revealing forgery."

From Lisa Pease's Real History Archives:

"Remember what happened to William Pepper? He believed some Ayers-like informants on the MLK case and made a central case against a former military man whom Pepper believed (and wrote) was then dead. So on national TV, what happened? The "dead" guy walked out onto the stage. His living didn't negate all of Pepper's work in reality. But in the popular mind? Pepper was the guy who had 'gotten it wrong' on TV. I fear strongly the same will happen to those who pursue this line of inquiry."

http://realhistoryarchives.blogspot.com/2006/11/did-cia-kill-bobby-kenne...

Here are Lisa's comments regarding a disagreement between Peter Dale Scott and William Pepper at the Making Sense of the 60's conference in 2008: http://www.blackopradio.com/black403b.ram

Her comments on Pepper begin at 23:30.

Here is an excerpt about William Pepper from Joan Mellon's talk from this same conference:

"A digression about sources. From about fifty hours of taped interviews, I could not use any of what a New Orleans figure named Gordon Novel told me. With a soldier of fortune named Gerald Patrick Hemming, the percentage of the truth to fabrication was 50-50. Knowing of my interest in Colombia, Gerry told he he had been imprisoned on Gorgona. (This was an island off the western coast of Colombia, named because of the preponderance of poisonous snakes wandering there. I didn’t believe him. This seemed like bragging. No, it turned out to be true. Smuggling drugs and not paying off the right people in Medellin, Gerry found himself on Gorgona.

Gerry told me that Robert Kennedy had addressed a group of Cuban exiles at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida in the summer of 1963. I needed corroborating witnesses; Gerry promised to name some, but couldn’t, and I broke off all contact with him. I forgot about this matter until a researcher named William Pepper told me the same story. His source, Pepper said, was an aging, very ill documentary filmmaker who had been a close friend of Robert Kennedy’s. He had won eight Emmys! Pepper said. And no, he couldn’t give me this dying man’s name.

As a film historian, I could reach any documentary filmmaker, and I called about ten people. None had ever heard the Homestead story. Then I contacted people close to Bobby Kennedy: Peter Edelman; John Seigenthaler; one of Robert Kennedy’s daughters; Ed. Guthman; Frank Mankiewicz; George Stevens; and Joey Gargan, a Kennedy cousin; the list goes on. None had ever heard of the Homestead story. Seigenthaler suggested I call the Kennedy library and ask to see the appointment book of Bobby’s secretary, Angie Novello. I did. They searched. 1963 was missing!

I went back to Pepper and insisted that he name his source – and it turned out that the source was…Gerald Patrick Hemming! In the course of the same conversation, Pepper told me that Bobby had flown to Dallas on the evening Oswald was arrested, and talked to Oswald in his cell! But I must not use this revelation! So historians must be wary, especially in this field."

http://www.joanmellen.com/oswald.html

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My reason for highlighting Pepper on this and not the others, despite all of their flaws, is that Pepper has probably been most visible of these individuals through his work on the MLK case and because of his visible position in NYCCAN. Now the military aspect of the MLK case is one of the most controversial parts of it. Parts of it are well documented and are almost definitely true and parts of it are far less credible. Scott is saying that the notion of a sniper backup team is likely an elaborate disinformation effort designed to discredited Pepper when needed. The whole story relied on individuals who Pepper could not meet with directly, with the exception of Jack Terrell, and reporter Steven Tompkins was required to function as the intermediary. Tompkins does not even agree with how Pepper used the information that he [Tompkins] retrieved from his military sources. With sources like these, this is not something Pepper should have provided as a solid addition to what we know of the narrative of MLK's assassination as the addition was portrayed in Orders to Kill and An Act of State. This eventually was used to discredit Pepper on ABC’s Turning Point hosted by Forrest Sawyer, which aired June 19, 1997. Here is an account of this by Jim DiEugenio in Probe Magazine:

"Predictably, Sawyer constructed a trap for Pepper in the second half of the program. Towards the end of Pepper’s book he details the tale of an Army special forces group sent to Memphis in April of 1968 to surveil King. Working from interviews conducted by reporter Steve Tompkins, Pepper writes that they received a special briefing and were told to actually terminate King. They would have if he would not have been fired upon already. According to Tompkins’ sources, one of the leaders of this group, Bill Eidson, later died. Sawyer took Pepper through this part of his book, questioning his methodology, and then produced Eidson and a cohort. Although Pepper held up fairly well through this elaborate set-up, he had been sandbagged. Strangely, and although the sequence was probably edited to favor Sawyer, he doesn’t seem to have seen it coming. Tompkins was also on the show and he implies that Pepper went too far with the material he had given him. But also, neither Tompkins nor Pepper appear to have checked out their military intelligence sources with the utmost scrutiny."
http://www.ctka.net/pr797-mlk.html

So for last year’s 40th Anniversary when interviewed on NPR he brings up the sniper backup team as if it definitely happened. Of all the solid things he could have said about the King case in this short amount of time given to him by NPR and he chooses that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65CSpD2zm8Q

To me, someone recognizing the responsibility of being the attorney to James Earl Ray or the King family would have left the more speculative aspects of this case on the drawing board rather than to publish them, which put him in a very vulnerable position. This same uncritical approach to NYCCAN might be leaving other vulnerable doors open if NYCCAN takes off.

Now Truthmove, the organization I have been a part of, has been very critical of Les Jamieson and his actions in NY 9/11 Truth (see our other posts on his distribution of anti-Semitic material, the big tent, etc.). For the 2007 Anniversery of 9/11, we could see ahead of time that the Ready for Mainstream conference was going to be a mix of credible and not credible presenters and we felt that we should warn the credible people beforehand. Another Truthmove forum regular and I were able to obtain the email addresses and send out emails to two of the presenters, one being Pepper. The other person, when he heard that Webster Tarpley was presenting, cancelled. Pepper on the other hand, spoke about disinformation, but at the same conference Tapley had his infamous meltdown about the Kennebunkport Warning and Alfred Webber spoke about exotic weaponry. Did this experience have any effect on Pepper’s affiliation with the organizers of NY 9/11 Truth? No, he ended up forming the 9/11 Ballot Initiative with them.

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The entire chain of posts in full context are available at the link below, but what I have posted there should make sense:
www.truthmove.org/forum/topic/1498