Conference on crimes connected to the government to be held at Bates

The 11th annual Maine Conference Investigating Crimes Committed by the FBI by will be held at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 15, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall. The public is invited to attend free of charge.

The conference, sponsored by Maine Citizens to Defend the Bill of Rights and the New World Coalition, a student organization at Bates, features a talk by Raymond Kohlman, an attorney who in December 1999 successfully represented the family of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in a lawsuit claiming the civil rights leader was the victim of a vast murder conspiracy, not a lone assassin. The King family had sued Loyd Jowers, a retired businessman who claimed six years ago that he paid someone other than James Earl Ray to kill King in Memphis, Tenn., in 1968. Kohlman claimed the FBI, CIA, the Mafia and the U.S. military were involved in the assassination.

The conference also features a talk by Hoppy Heidelberg, a member of the Oklahoma City bombing grand jury who believes the FBI was involved in the destruction of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Heidelberg, a Reform Party gubernatorial candidate in Oklahoma, also is a member of Oklahomans for Truth, a group that recently took depositions from an FBI informant who testified to the FBI’s involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing.