OpEdNews published on an exclusive basis April 9 the following report by Justice Integrity Project editor Andrew Kreig previewing a filing to be made the following day demanding a criminal grand jury investigation of evidence regarding the 9/11 attacks. That column achieved a remarkable 2,100 "Likes" on Facebook, along with more than 14,000 page views, as of this writing on April 12. The column is reprinted below, with slight updates to reflect that the petition was filed. Other coverage is shown in an appendix at bottom.

The WTC Tower immediately below illustrates "ejections" or "squibs" marked by arrows that, according to the petition-filers, provide a small part of the evidence of pre-placed explosive materials causing the collapses. So does molten steel, they say, which most logically could come from thermite or thermate, not from airplane fuel. The photo below at right shows examples of molten steel.

A federal grand jury should investigate the collapses of the World Trade Center Twin Towers during the 9/11 attacks, as well as WTC 7, according to a petition that an expert lawyers group filed on April 10 in New York City's federal court.

The 54-page petition and its 57 exhibits detail the evidence that explosives were used to destroy the WTC buildings during the attack on Sept. 11, 2001. The non-profit Lawyers' Committee for 9/11 Inquiry demands that the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York convene and submit the evidence in the petition to a grand jury.

The petition's executive summary and full text are now posted on the Lawyers' Committee website.

"The failure of our government to diligently investigate this disturbing evidence that has emerged over the past sixteen years regarding what occurred at the World Trade Center on 9/11," commented Executive Director Mick Harrison, "has contributed to the erosion of trust in our institutions."

The lawyers, whose petition is supported by numerous 9/11 family members of victims and first responders, detailed evidence (see below) that they say requires a criminal investigation by prosecutors in the office led by Interim U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman (shown below, at left).

President Trump and Attorney Gen. Jeff Sessions in January named Berman to be the interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Berman's experience includes extensive work as a federal attorney, as well as two years as a law partner of former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

Giuliani became nationally famous, including selection as Time Magazine's "Man of the Year," for his visible role after 9/11. But he is known also for having authorized the removal and disposal of WTC steel debris in heavily guarded shipments to China.

Petitioners conducted a press conference at 1 p.m. Tuesday on the steps of New York's City Hall in Manhattan. Those who want to add their names to the petition can sign up online here. New names will be displayed on the next filing, which will supplement the one filed this week.

As the 50th anniversary of the April 4 murder of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. approaches, the Washington Post published on its front page this week a news report quoting the King Family and other experts as expressing doubt about the official story that the convicted killer acted alone, or even at all, to  kill the nation's pre-eminent civil rights leader of modern times.

This is the way that Tom Jackman, an experienced reporter, began his in-depth analysis titled The Past Rediscovered: Who killed Martin Luther King Jr.? His family believes James Earl Ray was framed:

In the five decades since Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead by an assassin at age 39, his children have worked tirelessly to preserve his legacy, sometimes with sharply different views on how best to do that. But they are unanimous on one key point: James Earl Ray did not kill Martin Luther King.

For the King family and others in the civil rights movement, the FBI’s obsession with King in the years leading up to his slaying in Memphis on April 4, 1968 — pervasive surveillance, a malicious disinformation campaign and open denunciations by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover — laid the groundwork for their belief that he was the target of a plot.

The story represented a major breakthrough in mainstream news coverage, according to King’s friend Dr. William F. Pepper, whom Jackman quoted extensively because of Pepper's decades of work as a street-savvy investigator, an attorney, and a best-selling author seeking to solve the murder.

Pepper's 2003 book An Act of State, shown at left and featuring King and his wife Coretta Scott King on the cover, is the second of a trilogy by Pepper documenting evidence that conspirators murdered the civil rights leader to stop his evolving social movement. At the time of the 1968 assassination, that movement was expanding from a largely civil rights movement with roots in the Jim Crow Deep South to nationwide anti-war and economic justice crusade that some believe threatened the nation's power structure, not just bigots.

Pepper, also a noted human rights advocate who has taught at Oxford University, worked with King family members who also believe that a plot by power brokers to remove King from the American political scene included a media-assisted frame-up of the accused killer Ray, a petty criminal and eighth-grade dropout who could be vilified as a lone-nut murderer.

“The article,” Pepper told the Justice Integrity Project regarding Jackman's Post piece, “is a major breakthrough for the mainstream media, which has refused to cover the truth about the murder of Dr. King."

"Hopefully," Pepper continued in an exclusive interview with the Justice Integrity Project, "this initiative will extend to others in the mainstream media who will be reporting on the 50th anniversary in June on the death of Robert F. Kennedy, whose accused killer Sirhan Sirhan was another patsy like James Earl Ray.”

Pepper, a friend also of Kennedy, is shown with King in a 1967 photo by Ben Fernandez as Pepper and King conferred before King's keynote speech at the National Conference for New Politics in Chicago. King was evolving his message then to a much broader movement than anti-segregation efforts in the South.

Pepper was a journalist and political activist in the 1960s and later found himself in the unusual position of becoming convinced that the convicted killers Ray and Sirhan of Pepper's friends King and Kennedy were innocent of their deaths  as shown by ballistics evidence.

On March 28, a New York federal judge issued a major ruling helping to hold Saudi Arabian defendants accountable for the 9/11 terror attacks. The pre-trial ruling on behalf of family members of 9/11 victims largely reversed a previous ruling granting defendants sovereign immunity. Also, the ruling thwarted the Saudi government, whose Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited U. S. power brokers the past week to discuss major arms and oil deals and strategic interests.

The victory for 9/11 family members stemmed from their determination with the support of grassroots truth-seekers and several bold congressional leaders who ultimately won majorities for a recent law, JASTA. Several of these figures are shown in the adjoining photo during at 2016 press conference on Capitol Hill. They include 9/11 widow Terri Strada (national chair for 9/11 Families and Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism, her daughter Kaitlyn and the three main congressional supporters of the families in their fight for the legal right to obtain suppressed records implicating Saudis. MSNBC interviewed Terry Strada March 30 in the segment: Judge Allows Suit Alleging Saudi Arabia Financed 9/11 Attacks To Move Forward.

The guest column below is by a grassroots supporter of the families and full disclosure, Les Jamieson, a founder of the website HR 14 that advocated for years for release of a suppressed "28-page" segment of the 2002 9/11 report from the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.

This column, which originally appeared at the 9/11 Truth Action Project site, is part of ongoing coverage by the Justice Integrity Project. An appendix below provides links to recent and background materials.  

By Les Jamieson

Since 2002, the 9/11 families have been litigating against Saudi Arabia and related entities whom they've charged with responsibility in the 9/11 attacks, according to Jersey widow, Lori Van Auken.

For years, the complex case has dealt with major setbacks, mainly due to rulings that went along with the Saudi defense team's claims that the plaintiffs had insufficient evidence and that Saudi Arabia was protected by sovereign immunity.

Declassification of the 28 pages on July 15, 2016 and passage of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) that September changed everything. A convergence of events leading to the 15th anniversary of the attacks brought momentum that even the power of the security state could not withstand.

Within a month after passage of JASTA, families filed an amended complaint that reinstated Saudi Arabia, plus two additional family lawsuits. Then an appeal by the plaintiffs in response to release of Saudi Arabia was won. However, the Saudi defense team moved for dismissal again. These events culminated in a hearing in January.

On Wednesday, March 28, Judge Daniels, who had previously released the Saudi's from the lawsuit, has denied their motion to dismiss and ruled in favor of the 9/11 families.

The tide has turned. The suit against Saudi Arabia can finally move forward to the discovery stage, which is what they sought to avoid at all costs. Now a family of oil billionaires and their official entities with the power to affect the global economy and balance of power in the Middle East, will be held to account.

Aerial photo by Digital Globe showing at center about half of the gun control protesters from Third to Sixth Streets on Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, DC, with the main sound stage shown as a white rectangle on the Avenue at photo's bottom center near Third Street.

Led by schoolmates of shooting victims, hundreds of thousands of gun protesters packed Pennsylvania Avenue facing the Capitol Building in downtown Washington, DC March 24 during the March for Our Lives, a powerful, well-planned and otherwise impressive challenge to the nation’s political establishment.

Extensive news coverage (excerpted in an appendix below) showed how huge attendance, enthusiasm and eloquent speakers created strong momentum for gun control and other political activism.

This commentator will leave those overviews to others, aside from the excerpts below.

My focus will be to draw on experience organizing many annual trade association conventions and other events, including some in the nation’s capital, to focus more narrowly on the exceptional logistics that contributed to the march’s success.

I observed a number of these factors also as a participant. My office at Seventh and Pennsylvania Avenue NW was almost at the center of the parade route. I had planned merely sample the street scene, much like almost innumerable other parades and protests on that route (including the presidential Inaugural every four years).

But by the end, I found myself inspired to retrieve a discarded sign from a sidewalk near the Trump International Hotel at 11th Street and talk to passersby for more than two hours about the relevant issues, as indicated at right.

The sign that I was holding at left says "When the kids act like leaders and the leaders act like kids, you know change is coming."

Most striking on the scene was the eloquence of the event speakers and the enthusiasm of the large crowd. Not every advocate in life is going to be a strong public speaker. But these young speakers were either exceptionally inspired to rise to the occasion or somehow vetted in advance by the organizers.

Even more remarkable for a civic gathering, the talks were brief and the overall program actually ended about five minutes earlier than the scheduled end at 3 p.m. (following a noon start). 

Nearly a score of conference speakers last weekend presented powerful evidence of a conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and to maintain a cover-up that exists to the present.

Speakers documented again and again how a massive cover-up that began immediately after the president’s death has continued despite a unanimous congressional vote in 1992 on the so-called “JFK Act” that required release of all relevant documents by a deadline of last October.

Co-keynoter Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., J.D., drew on six decades of medical training and practice to denounce yet again what he described as scientifically impossible official findings of the 1964 Warren Commission.

The Commission and its supporters claim that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone assassin who killed Kennedy by firing three shots from the sixth floor of an office building located behind the president during a motorcade through downtown Dallas.

Wecht, an eminent forensic pathologist, medical school professor, author and former coroner portrayed above right in a file photo by Noel St. John at the National Press Club, showed that extensive scientific evidence as well as common sense indicate that Oswald (shown in a passport photo below left) could not have fired the fatal shot and wounding Texas Gov. John Connolly in several places with the same bullet — and so there must have been a conspiracy.

“What the hell is the problem?” Wecht said of efforts by the CIA and other federal officials to suppress in violation of the 1992 law relevant witness, medical and other records. “Just put the goddamn stuff out there!”

Concurring in that view was co-keynoter Roger Stone, the noted political operative and best-selling author of a book arguing that Kennedy’s successor Lyndon Johnson orchestrated the murder and a cover-up.

Joseph Siegelman, son of a former Alabama governor convicted in one of the nation's most notorious political prosecutions in recent American history, last week announced his candidacy to become their state's next attorney general.

The young Democratic attorney faces many obstacles in the deep Red state before emulating his father — former Gov. Don Siegelman, now 71 and recovering from emergency open heart surgery Feb. 9 — in winning their state's top elective law enforcement post. The elder Siegelman, shown at right with his son, was Alabama attorney general for a term in the late 1980s before election as lieutenant governor for two terms.

Don Siegelman won election as governor in 1998, serving a term from 1999 to 2003 while undergoing non-stop attack from Republican prosecutors beginning with his first months in office. His conviction and imprisonment on what independent investigators but not courts have shown to have been trumped up corruption charges resulted in his imprisonment and the devastation of the Alabama Democratic Party. Among other results , the prosecution thwarted both his re-election and plan to run for the presidency.

His son, managing partner of a Cochran Law Firm office in Birminghan, faces a long shot but highly dramatic and nationally important race to overcome a Democratic opponent in a June primary and, in November, the winner of a four-person Republican primary.

Although Joseph Siegelman will doubtless continue to frame his race in terms of justice for all Alabamians his father's conviction is known to virtually every voter. It is not just an implicit part of the current candidacy but will surely weigh on the minds of voters. 

Commentators will note, as here, that political figures from the long-running prosecution are still part of Alabama's landscape on both Republican and Democratic sides of the attorney general race. 

That's most visible in the GOP candidacy of Alice Martin (shown at right), one of the elder Siegelman's prosecutors when she was the presidentially appointed Bush Administration U.S. attorney for Alabama's Birmingham district and prosecutor of Siegelman on corruption charges that were dropped in 2004 after Chief U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon repeatedly disallowed prosecution tactics.

But there's more, much more, to the upcoming race, including divisions among Democrats and Alabama's ongoing massive problems with public corruption.

The latter were underscored most recently by a three-month jail sentence on Feb. 15 for former House Majority Leader Micky Hammon, prompting legal blogger Roger Shuler aptly to opine: Ex-Alabama Rep. Micky Hammon gets three months in prison for essentially stealing more than $50,000, showing our justice system is hopelessly broken.