Witness Docs from Stitcher

Previously on Ernie's Secret, he heard everything, he saw everything, he knew everything.

I don't think he viewed himself as an informant.

I think he viewed himself as them looking for information.

He was paid, he was receiving assignments, he was directed and he had this code number.

He was extremely important and valuable to the FBI, far and away, their most important racial informant.

From what we know about the FBI today, we don't have any confidence because we know now that they lie, they make up things, they do things, they create things, they destroy people.

Called 338 Night Tuesday November 22nd, he's in Washington with his son.

The diary entries are brief. Retired FBI agent Bill Lawrence had a problem.

I tried seven times evening November 21st to call 338 at above number.

One of his old confidential informants had left the message at the house earlier that day, but now Bill couldn't reach him.

This was an informant Bill had worked with for nearly a decade, an informant only known in the record books as ME-338R.

And Bill needed to talk to 338. He needed to talk to him now.

AM of November 22nd at 730, try it again, no luck.

If he couldn't get 338 on the phone before 10am the following day, something very bad might happen.

ME-338R of course was Ernest Withers.

And on 10am November 22nd, 1978, Ernest was set to testify behind closed doors before several members of a congressional committee.

For the nearly 18 years that Ernest had been working with the FBI, only a handful of people knew his secret.

But now Congress was investigating the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and others now knew Ernest's name.

They were determined to ask him what he'd been doing for the FBI at the time the king was killed.

Those frantic phone calls from Bill Lawrence? He wanted to know what Ernest planned to say.

Because what Ernest told that congressional committee could determine whether or not the whole world would learn the secret that these two men had held on to for years.

...