FBI Tracked King’s Every Move
April 1st, 2008Via: CNN:
Hoping to prove the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was under the influence of Communists, the FBI kept the civil rights leader under constant surveillance.
The agency’s hidden tape recorders turned up almost nothing about communism.
But they did reveal embarrassing details about King’s sex life — details the FBI was able to use against him. Video Watch how the FBI tracked King’s every move ยป
The almost fanatical zeal with which the FBI pursued King is disclosed in tens of thousands of FBI memos from the 1960s.
The FBI paper trail spells out in detail the government agency’s concerted efforts to derail King’s efforts on behalf of the civil rights movement.
The FBI’s interest in King intensified after the March on Washington in August 1963, when King delivered his “I have a dream speech,” which many historians consider the most important speech of the 20th century. After the speech, an FBI memo called King the “most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country.”
The bureau convened a meeting of department heads to “explore how best to carry on our investigation [of King] to produce the desired results without embarrassment to the Bureau,” which included “a complete analysis of the avenues of approach aimed at neutralizing King as an effective Negro leader.”
The FBI began secretly tracking King’s flights and watching his associates. In July 1963, a month before the March on Washington, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover filed a request with Attorney General Robert Kennedy to tap King’s and his associates’ phones and to bug their homes and offices.
In September, Kennedy consented to the technical surveillance. Kennedy gave the FBI permission to break into King’s office and home to install the bugs, as long as agents recognized the “delicacy of this particular matter” and didn’t get caught installing them. Kennedy added a proviso — he wanted to be personally informed of any pertinent information.
While King did have associates who had been members of the Communist Party, by all accounts they severed those ties when they started working in the civil rights movement. What’s more, the FBI bugs never picked up evidence that King himself was a Communist, or was interested in toeing the party line.
…
When King learned he would be the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, the FBI decided to take its harassment of King one step further, sending him an insulting and threatening note anonymously. A draft was found in the FBI files years later. In it the FBI wrote, “You are a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that.” The letter went on to say, “The American public … will know you for what you are — an evil, abnormal beast,” and “Satan could not do more.”
The letter’s threat was ominous, if not specific: “King you are done.” Some have theorized the intent of the letter was to drive King to commit suicide in order to avoid personal embarrassment. “King, there is only one thing left for you to do,” the letter concluded. “You know what it is … You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.”
And how is it spun (implicitly, at least)? “Gee, the intelligence agencies sure were crazy back then, huh?! Yep, the crazy 60’s, everybody was a little nuts. Thank goodness we live at a time when all that silliness is ancient history, and now whatever they do in secret — beyond the eyes of the People, and certainly beyond any real accountability — is nothing but good stuff that we can trust. Don’t give it another thought!”
If anybody reading this (my comment) thinks this isn’t how most people think, tell somebody about what we did to Iran in 1953, and time how long it takes them to say “But that was over 50 years ago!” 8 out of 10 will say something dismissive like that within 30 seconds; probably less, as it will be the first thing out of their mouth. What the hell will we find out about 50 years from now? Nothing, of course, we simply don’t do that anymore.
What a happy, shiny, plasticky world we (now) live in!
Sheesh.
I guess on reading this article that one must conclude that Martin Luther King was a subject of TORTURE EXTREME. TO THE NTH DEGREE.
Who was head of the FBI then, HOOVER I think,(sorry can’t remember) but oh so appropos if it was Hoover. A CLOSET or maybe not so bumfragger.
A colossal and viscious fraud. Now is that the kettle talking to the pot or what?
Communist links?
Shiite. The FBI used the same ploy with John Lennon.
Think on the people who have postulated progressive, out of the main stream views, who people of all colors and kinds and religions found a following of the people, who have been assassinated, if not by a bullet, well then, lets use a sex scandal instead?
Why don’t we do it in the road?
This treatment of Martin Luther King and others murdered for their opposition to the corporate mafia’s time will come.
Give em enough rope, and they will hang themselves.
RIP, MLK, not in my name was this done to you!
AnotherNut,
Surely, you can’t imagine that the “craziness” of back then in the 1960’s ever lost the oomph in its goomph, as Dr.Suess used to say. Oops. I think the real person behind Dr. Suess was labeled a communist too.
The FBI, the CIA, the NSA have been spying on all of us since they were born. Christ on a stick, no wonder we all are paranoid to one extent or another. THEY ARE ALL SPYING ON US. I know I’m not paranoid, but a realist. You’d be a fool not to think you aren’t being monitored.
I do believe spooks of any stripe are migrating from the communist to the terrorist as the threat.
NOT DOING A GOOD JOB.
Does the FBI or CIA have a customer service number? There’s your first clue. They are not SERVING US, but another master.
It must be hard to be an investigator in the employ of the US govmint. Depending on the day week, year or hour, they are beholden to the power behind the throne in the White House. Where instead of finding crime, an investigator, or special agent in charge, instead, has to enforce the latest jingoist proclivities of the the latest and greatest douche bag that has ascended to the top of the power dome.
I know several persons in such positions. Their health (both mental and physical) has suffered greatly. I can’t imagine when they signed on to their jobs that they ever thought, to earn their pay, that they’d EVER have to STOOP SO LOW to shank, spy, shit on, and/or murder people, just to keep their day jobs.
Eileen,
Clearly, you are not one of the 8 out of 10 I mentioned; nor, I’d guess, are most Cryptogon readers. But if you think my numbers are off — and there’s more than 2 out of 10 who would see that we’re the Eloi and the Morlocks have only gotten more efficient since the 60’s — then I need to move to your neck of the woods. Because where I live, and from what I see, most folks think that only the “bad guys” are in danger of losing their rights.