FBI tracked King's every move

[cali]

(CNN) -- FBI wiretaps have "given us the most powerful and persuasive source of all for seeing how utterly selfless Martin Luther King was," as a civil rights leader, according to a leading civil rights scholar.



"You see him being intensely self-critical. King really and truly believed that he was there to be of service to others. This was not a man with any egomaniacal joy of being a famous person, or being a leader," said Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar David Garrow in a recent interview with 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.

The almost fanatical zeal with which the FBI pursued King is disclosed in tens of thousands of FBI memos from the 1960s.

<snip>


The bureau convened a meeting of department heads to "explore how best to carry on our investigation 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.

<snip>

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/03/31/mlk.fbi.conspiracy/index.html

[inna]

1. good post, for once, recommended.

[spanone]

2. j. edgar was as crazy as they come.

[cali]

5. crazy, yes, and as loathsome and disgusting as they come.

[spanone]

6. he was really a sick fuck

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover

[NightWatcher]

3. King was an enemy of the status quo. he was threatened and taken out

they attempted to blackmail him over the sex stuff, but that didnt slow him down, so he had to be killed.

He threatened the power structure.

[malaise]

7. +1 n/t

[hootinholler]

4. Why on earth would Bobby Kennedy consent to the bugging?

What did J. Edgar tell him about King?

:shrug:

-Hoot