Because J Edgar Hoover feared he might be a communist, our nation set out to destroy a prophet.

[Octafish]

Ernest Withers outside the Lorraine Motel, Memphis, Tennessee.

Ernest Withers’ reports on Martin Luther King went to COINTELPRO command

Michael Richardson
COINTELPRO Examiner

The revelation by the Memphis Commercial Appeal that acclaimed photographer Ernest Withers was an informant on the civil rights movement to the Memphis office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has put COINTELPRO back in the news.

SNIP...

“We will at the proper time when it can be done without embarrassment to the Bureau, expose King as an immoral opportunist who is not a sincere person but is exploiting the racial situation for his own personal gain.”

SNIP...

In January 1969, Moore sent Sullivan a memo warning of a move to make King’s birthday a national holiday. Moore urged Sullivan to have material ready from the hotel room tapes to play for the incoming Nixon administration in an effort to stop the new national holiday.

Sullivan passed on Moore’s suggestion to Hoover and on January 23, 1969, just three days in after Nixon’s inauguration, Hoover sent the Attorney General designee, John Mitchell, a Top Secret memo.

“In view of this there is enclosed a document regarding the communist influence on King during his career and information regarding King’s highly immoral personal behavior. For your information, a copy of this document is also being furnished to the President.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.examiner.com/cointelpro-in-national/ernest-withers-reports-on-martin-luther-king-went-to-cointelpro-command#ixzz1BLyQfpwA

Dr. King was no commie. Nor was he a crook.

Peace, Love, and Justice are what Martin Luther King, Jr. was all about.

What is it they say about a Prophet in his homeland?

[defendandprotect]

1. Hoover saw a "Black Messiah" rising .... as I recall him describing it ....

and made sure that Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated --

Hoover ran a Gestapo and it certainly wasn't about defending America --

it was about defending fascism in America!

Hoover was a racist, through and though -- !!

[Octafish]

5. Hoover held the same mentality of the slaveholder.

That is, one person is better than another, and thus can use that person.

It is a despicable frame of mind. Unfortunately, it has held sway in the highest quarters of our nation for too long.

I haven't seen this yet, but I plan to: COINTELPRO 101

It was made by people who were impacted by these evil bastards.

[defendandprotect]

10. Hoover represented a sad and evil period for America, imo --

I'm a former New Yorker -- and was really shocked at DU "traditions" re AAs

even during the 60's! Haven't had a personal view of DC since then* -- used to

take the fligths back and forth at one time. Don't imagine with all the time

the right wing has been in charge there that anything has changed for the

better!

Was sorry to hear that Giffords voted against the DC ban on guns!

Thanks for the info on "Cointelpro" -- will read it tomorrow and try to catch up

with it!

:)



* other than one day marches a few times since then -- but no personal contacts

there any longer --

[leftstreet]

2. The Brit...Commun...Terra....ists are coming!!!1111

K&R

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. Exactly. All fear, all the time.

[RKP5637]

4. Yeah, so true, we've always had someones coming after us. I grew up listening

to the communists are coming after us, then the blacks are gonna get us, then the hippies, the Mexicans, the terrorists, the socialists, it's a F'en endless list. It gets tiring ...

[Octafish]

7. Control.

I thought this was a democracy?

COINTELPRO in the 60s

excerpted from the book

WAR AT HOME

by Brian Glick
Third World Traveler

EXCERPT...

COINTELPRO's targets were not, however, limited to Black militants. Many other activists who wanted to end U.S. intervention abroad or institute racial, gender, and class justice at home also came under attack. Cesar Chavez, Fathers Daniel and Phillip Berrigan, Rev. Jesse Jackson, David Dellinger, officials of the American Friends Service Committee and the National Council of Churches, and other leading pacifists were high on the list, as were projects directly protected by the First Amendment, such as anti-war teach-ins, progressive bookstores, independent filmmakers, and alternative newspapers and news services. Martin Luther King, Jr., world-renowned prophet of non violence, was the object of sustained FBI assault. King was marked, barely a month before his murder, for elimination as a potential "messiah" who could "unify and electrify" the Black movement.

Ultimately, FBI documents disclosed six major official counterintelligence programs (as well as non-COINTELPRO covert operations against Native American, Asian-American, Arab-American, Iranian, and other activists):

1) "Communist Party-USA" (1956-71): This was the first and largest program, which contributed to the Party's decline in the late 1950s and was used in the early and mid-1960s mainly against civil rights, civil liberties, and peace activists. Its targets during the latter period included Martin Luther King, Jr., the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, the NAACP, the National Lawyers Guild, the National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee, Women's Strike for Peace, the American Friends Service Committee, and the National Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy.

2) "Groups Seeking Independence for Puerto Rico" (1960-71): Initially hidden from congressional investigators, and still one of the least well known, this program functioned to disrupt, discredit, and factionalize the island's main centers of anti-colonial resistance, especially the Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP) and Socialist League (LSP). It also appears to have targeted groups fighting for human rights for Puerto Ricans living in the United States, such as the Young Lords Party.

3) "Border Coverage Program" (1960-71): This program of covert operations against radical Mexican organizations was similarly concealed from Congress. The few documents released to date do not indicate how much the FBI used it against 1960s Chicano activists such as the Brown Berets, the Crusade for Justice (Colorado), La Alianza (New Mexico), and the Chicano Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam (Los Angeles), which are known to have been infiltrated and repressed by other government agencies.

4) "Socialist Workers Party" (1961-69): In addition to ongoing attacks on the SWP and its youth group, the Young Socialist Alliance, this program operated against whomever those groups supported or worked with, especially Malcolm X and the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam.

5) "Black Nationalist Hate Groups" (1967-71): This was the vehicle for the Bureau's all-out assault on Martin Luther King, Jr. (in the late 1960s), the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam ("Black Muslims"), the National Welfare Rights Organization, the League of Black Revolutionary Workers, the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM), the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), the Republic of New Afrika (RNA), the Congress of African People, Black student unions, and many local Black churches and community organizations struggling for decent living conditions, justice, equality, and empowerment.

6) "New Left" (1968-71): A program to destroy Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Peace and Freedom Party, the Institute for Policy Studies, and a broad range of anti-war, anti-racist, student, GI, veteran, feminist, lesbian, gay, environmental, Marxist, and anarchist groups, as well as the network of food co-ops, health clinics, child care centers, schools, bookstores, newspapers, community centers, street theaters, rock groups, and communes that formed the infrastructure of the counter-culture.

7) "White Hate Groups" (1964-71): This unique "program" functioned largely as a component of the FBI's operations against the progressive activists who were COINTELPRO's main targets. Under the cover of being even-handed and going after violent right-wing groups, the FBI actually gave covert aid to the Ku Klux Klan, Minutemen, Nazis, and other racist vigilantes. These groups received substantial funds, information, and protection-and suffered only token FBI harassment-so long as they directed their violence against COINTELPRO targets. They were not subjected to serious disruption unless they breached this tacit under standing and attacked established business and political leaders.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Third_World_US/COINTELPRO60s_WAH.html

Fear is what J. Edgar Hoover was all about.

Come to think of it:
Fear is what George Walker Bush is about.
And his daddy.
And his daddy.
And his daddy.

And their friends.

[Toucano]

6. King's opposed the capitalists' global wars of greed and materialism.

And he was right to do so. To paraphrase Tavis Smiley, it's what made him the first truly great American.

They can call that "communism", "socialism" or any other "-ism".

I will always call it "truism", and it won't make my brain shut down if they use their buzzwords against him.

[Octafish]

8. Dr. King stood up to them.

For doing so, it cost him many friends.

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam.
I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak
for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I
speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the
leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

And, for us, so much more.

[Kurovski]

9. K&R. (nt)

[Octafish]

12. 'The madness of Viet Nam,' Dr. King said, will 'totally' poison America's soul.'

Dr. King opposed the War Party. From William Loren Katz:

Devastating Hope

The Pentagon and the King Legacy

By WILLIAM LOREN KATZ
CounterPunch

This January 13 the Pentagon commemorated the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with an address by Jeh C. Johnson, the Defense Department's general counsel.

In the final year of his life, King became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, Johnson told a packed auditorium. However, he added, today's wars are not out of line with the iconic Nobel Peace Prize winner's teachings. "I believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would recognize that we live in a complicated world, and that our nation's military should not and cannot lay down its arms and leave the American people vulnerable to terrorist attack." Really?

Dr. King's first anti-war speech, "Declaration of Independence from the War In Vietnam" delivered on April 4, 1967 at the Riverside Church in New York City is not only eloquent and passionate but also carefully reasoned and as unmistakable in its message as its title. Dr. King knew his call for U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam would bring challenges to his leadership from his enemies, many of his friends in the civil rights movement, and lead to increased FBI harassment. He spoke at a moment when U.S. officials from the President down warned that communism's triumph in Vietnam would lead to victories across Asia and beyond, and Americans has been as fearful of communism as they are of today's terrorists.

SNIP...

Early in his address, Dr. King pointed out that "our leaders refused to tell us the truth" about our war in Vietnam. Can we ever forget that the U.S. attack on Irag was initiated to destroy weapons of mass destruction that never existed, and retaliate against a Saddam Hussein and Iraq who had no part in the 9/11 attacks on the United States? In the name of Iraqi freedom our leaders ordered the torture of prisoners, and promoted democracy by supporting corrupt leaders who lack popular support. The people of Viet Nam, King said, "must see Americans as strange liberators." In Afghanistan today those who suffer from Drone attacks directed from afar, and from other deadly searches for terrorists, do not see us as liberators. They see a distant power occupying and oppressing innocent civilians, and see the United States as doomed to fail as earlier foreign invaders.

"The madness of Viet Nam," Dr. King said in 1967, will "totally" poison "America's soul." He told how U.S. involvement in Viet Nam "eviscerated" its war on poverty begun by President Lyndon Johnson, and instead had its "funds and energies" and "men and skills" drawn into a war "like some demonic, destructive suction tube." What happens to "America's soul" as the U.S. budget spins out of control, joblessness and hopelessness reaches proportions known only during the Great Depression?

CONTINUED w important links:

http://counterpunch.org/katz01182011.html

Those who could do something to end the War Party's reign over the past 42 years and didn't should be ashamed.

[bengalherder]

11. K&R

Go Doc Oct!

Been a fan for years...

I was a child when these assainations went down, but even I felt the sea change.

I hope we come to transcend the legacy of Nixon and Hoover.

[Octafish]

15. King, Ike, and 20 Years of War in Iraq

The War Party does not allow for an organized opposition. Thus, the assassinations of national leaders who opposed war and War Inc in the 1960s. And, today, those who are for peace can be considered enemies of the state.

King, Ike, and 20 Years of War in Iraq

by Andrew Fiala
Published on Sunday, January 16, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

EXCERPT...

When King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, he said that war was becoming obsolete. And he argued that mankind's survival depended upon solving the problems of racial injustice, poverty, and war. In 1967, when he spoke out against the war in Vietnam, King said, "war is not the answer." And he warned that the deep malady of the American spirit is our perverse devotion to what he called the "giant triplets" of "racism, extreme materialism, and militarism."

In his Nobel Prize speech, King called for an ecumenical spiritual revolution grounded in love. He claimed that love is a force that "all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life." According to King this is a "Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality." Love is opposed to racism, to poverty, and to war.

King put it this way: "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." But today nearly half of the federal budget is devoted to military spending, while we grapple with massive deficits and unemployment rates that are double what they were during the 1960's.

After twenty years of no-fly zones and shock and awe in Iraq, this war may soon come to an end. But at what cost? Over a million Iraqis have died from the combined result of war, terrorism, and the sanctions imposed during the 1990's. Thousands of American soldiers have died and many more have been permanently disabled. The Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimates that the total cost of the war in Iraq will amount to several trillion dollars.

SNIP...

King was not the first to note that military power and economics are connected. George Washington insisted that we avoid war if possible and especially avoid creating debt to pay for war, so that we do not "ungenerously throw upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear." And Eisenhower warned about the power of the "permanent armaments industry" and the "military establishment." War erodes our liberties, burdens us with debt, and builds up the strength of the military-industrial complex.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/16-5

Thank you for the kind words, bengalherder. A hearty welcome to DU, my Friend!

[bobthedrummer]

13. K&R Hoover&Tolson had their rights protected 24/7 n/t

[hootinholler]

14. I always viewed J Edgar as a tool

Not an instigator. He provided what was asked of him. Dirt on Nixon's enemies, infiltration of peace activists and the convenient blind eye for his friends.

-Hoot

[Vinnie From Indy]

16. In a cruel twist of irony, just a few decades later

the US ultra-wealthy elite in America cannot send our jobs fast enough to "godless" commies in China. It should also be noted that the elites of the MIC that made oceans of money from scaring Americans about communism simply replaced "godless commies" with a much more sustainable enemy - Al Queda. While it would SEEM obvious that enemies like the Soviet Union and China with their nuclear stockpiles would make it an easier sell to the American sheeple, they seem to be doing just fine with casting a few hundred evildoers with no nuclear capability as credible enough bogeymen to not only continue to steal billions but to actually increase the amount of money they steal to fight this largely manufactured enemy.

For con men and thieves, there has never been a more fertile environment than 21st century America. These elites make La Cosa Nostra look like kids with a lemonade stand in comparison.

[jotsy]

17. at the realized risk of its own long term peril.

Recommended.

[shanti]

18. and one more thing about j.e. hoover

he was black, according to the one drop rule, but all of this self-hatred was deeply hidden. if anyone could keep secrets and destroy the truth, it was hoover, and he did. it's funny, because i just saw a commercial for a show about him and not knowing anything about his background, i instantly was able to see hoover's african heritage, so i looked it up and voila.

goclark had a good thread on this in december:


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2052573

[Mojeoux]

19. The rumors also say Hoover was gay and a transvestite.

To be gay and use the intimate secrets he accessed as weapons and blackmail against other gay people and cross dressers is despicable. What a horrible human being, the direct opposite of the high character and human compassion of MLK.