If this doesn't demonstrate the excesses of government wiretaps, I don't know what does

[journalist3072]

I'm just sick to the stomach after reading this. It demonstrates why the United States government cannot and must not be given free reign when it comes to the issue of wiretaps.

FBI tracked King's every move

By Jen Christensen
CNN

(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 that 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.


-snip-


The FBI's interest in King intensified after the March on Washington in August 1963 when King delivered what 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 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 Dr. 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.

-snip-

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."


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


The most disappointing thing for me, perhaps, is that Robert Kennedy approved these wiretaps....basically telling Hoover and the FBI "as long you don't get caught."

Very shameful on his part.

[TahitiNut]

1. Welcome to the 60s.

Some of us are old enoygh to remember ALL of that very clearly.

Is it any wonder that I'm an independent liberal?

[enough]

2. Thank you for making this very important connection. I hope it sinks in. NT

[fed-up]

3. this needs some help to get to the greatest-k/r nt

[fed-up]

4. and can you repost this in General Discussion-this is probably one of 10 GD-P posts I have read nt