MLK and the FBI
In A Higher Purpose (2018), James Comey maintains that the memory of what the FBI did to MLK remains a stain upon the institution’s reputation: “Because I knew that the FBI’s interaction with the civil rights movement, and Dr. King in particular, was a dark chapter in the Bureau’s history, I . . . ordered the creation of a curriculum at the FBI’s Quantico training academy. I wanted all agent and analyst trainees to learn the history of the FBI’s interaction with King, how the legitimate counterintelligence mission against Communist infiltration of our government had morphed into an unchecked, vicious campaign of harassment and extralegal attack on the civil rights leader and others. I wanted them to remember that well-meaning people lost their way. I wanted them to know that the FBI sent King a letter blackmailing him and suggesting he commit suicide. I wanted them to stare at that history, visit the inspiring King Memorial in Washington, D.C. . . . The FBI Training Division created a curriculum that does just that. All FBI trainees study that painful history and complete the course by visiting the memorial. . . . To drive the message home, I obtained a copy of the October 1963 memo from J. Edgar Hoover to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy seeking permission to conduct electronic surveillance of Dr. King. . . . I put the memo under the glass on the corner of the desk where every morning I reviewed applications . . . to conduct . . . electronic surveillance . . . . I kept the Hoover memo there not to make a critical statement about Hoover or Kennedy, but to make a statement about the value of oversight and constraint.”
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was afraid of Martin Luther King—“the most dangerous Negro in America”—and it's fairly well known that he had a small army of agents watching him 24/7, reading his mail, wiretapping his phones, and listening in on his conversations—just as it’s fairly well known that King cheated on his wife with some regularity. What’s far less known is that the FBI often used this information in decidedly diabolical ways. For instance, at one point, Hoover sent a threatening letter to King which said, in essence: we’ve got proof of your infidelities, we’ve got sex tapes, and, unless you commit suicide, we’re going to release them to the public in 34 days: “You are finished. . . . King you are done. . . . The American public, the church organizations that have been helping—Protestant, Catholic and Jews will know you for what you are—an evil and abnormal beast. So will others who have backed you. You are done. King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is.” Kill yourself. Or we’ll kill your reputation. Of course King didn’t kill himself. Nor did he bow out of public life. But King was an exceptionally courageous dude. Made of tough stuff. I can’t help but wonder how many politicians, activists, and journalists have shied away from serious political issues after they received a letter like this.
Texting, email, digital photography, social media, and the proliferation of high-quality video equipment have radically transformed 21st-century communication. There’s a record of pretty much everything now. In practice, this means that there’s a great deal of dirt, or stuff that can be construed as dirt, on pretty much everyone under the age of 30, and many of those above it. What does that mean for the future of our democracies? Are we to be governed by elected officials who can be publicly disgraced and taken down at a moment’s notice whenever they challenge the powers that be? Or are we to be governed by the exceptionally virtuous few? Historically, that hasn’t always worked out so well. Maximilien “The Incorruptible” Robespierre was a disaster.
