The Crusade to Topple King

J. Edgar Hoover made his name in dogged pursuit of men like John Dillinger and "Pretty Boy" Floyd, but he never went after anybody with the diligence that he devoted to Martin Luther King Jr. Fragmented stories of FBI wiretaps on King have circulated for years, and last week the details of the almost paranoid pursuit were laid before the select Senate Intelligence Committee. Among its findings:

> The FBI wiretapped King's Atlanta house from 1963 to 1965, his Atlanta office from 1963 to 1966. It installed 16 bugging microphones in hotels and motels as he traveled, and it eavesdropped on him at both the Democratic and Republican conventions in 1964.

> After TIME selected King as its Man of the Year (Jan. 3, 1964), Assistant FBI Director William Sullivan sent a plan to Hoover for dealing with King by "taking him off his pedestal and reducing his influence." With King discredited, Sullivan wrote, the FBI could promote another black man as the leader of the civil rights movement. That man, a relatively unknown New York attorney and a Republican, only recently learned of the plan; he was stunned and asked the committee not to reveal his name.

> The FBI in 1964 anonymously sent to King's wife Coretta a tape of some bedroom conversations that had been secretly recorded while King was traveling. Such a tape was a prized possession of Hoover's, and he once had it played for Lyndon Johnson, who in turn entertained reporters with his version of King's extramarital conquests.

> In an anonymous letter mailed to King just before he was to go to Stockholm in 1964 to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, the FBI warned: "King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is ..." Committee Counsel F.A.O. Schwarz Jr. said that "this was taken by Dr. King as a suggestion for suicide."

> The FBI tried to prevent King's audience with Pope Paul VI in September 1964. Using New York's Francis Cardinal Spellman as a conduit, the agency sent disparaging word of King's morals to the Pope, but he did not cancel the audience. The FBI also tried to persuade two universities to withdraw honorary degrees that they planned to award to King. It is not known if they complied.

> An internal FBI memo of March 28, 1968, suggested that the agency use "friendly media contacts" to put out the word that King was a "hypocrite" for coming to Memphis to lead a garbage strike and urge blacks to boycott white businesses while he himself was staying at the white-owned Holiday Inn. Two local news stories subsequently mentioned the fact. King then switched to the black-owned Lorraine Motel. It was there he was shot on April 4, though the committee in no way suggests that the FBI was setting him up. That memo about the Holiday Inn contained the notation "O.K. ... H.", which was Hoover's usual note of approval.

Why Hoover's obsession with King? James Adams, the agency's assistant deputy director, testified that the initial reason was "to determine if there was Communist influence on him." Adams conceded that there were "probably 25 incidents" directed at King, and said, "I see no statutory basis and no justification for the activities." Chairman Frank Church asked if the FBI ever found that King was a Communist. Replied Adams: "No, we did not."

Justice Department sources have told TIME that the King case was opened on "solid evidence" linking Communists with King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. According to these sources, two high-level Communist Party officials told the FBI in 1963 that the party had penetrated the SCLC. Hoover sent a memo about this to the White House and the departments of Defense, Justice and State. On the basis of the memo, Attorney General Robert Kennedy authorized wiretaps on King.

King also had enraged Hoover by criticizing the FBI for not doing more to protect Southern civil rights workers and not hiring more blacks; in 1963, of the FBI's 5,500 agents, only five were blacks.* Says one FBI source: "If you criticized the FBI, Hoover took after you. He'd do anything to destroy the credibility of a critic."

The committee also heard details of the FBI's campaign in the 1960s to harass other Americans. The FBI spied on the women's liberation movement on the theory that it might be infiltrated by Communists. Said Schwarz: [The bureau] "had informants running all over the country checking on what housewives were talking about in their meetings to discuss their role in life." In one case, he said, the agency arranged for white mice to be released at a women's lib protest demonstration.

False Credentials. A Hoover memo of October 1968, titled "The Disruption of the New Left," urged that the FBI send anonymous letters to parents, informing them when their youngsters were arrested in antiwar demonstrations. At the 1964 Democratic Convention, the FBI got false press credentials through NBC and inserted agents, working as reporters, within left-wing and civil rights groups. Sometimes the FBI tried to disrupt the marriages of dissidents by sending anonymous letters to a husband or wife. Said one letter to the husband of a white woman active in the black movement: "Look man I guess your old lady doesn't get enough at home ... Like all she wants to integrate is the bedroom."

In other distressing testimony to Congress, Robert Hardy, a Camden, N.J., building contractor, described his experience as an FBI informant. At bureau direction he planned, encouraged and directed a raid by antiwar protesters on a Camden draft board. Said Hardy: "They were the most nonviolent, well-intentioned people I ever met in my life. I'm not proud to say that with respect to breaking into the draft board, I taught them everything they knew."

Defending the bureau, Adams asked that critics remember what the country was like in the late 1960s: "We had cities being burned and educational institutions being bombed. People were dying ... Presidents, Congressmen -no one said 'Do this' or 'Don't do that.' That's why we are looking for guidelines."

* There are 8,000 FBI special agents now, 103 of them are black.

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