[wvns] FBI Spied on Martin Luther King's Widow
FBI Spied on Martin Luther King's Widow
By ERRIN HAINES,AP
http://news.aol.com/story/ar/_a/fbi-spied-on-martin-luther-kings-widow/20070831072609990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001
ATLANTA - Federal agents spied on the widow of the Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr. for several years after his assassination in 1968, according
to newly released documents that reveal the FBI worried about her
following in the footsteps of the slain civil rights icon.
Photo Gallery: Under Surveillance
Arnold Michaelis, Time Life / Getty Images Coretta Scott King poses
for a portrait in the late 1960s. Newly released documents show that
government agents spied on her for years after her husband, Martin
Luther King Jr., was assassinated.
In memos that reveal Coretta Scott King being closely followed by the
government, the FBI noted concern that she might attempt "to tie the
anti-Vietnam movement to the civil rights movement."
Four years after Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, the FBI closed its
file on Coretta Scott King, saying, "No information has come to the
attention of Atlanta which indicates a propensity for violence or
affiliation of subversive elements," according to a memorandum dated
Nov. 30, 1972.
The documents were obtained by Houston television station KHOU in a
story published Thursday. Coretta Scott King died in January 2006 at
the age of 78.
The Rev. Joseph Lowery, who served as president of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference - which King co-founded in 1957 - said
the documents illustrate the FBI's pattern of "despicable and devious"
civil-rights-era behavior against the organization and those
affiliated with it.
What's Your Take?
"The FBI kept a microphone everywhere they could where the SCLC was
concerned," said Lowery, who said the agency had a member of the
SCLC's staff on its payroll.
"Since we had nothing to hide, it was no great problem for us. But we
don't put it past the FBI; (then-FBI Director) J. Edgar Hoover hated
Martin Luther King and everything that the SCLC stood for."
Andrew Young, a lieutenant of King's during the civil rights movement,
agreed. But he said he was surprised that the government would focus
on Coretta Scott King.
"I didn't know it and I don't think she knew it," Young said. "If ever
there was a woman that had the makings of a saint, it was Coretta. I
don't know what they were looking for, I don't know what they were
expecting to find. I don't know why they wasted the government's money."
Also included in the documents:
The FBI suggested that Ralph Abernathy, a close aide to Martin Luther
King, be made aware of threats against his life for the benefit of
"the disruptive effect of confusing and worrying him."
An intercepted letter written by Coretta Scott King in 1971 to the
National Peace Action Coalition, in which she said the Vietnam War has
"ravaged our domestic programs."
One memo shows that the FBI even read and reviewed King's 1969 book
about her late husband, "My Life with Martin Luther King Jr." The
agent made a point to say that her "selfless, magnanimous, decorous
attitude is belied by ... (her) actual shrewd, calculating,
businesslike activities."
There is also evidence that the Nixon administration and
then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were kept informed of the
FBI's nearly constant surveillance.
Martin Luther King Jr.'s activities were known to have been monitored
by the federal government as he led the civil rights movement in the
1960s. Intelligence gathering on famous Americans and war critics
became so infamous that rules to curtail domestic spying were put in
place in the 1970s.
King's nephew, Isaac Newton Farris Jr., said on Thursday that the
surveillance of his aunt comes as no surprise.
"We knew she was surveilled," said Farris, who is also chief executive
officer of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social
Change. "The only surprise is the intensity of the surveillance after
his death. It appears it was as intense as the surveillance on my uncle."
Farris said there was no reason to monitor either one of them, since
they were law-abiding citizens who were standing up for their
constitutional rights.
"This is a woman who basically was trying to raise four kids and honor
her deceased husband," Farris said. "I don't know how that was a
threat to anybody's national security."
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