Since a search warrant was executed at former President Donald Trump’s Florida Mar-a-Largo home, the FBI has received death threats to their lives, pleas for it to be defunded, and comparisons to Adolf Hitler’s Gestapo. Speaking from personal experience, I can unequivocally state that the FBI we live with today is not the FBI that my uncle lived with.
Beginning in 1955 and not ending until his 1968 assassination, my uncle, Rev Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (M.L.), was the most spied upon American citizen in American history. The ACLU documented how the FBI violated Uncle M.L.’s civil and human rights in its January 2002 study THE DANGERS OF DOMESTIC SPYING BY FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT: A CASE STUDY OF FBI SURVEILLANCE OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING. Some of the FBI abuses of Uncle M.L. were:
♦ Prepared and distributed a report called “Communism and the Negro Movement – A Current Analysis.” The report, which was sent to various high-ranking government officials, was described by an assistant attorney general as a “personal diatribe a
personal attack without evidentiary support on the character, the moral character and person of Dr. Martin Luther King, and it was only peripherally related to anything substantive”.
♦ Tried to pit the religious community against Dr. King. In 1964, an FBI official spoke to the General Secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ in hopes of tarnishing Dr. King’s reputation. Although not representative of many of its members, the General Secretary at the time seemed to have bowed to the enormous pressure of the FBI and assured the agency that “steps have been taken by the National Council of the Churches of Christ to make certain from this time on that Martin Luther King will never get ‘one single dollar’ of financial support from the National Council.”
♦ Sought to derail a meeting it learned Dr. King planned with the Pope. In August 1964, the agent in charge of the FBI’s New York office was instructed to contact Cardinal Francis Spellman on a “highly confidential basis” and impress upon the
Cardinal the “likely embarrassment that may result to the Pope should he grant King an audience and King is later discredited.” Despite the FBI’s efforts, the Pope chose to meet with Dr. King. Then-FBI Director Hoover scrawled across the memorandum informing him of that meeting “astounding,” and “I am amazed that the Pope gave an audience to such a [removed by FBI].”
♦ Tried to limit Dr. King’s ability to raise funds for the SCLC. The FBI used covert operations to successfully block Dr. King from obtaining contributions from Teamster President James Hoffa. A memorandum from field agent Robert Wick to Cartha DeLoach of the FBI’s Internal Security Division on November 11, 1966, stated: “our counterintelligence aim to thwart King from receiving money from the Teamsters has been quite successful to date.”
♦ The FBI used “friendly news sources” to criticize Dr. King’s stance on the Vietnam War, publicizing “King as a traitor to his country and to his race.” These news articles proved successful in reducing money raised from a series of shows given by Harry Belafonte to raise funds for the SCLC.
The FBI’s spying on Uncle M.L. was so pervasive and unjustified that former FBI Director, James Comey, kept a copy on his desk of the October 1963 6-sentence memo, which contained no legal justification language to rationalize or explain the intense spying, signed by then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy authorizing the equivalent of 24/7 surveillance of Uncle M.L.
Comey says he kept the surveillance memo on his desk to remind him of “what we as humans are capable of and why it is vital that power be overseen, be constrained, and be checked”. Comey also added a Martin Luther King lesson to the FBI trainee program that according to Cynthia DeWitte, the then-curriculum manager at the FBI academy, “We wanted to provide a lesson of what happens when power is abused and the responsibility that comes with being in the FBI”.
That was the FBI my Uncle M.L. had to live with, a Gestapo-like organization that tried unsuccessfully to break up his marriage to Aunt Coretta and induce him to commit suicide. Uncle M.L.’s FBI was not bound by any government control only by the whims of its tyrant leader J. Edgar Hoover.
A copy of the FBI “suicide letter” sent to Uncle M.L.
Hoover’s FBI of the 1930s, ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, and part of the 1970s operated like Hitler’s Gestapo. If a citizen’s legal right to privacy, right of free speech through protest demonstrations, legal choice of political affiliation, or legal choice of religious affiliation ran counter to the personal beliefs or moral values of Hoover, that citizen like Uncle M.L. became an investigation target of the FBI.
In the 1960s all Hoover’s FBI needed to violate Uncle M.L.’s right to privacy by eavesdropping was the approval of the Attorney General. Hoover’s FBI didn’t need to seek a federal judge’s approval to eavesdrop on an American citizen or wiretap their premises. Hoover’s FBI didn’t have U.S. House or Senate intelligence oversight committees to monitor its operations.
J. Edgar Hoover used legal programs like COINTELPRO to become the most powerful autocrat in American history
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was the closest thing American democracy had to an American autocrat. During his 48-year reign as FBI director Hoover used the Gestapo tactics of eavesdropping and surveillance to blackmail and intimidate everyone he deemed a threat to his personal power, be they an entertainment star, corporate titan, Attorney General, Congressperson, Senator, or even a President of the United States!!!
Fortunately for the sake of American democracy the 1975 United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, informally known as the Church Committee, changed all that. As former FBI Director James Comey has said FBI power must be “overseen, be constrained, and be checked”. In order for today’s FBI to eavesdrop or conduct surveillance on anyone from a former President down to a local street corner deadbeat, it has to have permission to do so from a federal judge. There are now a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that diligently monitor FBI operations, both holding the FBI accountable for any abuses of its authority. And no FBI Director can serve longer than 10 years without an affirmative vote from both the House and Senate.
Actress Jean Seberg is an example of how Hoover’s FBI would attempt to sabotage anyone, white or black, who didn’t conform to his personal beliefs. Above is an FBI memo proposing a plan to lie about the pregnancy of Seberg, hoping to “possibly cause her embarrassment or tarnish her image with the general public” because she was a financial supporter of the Black Panther Party
Today’s FBI no longer investigates American citizens based on what race they are, what political party they belong to, or what religion they believe, today’s FBI investigates American citizens based on the harm they have done, are doing or will do to their fellow American citizens.
In 1968 when Uncle M.L. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee Hoover’s FBI was number 1 on my family’s suspect list, ahead of the CIA, ahead of the klu klux klan, and ahead of pro-Vietnam War corporate America. Today in 2022 if the same powerful Uncle M.L. was assassinated today’s FBI, happily for American democracy, wouldn’t even qualify to make the suspect list, instead, we would be able to do now what was unthinkable in 1968, appeal to the integrity and investigative expertise of the FBI to determine who killed our loved one.
No American should get it twisted, the FBI is far from perfect and has many issues to address before perfection could ever be achieved, but when compared to China’s Ministry of State Security, Russia’s Federal Security Service, Germany’s Bundesnachrichtendienst, France’s Directorate of Territorial Security, Great Britain’s MI5, or Japan’s Public Security Intelligence Agency, the FBI is damn good at what they do and it leaves all others combined in the dust.
To the fine men and women who are today’s FBI, on behalf of many likeminded Americans I offer an apology for the misguided Americans who have slandered your integrity, suggested depriving you of the resources you need to do your sometimes miraculous work of protecting Americans, and for threatening to take away from you and your family the same thing you work every day to give all Americans, a safe terror-free life.
As one who has personally felt the pain of whence you have come, your past dark Hoover days of unjust persecution, I am proud to salute who you are and who you are not today, I thank God for the sacrifices you voluntarily make each and every day for America. Since 1968 you’ve come a long way baby!!! Please ignore the player haters. Please continue to keep America safe, please continue to keep America strong. God Bless The FBI.