I wrote about this last year and while it’s not exactly a secret it’s a story surprisingly few people know, so I think it’s worth repeating:
In November 1964, weeks before Martin Luther King was to travel to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, an anonymous correspondent sent him a package in the mail. The package contained an audiotape, and a letter.
The tape was a compilation of material recorded via Bureau wiretaps over the previous year. It consisted of off-color jokes and remarks King had made in private, among friends, interspersed with the sounds of him having sex with someone other than his wife. The letter included the following challenge:
King, look into your heart. You know you are a complete fraud and a great liability to all us Negroes. … you are no clergyman, and you know it. … You could have been our greatest leader. You, even at an early age have turned out to be not a leader but a dissolute, abnormal moral imbecile. … You are done. Your “honorary” degrees, your Nobel Prize (what a grim farce) and other awards will not save you. King, I repeat you are done. No person can overcome facts, not even a fraud like yourself. … The American public, the church organizations that have been helping — Protestant, Catholic and Jews will know you for what you are — an evil, 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. You have just 34 days in which to do [it]. … You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.
The letter was mailed 34 days before Christmas.
King did not receive the package until after he returned from Oslo, and after the 34-day deadline had passed. When he listened to the tape he quickly concluded that it could have come from only one source — the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
He was right.
The FBI had been wiretapping King for over a year by then, and Bureau chief J. Edgar Hoover made no secret of his loathing for the civil rights leader. The suicide package was prepared by Hoover deputy William Sullivan, an Assistant Director of the Bureau and the head of its Domestic Intelligence Division.
When you teach American history as I do, you get asked about conspiracies a lot. As it happens, I’m skeptical about some of the biggest conspiracy theories out there — unlike nearly all of my students, for instance, I think it’s highly likely that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
But I’m not one to ridicule such theories either, and I find the smug dismissal with which they’re so often greeted deeply obnoxious. Because forty-seven years ago one of America’s highest ranking law enforcement agents launched a secret campaign intended to blackmail the country’s most prominent civil rights activist into committing suicide.
That’s not a theory, it’s a fact. And once you know that, it gets a lot harder to dismiss other people’s stories of shadowy government goings-on.
12 comments
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January 16, 2012 at 11:17 am
Doug Horne
Great stuff … more people need to know.
You mentioned Kennedy. Read this and try to imagine it as a coincidence (there is another story just like it in Miami after Nov. 22) The more detailed accounts describe a scenario in Chicago very similar to what happened in Dallas.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3902495&page=1#.TxRMupjTKFI
January 17, 2012 at 2:40 am
Martin Luther King was NOT a Republican - Page 2 - Christian Forums
[…] […]
January 23, 2012 at 2:16 pm
Tom Wilco
So, where are the links backing up this story? How are we supposed to believe that anything you’ve said is true? I hope you don’t ask your students to take your word on blind faith…
January 23, 2012 at 4:03 pm
Angus Johnston
I don’t ask my students to take my word on blind faith, but I usually don’t give them “links” either.
In this case, the text of the letter is easily Googleable, and will take you to any number of scholarly histories that tell the story.
My recollection is that I relied mostly on David Garrow’s King biography in composing this post, but really, like I said above, it’s not exactly a secret.
March 28, 2012 at 8:42 am
The Controversial HSCA Investigation and Beyond.. | occupy illuminati
[…] – The FBI’s Attempt to Blackmail Martin Luther King Into Suicide […]
April 21, 2012 at 7:17 am
Edossa
Well trand FBI is not acte on him/herself investigating elements from every where, but use techinology which is filtaring information. CIA or centeral intelegency agency is indepandant from poletical parties and militars browd working function like CIA_spy is also not famighn of information like fimighn peoples ingalf any things what he or she get on or in her or his body this is not cia and it’s goll. CIA follow up it’s peoples or citizen as educater from there gamet of born and by teaching grow in deceplind world. FBI know peoples problum and control befor action, but not paind peoples more paind. And also diceplend peoples not diny saying deceplind only from me. FBI not collecting arrest CIA manbers in buchirest, e.tc global, physical, and abstractly , but identify who is and from where problums ? Living peoples in peace and kind world as there interest.
April 21, 2012 at 7:18 am
Edossa
Well trand FBI is not acte on him/herself investigating elements from every where get, but use techinology which is filtaring information. CIA or centeral intelegency agency is indepandant from poletical parties and militars browd working function like CIA_spy is also not famighn of information like fimighn peoples ingalf any things what he or she get on or in her or his body this is not cia and it’s goll. CIA follow up it’s peoples or citizen as educater from there gamet of born and by teaching grow in deceplind world. FBI know peoples problum and control befor action, but not paind peoples more paind. And also diceplend peoples not diny saying deceplind only from me. FBI not collecting arrest CIA manbers in buchirest, e.tc global, physical, and abstractly , but identify who is and from where problums ? Living peoples in peace and kind world as there interest.
April 21, 2012 at 7:23 am
Edossa
Well trand FBI is not acte on him/herself investigating elements from every where get, but use techinology which is filtaring information. CIA or centeral intelegency agency is indepandant from poletical parties and militars. It’s browd working function like CIA_spy, e.t.c. CIA_spy is also not famighn of information like fimighn peoples ingalf any things what he or she get on or in her or his body this is not cia and it’s roll. CIA follow up it’s peoples or citizen as educater from there gamet of born and by teaching grow in deceplind world. FBI know peoples problum and control befor action, but not paind peoples more. And also diceplend peoples not diny saying deceplind only from me. FBI not collecting arrest CIA manbers in buchirest, e.tc global, physical, and abstractly , but identify who is and from where problums ? Living peoples in peace and kind world as there interest.
May 17, 2012 at 2:39 pm
The Murder of Fred Hampton — BEAUTIFUL DOPE
[…] agents that spied on Martin Luther King also ran Cointelpro’s ‘Omaha Two’ – The FBI’s Attempt to Blackmail Martin Luther King Into Suicide – Cointelpro: FBI tried to drive Martin Luther King, Jr. to suicide – The FBI’s Vendetta […]
June 8, 2013 at 12:41 pm
Jewel Collins
what a bunch of bullshit
June 13, 2013 at 3:30 am
FBI attempted to blackmail Martin Luther King into suicide | AlxMedia
[…] (Text summary by Angus Johnston.) […]
June 18, 2013 at 9:31 am
Things to Hide — The League of Ordinary Gentlemen
[…] If we are worried about it, where should we apply the check? Before the data is collected, or after? It must be before: In a world where we all have things to hide, and where the government can potentially know about any of them, individuals can easily be manipulated without anyone else ever knowing. Blackmail happens in private. By its nature, the victims don’t talk, and it takes someone of rare courage to defy a blackmail attempt. […]