ENCOUNTER: J. EDGAR HOOVER LECTURES MARTIN LUTHER KING (By PETER CARLSON) [ Ссылка ]
When Martin Luther King requested a meeting with J. Edgar Hoover in 1964, the FBI director’s first instinct was to refuse. His reason was simple: He detested King.
“I held him in complete contempt,” Hoover later told Time magazine. “First I felt I shouldn’t see him, but then I thought he might become a martyr if I didn’t.”
Hoover hated King for several reasons, according to former FBI assistant director William C. Sullivan. First, King’s attorney and friend Stanley Levison was a former Communist, which raised Hoover’s suspicions. Also, King dared to criticize the FBI for failing to solve civil rights–related crimes, which angered the thin-skinned G-man. And, as Sullivan wrote in his memoir, “Hoover was opposed to change, to the civil rights movement, and to blacks.”
In 1963 Hoover used the King-Levison connection to convince Attorney General Robert Kennedy to let the FBI tape King’s phones & bug his hotel rooms. The bugs revealed that King enjoyed sexual relations with women other than his wife, which disgusted Hoover, a lifelong bachelor whose own sex life (if any) remains a mystery.
Hoover shared his tapes of King’s sexual romps with President Lyndon Johnson, who gleefully played them for his aides. Hoover also ordered his underlings to leak information on King’s sex life to reporters.
When King won the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1964, A month later, Hoover revealed his enmity in public. “In my opinion,” he told a gathering of women reporters, “Dr. Martin Luther King is the most notorious liar in the country.”
That comment ignited a firestorm of controversy that led to the now legendary meeting between Hoover and King.
Robert Hill: MLK nearly died before he could change America: (Opinion by By Robert Hill) [ Ссылка ]
Hoover Hid That Some Witnesses In Malcolm X Assassination Trial Were FBI Informants, A Manhattan judge exonerated two men convicted of killing the revolutionary leader after decades of doubt about who was responsible for his 1965 death. (By Michael R. Sisak and Jennifer Peltz) [ Ссылка ]
The recent Malcolm X investigation found information in FBI files about witnesses who couldn’t identify Islam and implicated other suspects, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. told the court. The files showed that the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover ordered agents to tell witnesses not to reveal that they were informants when talking with police and prosecutors.
“I apologize for what were serious, unacceptable violations of law and the public trust,” he said. “There is one ultimate conclusion: Mr. Aziz and Mr. Islam were wrongfully convicted of this crime.”
Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck, one of the lawyers for Aziz and for Islam’s family, said the review also found the FBI and police hid evidence from prosecutors, as what he called part of a plot to disrupt the Black civil rights movement.
The FBI and New York Police Department had evidence of Aziz’s and Islam’s innocence within hours but ignored and suppressed it, said another of their attorneys, Deborah Francois, who works with civil rights attorney David Shanies.
Biben said the case “cries out for fundamental justice.”
The NYPD and the FBI said Wednesday that they had cooperated fully with the re-investigation. They declined to comment further.
NYPD Chief of Patrol Juanita Holmes said Thursday she felt for Malcolm X’s family and for Aziz and Islam “if we are responsible for withholding information.”
“I hope that we never revisit a scenario like this again,” she added.
Attorneys, scholars and others have long raised questions about the convictions, and alternate theories and accusations have swirled around the case. After Netflix aired the documentary series “Who Killed Malcolm X?” early last year, Vance’s office said it was taking a fresh look at the case.
#ThingsThatMakeYouQuestionEverythingAboutTheJusticeSystem🤔
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Related To:
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began monitoring Martin Luther King, Jr., in December 1955, during his involvement with the Montgomery bus boycott, and engaged in covert operations against him throughout the 1960s. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) | The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute [ Ссылка ]
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. vs. J. Edgar Hoover: Do We Really Know Who Won 60 Years Later?🤔 [ Ссылка ] via #InvisibleLegendsReimagined
Genius: MLK/X | Official Trailer | National Geographic: [ Ссылка ] via @NatGeo
