Jun 19, 2019 · The FBI began wiretapping King’s home and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference office in Atlanta on Nov. 8, 1963, with Robert Kennedy’s written approval. A major reason, as Mr. Garrow ...
The FBI's ongoing surveillance of Levison took on new energy when an informant tipped off the Bureau that Levison was an adviser to King. In late 1962, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy approved an FBI request to tap Levison's phone and bug his office. Kennedy later agreed to let the Bureau eavesdrop on King as well.
On October 10, 1963, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy committed what is widely viewed as one of the most ignominious acts in modern American history: …
It wasn't until 1963, when Attorney General Robert Kennedy approved wiretapping King's phones, that the government ramped up its campaign against the civil rights activist. (After King gave his "I ...
On orders from Hoover, information characterizing King as a communist dupe and a moral degenerate was circulated throughout the government, and to journalists, church leaders and others. J. Edgar Hoover created the modern FBI and ran it for 48 years, until his death in 1972.
Beginning in 1962, the FBI conducted an extensive program of surveillance and harassment against Martin Luther King Jr. Under the guidance of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover - and with the permission of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy -- the FBI tapped King's home and office phones and those of his associates. FBI agents also bugged King's hotel rooms, recording the civil rights leader's extramarital activities. The FBI used selected parts of its round-the-clock surveillance to try to discourage and discredit King. On orders from Hoover, information characterizing King as a communist dupe and a moral degenerate was circulated throughout the government, and to journalists, church leaders and others.
In 1962, FBI informants told the Bureau that one of Martin Luther King, Jr's closest advisers - New York lawyer Stanley Levison - was a communist. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover ordered an investigation. On June 22, 1963, King met with President John F. Kennedy at the White House to discuss civil rights. At one point, Kennedy led King from the Oval Office into the Rose Garden. The president warned King that two of his top associates - Levison and SCLC employee Jack O'Dell, were communists. Kennedy urged King to get rid of them (King later quipped that perhaps the president spoke to him in the garden because he thought the Oval Office might be bugged).
Hoover kept tabs on his political enemies and those who dared criticize the Bureau. Many historians have described Hoover as a racist.
The Rev. Martin Luther King makes a statement at the Justice Department in Washington on Dec. 1, 1964 after a meeting with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. King termed the 1¼-hour talk “quite amicable” Andrew Young, assistant to King, is at left. ( Bob Schutz / AP) July/August 2002 Issue.
The crucial figure was Stanley David Levison, a white New York lawyer and businessman who first met Martin Luther King in 1956, just as the young minister was being catapulted to national fame as a result of his role in the remarkable bus boycott against racially segregated seating in Montgomery, Alabama.
Jack Childs had served as primary "leg man," or assistant, to William Weiner, the CPUSA's chief financier, from 1945 to 1948. In May of 1952 he recalled for agents how Weiner had garnered secret contributions and handled the Party's extensive cash repositories.
Stanley Levison was a new name to the FBI. The FBI's interest in the Childs brothers concerned the future far more than the past, and the Bureau wondered whether their long-standing friendship with Weiner could lead to their reactivation as Communist Party members.
Martin Luther King was never himself a Communist— far from it. But the FBI's wiretapping of King was precipitated by his association with Stanley Levison, a man with reported ties to the Communist Party. Newly available documents reveal what the FBI actually knew—the vast extent of Levison's Party activities
Robert Kennedy, shown here in 1963, served as chief counsel for the U.S. Senate ’s Rackets Committee and then as U.S. attorney general. In both capacities, he worked to crack down on organized crime. Courtesy of Library of Congress.
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Staunch civil rights advocate and United Auto Workers president Walter Reuther was recruited by the White House “to infiltrate the march and steer it away from radical rhetoric and direct action,” wrote Charles Euchner in his book “Nobody Turn Me Around,” about the historic march. “And so he did.”.
Watch CNN TV for special coverage throughout the day, including live coverage of President Obama’s address at the Lincoln Memorial, marking the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
It was June 1963 and Kennedy was meeting with civil rights leaders at the White House, including 23-year-old John Lewis, who had just been elected to lead the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. “It was a very moving meeting,” Lewis said.