All language subtitles for MLK-FBI

At this time l have the honour
to present to you,

the moral leader of our nation.

From 1955 to 1968,

Martin Luther King led a peaceful
ZOth century American revolution.

In the short span of 13 years,

the non violent Civil Rights Movement

which he headed changed
the face of American society.

You know,
when you construct a man

as a great man, there's nothing
almost more satisfying

than also seeing him
represented as the opposite.

When the National Archives,

puts government documents

up on the web in public,

one has to confront them.

One cannot pretend they don't exist.

I think one of the difficulties

for historians in dealing
with really the fruits

of all of this surveillance
of King is whether or not

we then become complicit
in what the FBI was doing.

You know this about humans,
what we‘re best at is convincing ourselves

of our own righteousness.

And I think this entire episode
represents the darkest part

of the bureau‘s history.

Tapes from the hotel rooms,

uh. the FBI reports of what was going on.

those are pieces of information
that we shouldn't have.

Whatever comes out will certainly help us

understand him as a person
and that's kind of our,

our duty is to understand.

Hello.

In the traditional motion picture story,

the villains are usually defeated,

the ending is a happy one.

I can make no such promise for the picture

you're about to watch.

The story isn't over.

They came
from Los Angeles and San Francisco,

or about the distance
from Moscow to Bombay.

We're almost there.

They came
from Cleveland, from Chicago,

or about the distance from Buenos Aires
to Rio de Janeiro.

They came from Jackson, Mississippi,

from Birmingham, Alabama,

or about the distance
from Johannesburg to Darussalam.

Hi. Hello. Hi.

He had been insulted,

beaten, jailed, drenched
with water, chased by dogs,

but he was coming to Washington,

he said, to swallow up hatred in love,

to overcome violence by peaceful protest.

We are not going to fight
our white brethren with malice

nor are we going to fight them

with any falsified stories,

nor are we going to fight them
with hatred,

but we're going to fight them with love.

When they hate us, we gonna
solve their hatred in love.

When they speak against us,

we gonna speak things of love toward them.

We are not gonna let
their hatred turn us around,

but we gonna love them on every side.

We had been
through the battles in Birmingham.

We thought that was the movement.

And it was.

But after it was over, we realised

that what had happened was
that the March on Washington

took a Black southern movement

and turned it into a national

and international movement
for human fights.

One day right there in Alabama,

little Black boys and Black gins

will be able to join hands
with little white boys

and white girls as sisters and brothers.

l have a dream today.

The FBI was most alarmed about King

because of his success.

And they were particularly concerned

that he was this powerful
charismatic figure

who had the ability to mobilise people.

And if America is to be a great nation,

this must become true.

So let freedom ring.

When you look at the social movements

from the point of view of the FBI,
it looks very different.

You know, J. Edgar Hoover
is famous for saying

that he feared the rise
of a Black messiah.

Free at last.

Free at last. Thank God Almighty,

we are free at last.

After Dr. King gave his famous
March on Washington speech,

Wednesday, August 28th 1963...

in a memo dated the 30th of August,
no later than that,

the second person in the FBI,
it may have been Sullivan,

sends a urgent memo in which he says,

"After the March on Washington, it's clear

"that Martin Luther King Jr.

is the most dangerous Negro in America."

"And we have to use every resource

at our disposal to destroy him."

Let me hear you say,

- Freedom!
- Let me hear you say,

Freedom!

1956, 20,000 Blacks

walked the streets of Montgomery, Alabama

to protest segregation on city buses.

The Montgomery bus boycott focuses

national attention on its leader,

a 27-year-old Baptist minister,

Martin Luther King Junior.

Is this just a test
that you're getting ready for?

That's what we're doing.
The next one will be for real.

I'm sure that I voice the sentiment

of the more than 40,000
Negro citizens of Montgomery.

We still have the attitude of love,

we still have the method
of passive resistance

and we are still insisting,

emphatically that violence
is self-defeating,

that he who live by the sword
would perish by the sword.

He let us accept the fact,
and made us accept the fact,

that what we were doing was insane.

He'd say, you've got to be
certifiably insane

to think that a bunch of crazy young folks

no guns, no political power,

are gonna change this nation.

We were trusting in the power of God,

and only kind of crazy people of faith

would be willing to put
their lives on the line and,

and trust in God.

In an era of science and technology,

ambiguous spiritual phenomena
like moral power...

you know, it didn't make sense.

This morning,
the long-awaited mandate

from the United States Supreme Court

came to Montgomery.

Segregation in public transportation

is both legally
and sociologically invalid.

In the light of this mandate,

the Negro citizens of Montgomery are urged

to return to the buses tomorrow morning

on a non-segregated basis.

As the boycott wins in the United States

Supreme Court come the end of 1956,

Civil Rights activists take
a strong interest

in this unprecedented community action,

in the capital of the old confederacy.

Now, one of the most
important of those long-time

civil rights activists
who took a real interest

in Montgomery was Bayard Rustin,

and it's through Rustin
that Stanley Levison meets Dr. King.

Stanley David Levison...

was white.

He was Jewish. He was a lawyer,

he was a certified public accountant,

an unsung hero
in the civil rights movement

as related to Martin Luther King Jr.

And Dr. King adored him.

From 1955 forward, the FBI takes

some degree of interest in local
Black protest movements in the south,

in Montgomery, in Birmingham,

in Nashville, Tennessee.

But it's standard FBI vacuum cleaner

information gathering.

They're not particularly focused
on Martin Luther King, Jr.

in those middle and late 1950 years.

Even though Stanley Levison and King

have a very close
personal relationship from 1957 fonivard,

only at the very beginning of 1962,

four, five years later,

does the FBI tardily realise

that Levison, has become

a very important advisor to King.

I always tell people I was strolling down

the student union one day,
and the bureau had a table there

and they were recruiting,

so I filled out the application,
and, lo and behold,

uh, a week later I get a phone call.

They told me that they will accept me
if I pass the physical.

On my uh, gosh, 21st birthday,

I was driving my carto Washington D.C.,

took an oath of office and, uh,

almost quit that day because it was just,

very surreal.

They were talking
about when the bomb goes off,

where to go, and stuff like that,
I'm thinking,

"This is like out of a movie."

The new FBI will not be the product

of one individual.

No one man can build it,
but one man can pull it down.

There were two big themes that came across

in the popular culture that was produced
about the FBI.

One of those was crime,

and the other was the struggle
against communism.

Uh-hmm.

Sometime in 1962,
Levison got a subpoena,

from the House Un-American
Activities Committee.

And he was really...

I don't wanna say petrified,
but he was very concerned.

Are you now
or have your ever been a member

of the Communist Party?

I stand on my constitutional rights
under the 5th Amendment.

It was an old saying
that once you're a member

of the Communist Party,

you're always a member
of the Communist Party.

That's what everybody believed.

And it's pretty clear,
in fact, that Stanley Levison

was deeply involved
in Communist politics in the 1950's.

He had dropped off the radar

but even after he went totally
off the grid, if you will,

and when the relationship
with Dr. King started,

they would still get reports from people

inside the Communist party
of what Levison was doing.

The concern with Dr. King
and his connections with Stanley Levison

was that he was being influenced
by the Communist Party.

The growing
menace of communism

arouses the House of Representatives
Unamerican Activities Committee.

Among the well informed
witnesses testifying

is J. Edgar Hoover,

head of the Federal Bureau
of Investigation.

Mr. Hoover speaks
with authority on the subject.

The Communist Party of the United States

is a fifth column if there ever was one.

It is far better organised
than were the Nazis

in occupied countries
prior to their capitulation.

They are seeking to weaken America.

Their goal is the overthrow
of our government.

To some people,
J. Edgar Hoover

was a great American,

a hero who stood up
against crime and communism.

To others, he was
a figure of profound evil

who terrified those
he disapproved of

with police powers at his command.

To everybody, he symbolised the FBI.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation
is as close to you

as your nearest telephone.

It seems to be your protector
in all manners

within its jurisdiction.

It belongs to you.

J. Edgar Hoover was the head of the FBI

for 48 years,

from 1924 to 1972,

and it's a really astounding span of time.

He went from a period in which Washington

was kind of a nothing back water
to a moment

when it was really the pinnacle

of American power,
and he helped build a lot of that.

The communists have been,
still are, and always will be a menace

to freedom,
to democratic ideals,

to the worship of God
and to America's way of life.

From the moment
that he entered government,

it was his job to figure out

who was dangerous to the country,

who was too revolutionary,

who belonged to a subversive organisation.

Hoover understood himself
really as the guardian

of the American way of life.

But he had a very particular
vision of what that meant.

He understood it, really,
as a society of certain kinds

of racial and gender hierarchies,

a society in which white men
were the natural actors,

the natural rulers.

I want to talk to you
fighting men and women

about the battle of the United States.

I think for Hoover,
particularly in his early years,

communists were in some sense
the ultimate subversives.

He saw them as disruptive
of a kind of law and order,

of a certain kind of social order.

He saw them as disruptive
on questions of race.

The Workers
Communist Party of America

puts forward correctly
as its central slogan,

"Abolition of the whole system
of race discrimination...

"...fu|| racial, social,
and political equality

for the Negro people."

Black America was always
a particular focus

of the FBI because
there was the presumption

that Black people are somehow
more susceptible

to recruitment fora dangerous ideology.

We are all familiar with the fact

that the communists have been
agitating racial problems,

racial disunity in our nation
for the last several years.

That's the reason that you've seen

racial agitators like Martin Luther King

rise on the scene and get
all kinds of national publicity.

This was intended.

They would like nothing
more than to see a civil war

in the 1960's in the United States.

The FBI,
quite understandably, asks itself

how come has someone
who was once so important

in American communism
now turned up at the right hand

of Martin Luther King Jr.?

Within a few weeks,
the FBI goes to Attorney General

Robert F. Kennedy for Kennedy's approval

to begin wiretapping Levison at his home

and office in New York.

Among the most familiar words
of the founders of the republic

are those affirming
that all men are created equal

and that they are endowed
with certain rights

of which they cannot be deprived.

It is a sad shortcoming
of our history that,

while asserting these
high principles of equality,

we have never completely
lived up to them,

nor have these injustices
and discrimination

been peculiar to any one part
of our country.

How bad is
the complaint today?

After all the United States
has changed a lot, uh,

the Negros rights are protected
under the law; what exactly,

how much has this system changed
between then and now?

Well, it has changed a good deal,

urn, it is far from what it ought to be,
but, uh, I can see many,

many changes that have taken place
over the last few years.

The problem now is to move from,
from token integration to,

uh, overall integration, where it, uh,

involves more than
just a few students in school,

more than just a few lunch counters open,
more than, uh,

gaining justice in the courts
in a few situations

but in every situation.

The next target
of the civil rights movement

was Birmingham, Alabama;

in 1963, the most segregated
city in the nation

and, for Blacks, a place to die
if you tried to be a person.

Staying calm under fire is
necessary for your sun/ival.

It's also necessary for your success.

But it's very hard not to get emotional

when people are trying to kill you.

There is no middle ground in this fight.

There is no middle ground in this program.

You're either for us,
or you're against us,

and you've heard that said
time and time again.

Yes, my friends,

you are either for us,
or you are against us.

We were trying to reveal the truth

about segregation in the south.

I will not rest
until we are able to make

this kind of witness in this city

so that the power structure down town
will have to say,

"We can't stop this movement,
and the only way to deal with it

"is to give these people what we owe them
and what their God-given rights

and their constitutional rights demand."

In a very emotional
and volatile environment,

it was important for us to come off

as reasonable, sane, and patriotic.

Because we were.

We just wanted America to be
what America said it was supposed to be.

And they go talking about
these little levels of progress

that we see here and there, and they say,

"You know you've made great progress.

Aren't you satisfied?"

No, we are not satisfied.

Well, of course
I feel that the communist movement

is behind all the racial demonstrations
in this country, and, uh,

I have only--I have a statement here

that J. Edgar Hoover made in 1958,

quote "The Negro situation is
also being exploited fully

"and continuously by communists
on a national scale

"so as to create unrest,
dissension, and confusion

in the minds of the American people."

Both Bobby Kennedy
and his brother the president,

were on record
as supporters of Dr. King,

as supporters
of the civil rights movement,

but when the FBI begins
insisting that King

is susceptible to influence

from this dangerous
Soviet-connected figure,

Robert Kennedy and, in time,
his brother the president, too,

tell him that he needs
to distance himself

and really sever
his connection with Levison.

The leaders of the march
are now coming down the Northwest

driveway of the White House.

They'll shortly be
going in to see the President.

It was June 22nd, 1963.

President Kennedy is meeting
with several civil rights leaders.

They are being led
by Walter Reuther of the UAW,

Martin Luther King, James Farmer,

Whitney Young of the Urban League.

President Kennedy,
he asked Dr. King to stay behind

and he and Dr. King
went for a walk in the Rose Garden.

And Kennedy said,

"My brother, the attorney general,
and J. Edgar Hoover,

"we have some,
we've got some bad news.

Some people you're very close to
are openly communists."

Kennedy said, "You know,
we're in this thing together

"pretty closely, you know;
if anything happens to you,

"it's gonna reflect very badly on myself
and Bobby as attorney general.

"You gotta distance yourself,
you can't have anything to do

with these people."

Even hearing it
from President Kennedy,

King is unwilling to believe
that these FBI allegations

about Levison have any real truth to them.

Dr. King, it's been alleged
that you have been slow to sever

your ties with alleged communists
in the civil rights movement,

even after government officials
have warned you against them.

The only person that they identified

and had any connection
with the southern Christian leadership

conference was removed.

Dr. King was advised again and again

to avoid getting into any public spat

with J. Edgar Hoover.

Well, this places you
in the direct opposite position

of the Director of the Federal Bureau
of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover,

who gave some testimony recently
to the contrary.

I would hope that the, the FBI would
come out and say something

that I think is much more significant,
and that is that it is amazing that

so few Negroes have turned to communism
in the light of that desperate plight.

I think it is one of the amazing
developments of the 20th century,

how loyal the Negro has
remained to America,

in spite of his long night of oppression
and discrimination.

FBI Headquarters.

When the FBI begins
wiretapping Levison,

what they're hoping to find
is evidence that he's still--

- Yes?
- --in some manner a communist agent.

- Oh, it is?
- The FBI's theory was disproven.

All right. I‘ll tell him. Thank you.

But at the same time,
King was less than honest

with both Robert Kennedy
and John Kennedy

in telling them that he would break off
contact with Levison.

The FBI realises
that the relationship continues

because they're wiretapping,
and they can see this all playing out.

This of course enraged the FBI.

Hoover was very upset about this
because he saw it as evidence that, um,

just as he had suspected all along,
King was lying, he was deceiving,

that there was in fact a plot,
that these ties were very close.

It really only reinforced his sense
that there was something bigger going on.

By mid-1963,

the FBI was fully aware

that King was remaining in touch

with Levison through their mutual friend,
Clarence Jones.

Drama! Thrills! Action!

The FBI in peace and war.

One day, I come home...

and my wife says...

"I didn't know you had arranged
for the telephone company

"to come and put in new wiring
for our phones."

I said, "What are you talking about?"

She said,
"Oh, no, they just put in

a whole new thing
into one of our closets."

I thought about it
maybe several hours later

and I said, I said,
"Ann, did they call you?"

"Yeah, they called me up.
They said they had talked to you."

And, uh...

shortly after that,
I began to think that, ah, okay...

my phone is tapped.

Just a few weeks later,

in early August of 1963,

Dr. King goes to stay
at Jones' home for a few days.

Hearing Dr. King on the Jones home wiretap

is the accidental way

by which the FBI first learns

that King has this
non-monogamous private life.

And with those intercepts of King
at Clarence Jones' home,

the Bureau's motivation shifts.

- Yes?
- O'Hara?

- Yes.
- Gaines.

Maybe I got something.

- I'll be right over.
- Great.

It's crystal clear that
what the Bureau by the end of 1963 wants

is to get recordings of King having
sexual relations with various girlfriends.

Here's
the rare opportunity we promise.

Here's one of the great voices in America,

Dr. Martin Luther King.

It's rare, Doctor, that we get
a chance to see you in New York.

Are we covered?
Oh, yes, there's a microphone over there.

Uh, do you visit here often?

Oh, I'm in New York
almost every other week at least.

Quietly though.

There's always something
happening in New York,

so you can't avoid coming to New York.

You've discovered it's a fun city?

Well, I haven‘t,

I haven't quite discovered
that side of New York.

All right.

- Being a Baptist clergyman—
- Ah.

--they keep me involved in other areas.

Right.

- Your home is actually in Atlanta.
- Atlanta.

Atlanta, Georgia.

Have you lived there all your life?

I was born in Atlanta, and, uh,
went to school in Atlanta through college,

and then I went
to theological seminary

and graduate school
in, uh, the north.

Mrs. King.
of course, lives in Atlanta.

- Oh, yeah.
- And there are..

She was from Alabama
originally, but, uh,

All along, I have supported my husband.

Whatever happens to him, it happens to me.

- And children?
- Yes, we have four children.

Ah. What would--
What would their ages be, Doctor?

Eleven, uh, nine, six, and four.

We have two girls and two boys.

Do you have a church
at this time in Atlanta?

Yes, I am the co-pastor

of the Ebenezer Baptist Church
in Atlanta, and my father is pastor, so.

- Both you and your father?

Well, he makes it clear, uh,
sometimes consciously

and sometimes unconsciously,
that he is the pastor--

- Right.
- --and I'm the co-pastor.

Hey, everybody.

What has
the civil rights movement

done to the Negro individually?

Well, I think the greatest thing
that it has done is that it has given

the Negro a new sense
of, uh, somebody-Mess.

The Negro has straightened
his back up, so to speak, and, uh,

you can't ride a man's back
unless it's bent,

and I'm not at all pessimistic
about the future

because I think the Negro has
a kind of determination,

and I think there are numerous allies

in the white community

with the same kind of determination.

And with this kind of creative
and constructive coalition,

we can move forward, even to solve
these more difficult problems

that I have mentioned.

Welcome, ladies and gentleman,
to "Let's Look at Congress."

Today, I have a guest for you
that I know will be a great treat to see.

Congressman Keating,
I'm very happy indeed to have

this opportunity of appearing
with you on yourtelevision program.

Uh, Mr. Hoover, uh, to what extent
do you in your work use wiretapping?

That's always a question
that people wonder about.

I'm very glad that you asked me
that question, uh, Congressman Keating.

The FBI was authorised to utilise
wire taps only in those cases

involving treason or subversive
activities, sabotage and espionage.

And I can say to you as of this moment,

there are less than 90 wire taps
in the entire United States

and territories of our country.

Well, I am sure that will disabuse
many people's minds of the wide use of it.

The FBI had a sort of interesting set

of policies about surveillance.

There had been a lot of public discussion,

a lot of court cases around wiretapping,
so that's the telephone.

Often when the FBI was
gonna wiretap someone,

they had to get the authority
of the Attorney General.

That was policy.

That was more or less law.

My colleagues and I
in the Department of Justice...

are your representatives
in the Federal Court of the land.

Citing the danger of Levison
and King's apparent dishonesty...

Robert Kennedy authorises,
for the first time,

wiretaps on King himself in Atlanta.

The FBI is not really telling
Attorney General Kennedy

that it has this other agenda.

When the FBI first
started conducting

overt surveillance of King,

it really had something
of a national security logic,

or at least they presented it that way.

The theory was, there were communists
within the civil rights movement,

the Communist Party
was very tied to the Soviet Union.

But one of the things
that I think we can take from this

is how easy it is for that
to morph into something else.

As those taps
and as that surveillance really began,

the FBI found out
all sorts of things about King.

And very quickly,
while they still had some concern

with the communist question,
it begins to become

something that's much more
about King's personal life,

about him as a man,

about his sex life,
about his family,

about his confidantes,
and about really his private life.

It happened really without the approval
or authority of anyone outside of the FBI.

As soon as
the wiretap on King's home

begins in late 1963,

within weeks

the FBI begins
convening meetings to discuss

how can we further exploit
all of these extra-marital recordings?

And that is transparently
why Bill Sullivan,

as the Head of FBI Domestic Intelligence,

made the decision that the FBI
should expand its electronic surveillance

of Dr. King from just wiretapping

to also using microphones,

AKA bugs.

Sullivan's focus was collecting

salacious sexual material on King.

And the FBI had a very elaborate
and very complicated process

for getting those bugs
to the right places.

Call Blanden.

Now,
in a Willard Hotel type of situation,

the FBI and its buddies
on the hotel staff

could decide in advance what room
is Martin Luther King gonna be assigned to

and have the microphones in place.

They would set up
the bugs in his hotel rooms

and usually would take the room
either next door or downstairs somewhere,

where they could in fact listen
to the recordings,

monitor what was going on,
and sometimes, you know,

observe physically
who was going in and out of the room,

because when you have a recording,
a-all you have are a bunch of voices.

One of the challenges of those recordings
is trying to figure out,

particularly in sexual situations

with more than
a couple of people involved,

who's saying what, who's doing what,

and so there was physical surveillance
then involved to know, uh,

who was in the room,
uh, who appeared to sound what way,

and what they might be up to.

Down this avenue of sadness,
they bring President John F. Kennedy,

martyred hero, to lie in state
under the great Dome of the Capitol.

No memorial oration or eulogy

could more eloquently honour

President Kennedy's memory

than the earliest possible passage

of the Civil Rights Bill,

for which he fought so long.

Congress passes
the most sweeping Civil Rights Bill

ever to be written into the law,

and thus reaffirms
the conception of equality for all men

that began with Lincoln
and the Civil War 100 years ago.

The Negro won his freedom then.

He wins his dignity now.

Five hours after the House
passes the measure,

the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is signed
at the White House by President Johnson.

Before an audience of legislators
and Civil Rights leaders,

who have laboured long and hard
for passage of the bill,

President Johnson calls
for all Americans to back

what he calls a turning point in history.

Integration leader
Martin Luther King receives his pen,

a gift he said he would cherish.

The Department of Justice
will enforce the law if necessary.

And G-Man chief
J. Edgar Hoover is present.

Now, in this summer of 1964,

the Civil Rights Bill is
the law of the land.

In the words of the president,
"It restricts no one's freedom,

so long as he respects
the rights of others."

This is an extremely
moving moment in my life.

We didn't know
anything about it.

We didn't even know that Dr. King
had been nominated

until it was announced
that he had received the Nobel Prize.

I do not consider this
merely an honour to me personally,

but a tribute to the discipline,

wise restraint, and majestic courage

of the millions of gallant Negroes
and white persons of good will,

who have followed a non-violent course

in seeking to establish
the reign of justice,

and the rule of love
across this nation of ours.

Do you plan to go
in person, do you?

Yes, I definitely plan to.

Will Mrs. King go with you?

Uh, well I certainly hope so,

and, uh, I'm sure
that we can work out a way

for her to get there,
being a mother, and four children,

it's not easy for her
to get away all the time,

but, uh, I'm sure that,
on this occasion,

she will be accompanying me.

I was with him down in Bimini,

shortly after the announcement.

Bimini didn't have any phones,
and there was no television.

There was nothing much to do on Bimini.

And he was working
on his Nobel Prize speech.

But all of a sudden, you know,
these helicopters started coming in.

It was all the national press
that had found out where we were.

And they came and they told us
that Hoover had made the speech

to a women's organisation,

that Martin Luther King
was the world's most notorious liar.

See. Well, I don't know
what he was lying about.

Well, naturally I was, uh, shocked
and greatly surprised

that Mr. Hoover would make such
an unwarranted and vicious accusation.

Uh, I don't think Mr. Hoover
would have made such a statement

if he had not been under
the great deal of pressure.

Do you believe the FBI is doing all it can

to resolve civil rights complaints?

Well, I don't know
all of the inner workings of the FBI.

I do know that in cases

that do not involve Negroes
and civil rights,

the FBI moves with dispatch,
it has a machinery, the know-how.

The fact remains that in spite
of all of the brutalities

that we faced in Alabama and Georgia,
not a single arrest was made,

in spite of the fact
that four unoffending innocent Negro girls

were brutally murdered
in a church in Birmingham, Alabama,

not a single arrest has been made,

and in spite of the fact
that the civil rights workers

were killed this summer in Mississippi,
uh, we haven't seen a single arrest.

After Hoover denounced
Martin Luther King

as the most notorious liar
in the United States,

it produced a real showdown
between Hoover and King.

I have no comment to make on that.

- Any, uh--
- How are you feeling, Mr. Hoover?

Excellent.

Is there any, uh, response in your part
to the suggestions that you resign?

That's the wish father to the thought.

Thank you very much, sir.

Thank you.

Hoover and King only met
face-to-face once.

They agreed to sit down, uh,

on Hoovei’s turf in Hoover's office,

and try to make peace.

Testing, one, two.

All right.

King showed up.

He brought a few of his closest advisors
and aids with him.

There was not press inside that office
when they sat down together.

By all accounts, Hoover kind of
talked at them for a while...

and then King emerged saying,
you know, "All good."

Did he apologise to you
or in any way indicate the threats

from what he had said?

Well, I must say that the conference,
uh, was very friendly,

and that, uh, Mr. Hoover talked
in a very amiable way

so that, uh, in a very friendly manner.

The whole talk was very friendly, and uh,

I think he sought to get
over to us some of the--

Do you feel your visit here then
was a success,

or how would you characterise it?

Well, I would say it was a success
in, in the sense that I think

we develop new levels of understanding.

And as I said to him in the beginning,
I felt that this was a basic necessity.

Did you specifically mention
his comment about being a liar?

Uh, I think we'll have to end it here.

Ultimately,
King and Hoover pretended,

to come to some sort of
accord out of that,

but it was a big controversy,
and it was a polarizing controversy.

What, uh,
do you think of Martin Luther King?

Well, sir, I don't know.

Uh, | read a lot about him.

I don't, I don't care for him.

He's too bossy.

Thinks he's too smart.

I think he's a very wonderful man,
trying to help our race.

Well, you know what, uh,
Hoover thought about him.

- I think he was about--
- He said he was the most--

--10 times as bad as Hoover said.

Why, why do you feel that way, sir?

Well, just from all the trouble
that he's caused in this country,

all this rioting and things.

Ijust think he's about the worst, he,
he is a human, but the worst in the world.

Probably my favourite
public opinion poll,

which tells us something about
how radically different this moment was,

in the aftermath of that showdown,
fully 50% of the public sided

with J. Edgar Hoover, around 15,
20% sided with Martin Luther King,

and a bunch of other people said
they weren't following it and didn't know,

but Hoover was
the universally beloved figure.

King was the controversial figure.

And I think we tend to forget that.

One of the things
that's helped to legitimise the FBI

is American popular culture.

The FBI.

I think that we're constantly battling
with popular representations

of police, FBI, and federal agents...

NY20, go ahead.

...as our saviours.

The FBI was incredibly good
under Hoover,

at promoting an image of itself
really as the heroes of America.

Hey, Mr. Hoover,
your G-Men sure are good.

I'd like to be one when I grow up.

Well, if you work hard, play hard,
live clean, you certainly will be one.

One of the most
important things that Hoover did

was to create a Bureau
really in his own image.

That meant that he hired a very particular
kind of person as an agent,

a relatively conservative white man

of a certain height and a certain weight.

He particularly liked fraternity boys
and football players...

but there‘s a reason
that people know when you say,

"That's a G-Man,"
there's something that you have in mind.

It's a man in a suit, a white man,

probably about six feet tall,
buff, conservative.

That was what Hoover wanted.

Time Magazine says
that Martin Luther King, Jr.

has made himself the unchallenged voice
of the Negro people,

that he has become to millions
in the north and in the south,

a symbol of the Negro revolution.

He is a member of the clergy.

He has been called the American Gandhi.

He is with us today from Atlanta, Georgia,

where he is president of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference.

We'll have a question now from Gay Pauley.

The, uh, non-violence always end up
with violence or almost always, Dr. King.

Um, what, what excuse or what, uh, reason

do you offer for this approach of creating

a crisis atmosphere in a community,
which leads to bloodshed,

as it has in many southern cities
and some northern?

Well, I think we should see the source
of the bloodshed first, and that,

we must understand
the real non violent creed.

Well, doesn't this crisis atmosphere,
though, uh, create or endanger

the Negro's cause by creating
among the whites a resentment of feeling

that the Negro is moving too rapidly,
uh, too, um, asking too much so suddenlf?

Does this worry you that this atmosphere
could be creating, or is?

Well, I think this is a temporary response
in any social revolution.

Well, doesn't that hurt your cause?

Uh, I don't think so ultimately.

I think it helps it in the final analysis.

The only way people can
grapple with their prejudices

is to admit that they have them.

And so often people don't
realise they have them, uh,

and so often people don't realise
or honestly acknowledge

that there is a problem.

And, uh, it is necessary
in the non-violent movement

to bring the issue to the surface
so that people

are forced to deal with it

and to deal with their conscience
on the issue.

I call upon you.

I have the great honour

on behalf

of the Nobel Committee

to hand over to you...

the insignia of the Nobel Peace Prize,

the diploma and the gold medal.

Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.

Now, this is the greatest honour
that King has received.

And the fact that King is now
being internationally celebrated

as a moral leader

deeply angers
and offends both Hoover and Sullivan.

He was upset
that this young black man,

who, I think at that time, was 34 or 35,

is being recognised around the world

as a pioneer in peace and justice.

Hoover was being ignored,
and he blamed us.

Now, what am I gonna do
about Martin Luther King

with all these reports that are
coming in on him all the time?

And then somebody—
can somebody tell him,

uh, watch his conduct?

Lord...
looks to me like he's too far gone.

Well, a lot of it,

as far as his relationships
with girls is concerned,

there's been many...

Maybe... maybe they're
getting the Nobel Prize...

Of course, Hoover loves that,

he doesn't like King.

Now, they're pressing me to attend
a dinner in his honour in New York.

I can't do that, can I?

I would think you could,
but I wouldn't advise you to.

I'd find some other reason why you can't.

The FBI is frustrated that,
even though they've successfully

caught King in 15 or more hotel rooms,

and they've distributed this
behind the scenes to church leaders,

to reporters, nothing's publicly happened.

That despite all of the hundreds
and hundreds of man hours

that they've put into this,
King has not been personally destroyed.

For Hoover, you know,

a lot of this is framed
as a matter of hypocrisy.

Here is the sainted minister
presenting himself

as this great moral authority,

but we actually know he's this sick,
dirty penrerted creature.

And you see that kind of language
all over FBI documents.

The FBI surveillance
of Dr. King, uh, it was special

in the fact that whatever city he went to,
it was all hands on deck.

Everything else stopped.

Hoover was obsessed with, uh,
Martin Luther King and his activities.

From what I heard,
there were some photographs.

Whoever was in 'em,
that just kind of fed that,

that mindset of Hoover, that, uh,
this was a dangerous man

and that he needed to be removed.

Now, this is not the way
that Sullivan or Hoover themselves

would have said it,
but there was a radicalism

to King's sexuality
that they viewed as offensive.

For Hoover in particular,
he himself tried to be

a very tightly-controlled person
when it came to matters

of his personal life and his sexuality,

and the way that he policed
the boundaries of that.

Now that's a complicated story
in its own right.

Hoover
and particularly Bill Sullivan,

the head of domestic intelligence,

paternalistically thought
that Martin Luther King, Jr.

was morally unfit to be
a leader of Black America.

I think for Hoover as well,
who was really raised

in a Southern segregationist tradition,
um, a set of really outsized fears

about Black men's sexuality,
about Black men as rapists,

as people who don't know how to control
their sexual appetites, right?

They're looking
at what they're finding out about King

and sort of seeing it through that lens

and narrating it
through that kind of language.

Dr. Martin Luther King is
calling himself a Christian,

and he mixes white women, coloured women,
and men and women all together.

I think that this interest
in the sexual life of King,

this is just inseparable
from the history of racial violence

in the United States.

And how can you look
in these stripes of red on this flag,

knowing very well that your forefathers,
yes, yours, not mine,

yours, all of them,

that that stripe represents that blood
that they spilled on this soil,

American soil,
something that you have never had to do,

to give you this God-given right
of racial purity and our heritage.

When we think about the US
as it emerges from the Civil War,

you have this idea
that formeiiy enslaved people

should be integrated
into the body politic.

And there is an enormous pushback,

not only from supporters
of the Confederacy,

but the problem of race is
a national problem as well.

One of the core justifications
for preventing Black male suffrage

was deviance,
that Black people are deviant,

that Black men in the State House
are a threat to white women.

And it's this representation of Black
political aspiration as sexual threat.

And unfortunately
that's an ever-recurring theme.

This mobilisation of Black sexuality

as a justification for murder,
for exclusion,

for discrimination and for incarceration.

This is a fabric of American history.

This was a way
that you could bring down

a very successful,
influential Black civil rights leader

and contain the movement
by destroying its figurehead.

And so it's at that moment that
the FBI decide that they're really gonna

operationalise
and go quite overtly after King.

When you stand up
against the forces of evil...

you will be persecuted
for righteousness sake.

The words of the spiritual,
you will be buked and scorned.

You will be talked about.
You will be lied on.

You will be persecuted in many ways.

You will be thrown, again, maybe
into narrowed and frustrating jail cells.

I can't promise you
that you can avoid this.

We used to have
these conference calls,

uh, at least three times a week,

late at night, 10 or 11 o'clock at night.

And I was convinced then the FBI was
tapping our--I just as—I just said,

"I'm sure they're doing it."

Dr. King became so annoyed at me

for repeatedly saying this.

"Clarence," he said, "don't you know
the FBI has got more important

"and better things to do...

than to be wiretapping our phones?"

But there did come a day
when he became more suspicious.

And then there came a day, certain...

when the FBI mailed the tape

ofDr. King...

with other women,

mailed it to him and to Coretta...

with an advice that
he should go kill himself.

That's when he knew.

I think there have
always been a couple

of really important tensions
within the FBI.

One is being a very rule-bound
organisation,

a very professional organisation,

an organisation very attuned
to, uh, jurisdiction and law...

and then being a-- an organisation
that was almost lawless.

The bureau has all of these
hotel room recordings.

And so Sullivan has his underlings

compose a greatest hits
compendium tape...

and then sits down at his own typewriter

to draft an anonymous
threatening letter to King.

This is purportedly
from an admirer within the movement, uh,

who has found out about King's
sexual indiscretions, uh,

feels betrayed by it
and writes, uh, this full page,

really scurrilous letter
denouncing King as a beast,

and a pervert
and a monster, a hypocrite,

and in fact saying,
"I know what you've done."

It's clearly
a very poor quality attempt

of someone who's sort of
culturally clueless,

to pass as Black.

They put this package together
and send it off, uh,

saying, "King,
you know what you have to do,"

and giving him a deadline
by which he needs to do it.

Many people have interpreted that
to be that you need to kill yourself,

and this is one of the ways
that King and his confidantes

who saw this letter interpreted it.

There's some ambiguity there,
but it is one of the most notorious

and diny tricks that the FBI ever,
ever conducted in the 1960's.

- Have you read that letter?
-Yes, I have...

I was sick to my stomach, actually.

I mean, I didn't throw up,
but I felt ill reading it.

And that's what I mean
when I say I think this entire episode

represents the darkest part
of the Bureau's history.

The package was sent to the office.

I think it was mailed to us
from somewhere in Florida.

We never saw it.

It was put in a box and sent to Coretta.

So she opened it up, and she played it,

and then she called the office
and said, "Look,

"somebody has sent a tape in here

"trying to get Martin to kill himself.

"And they have a recording of some man

and woman in the bed."

I didn't even wanna hear it, you know?

This was designed to upset him.

We always assumed
that Hoover was behind it.

My philosophy about the movement

is that unless I saw something

with my own eyes, um,

you really have to be careful
what you believe.

I'm here because
I want you to know that I'm with you

and that I am with my husband.

As the wife of, um, a major symbol
of the Civil Rights movement,

I think I can say that,
um, without boasting,

I think it's a fact, um...

I have had the privilege of being perhaps,
uh, closer to him than anybody else,

and perhaps that maybe
I understand him better than anyone else.

And, uh, therefore I think

I have a pretty good understanding
of the whole struggle.

In the immediate wake of Mrs. King,
Dr. King, and King's closest aides

listening to the anonymous,
embarrassing tape recording from the FBI,

Dr. King undergoes
a real emotional crisis.

And it's an emotional crisis
that the FBI is listening in on,

thanks to its telephone wiretaps.

Dr. King is desperately afraid

that his sex life is going to be exposed

in raw detail to the American public.

Now his life is so busy
on a day-to-day basis

in early 1965

that he's not able to worry
about this twenty four hours a day,

seven days a week.

He's distracted from his worries
a good portion of the time.

But the emotional impact on King

of what the FBI was doing to him

cannot be gainsaid.

King was clearly
in very serious emotional turmoil,

uh, emotional fear.

And even as a few weeks went by
and nothing happened,

King always has that worry
in the back of his mind,

that at some point the FBI. is going
to get lucky, and some journalist,

some magazine is
going to print all of this.

This is highway number 80,
Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

You can fly it in a matter of minutes,

you can drive it in less than an hour,

or you can walk it in five days,

which is what this is all about.

We knew that the FBI
was following closely

almost everywhere we went.

We identified the agents.

We assumed that the rooms were bugged.

Dick Gregory said that, um,

if you're Black and not slightly paranoid,
you're really sick.

And we were slightly paranoid,
but we never let that paranoia

interfere with what we were trying to do.

We've lived with slavery
and segregation 345 years.

We waited a long time for freedom.

Now is the time to make real
the promises of democracy.

Now is the time to make justice
a reality for all of God's children.

Today is
a triumph for freedom,

as huge as any victory

that's ever been won on any battlefield.

The triumphal passage
of the Voting Rights Act really highlights

what a close political alliance has
developed between Martin Luther King

and President Lyndon Johnson's
administration.

Okay. Hold on, please.

- Hello? Hello?
- Yes, Dr. King.

Yeah, Mr. President.
How are you today?

Oh, I'm doing pretty good.

But now you better get
your thinking cap on,

on this conference
because we're going to have to rush it.

We don't want to rush it too much.

We want to have plenty of preliminary
work on the panels and things--

- Uh-huh.
- --but you better--

you can see here that, uh,

my Howard university speech
wasn't any too early.

That's right, that's right.

You said--you said it
right there, that's right.

But you put a little
of that stuff in your thing--

refer to that Howard University speech.

Nobody ever publicised that.

Almost every speech
I've made, because, uh,

I think it's the best statement
and analysis of the problem

I've seen everywhere,
certainly no president

has ever said it like that before.

But if you got any suggestions
or recommendations, why,

I'm just as close as the telephone
if you got enough money to pay it,

if you haven't money, call Collect.

All right.
Goodbye.

Increasingly now,
Americans are functioning directly

in the fight for freedom in this far,
foreign corner of the earth.

The risks are real.

We intend
to convince the Communists

that we cannot be defeated

by force of arms or by superior power.

They're not easily convinced.

When Martin Luther King, Jr.
first speaks out publicly

against the Vietnam War in August, 1965,

he quite quickly is
forced back into line,

by hostile criticism directed at him

by democratic allies of President Johnson.

We will not be forced
out of South Vietnam.

And so King then remains silent
about Vietnam for almost 18 months.

During our tour
in the Republic of Vietnam,

we have all seen what communism can do

to a struggling nation
in our world community.

When King is on his way
to Jamaica in early 1967,

and while waiting for a flight,
he buys some magazines

in an airport gift shop,
and in an issue of Ramparts Magazine,

he sees a whole series of photos
about the impact of US Air Force

napalm bombing on Vietnamese civilians.

Non-violence for King was not simply
a civil rights protest tactic.

King believed that non-violence
was a Christian ethic

that should be applied around the world,

not just by Black demonstrators.

Let us pray.

Only in early 1967
does King's conscience

begin to so trouble him
about his prolonged silence

that he forces himself
to go public once again,

knowing full well that in doing so,
it will break his political alliance

with Lyndon Johnson and bring down

very widespread political criticism
on his head.

And of course, it's always good
to come back to Riverside.

The worst press that
Martin Luther King received, I think,

in his lifetime was exactly one year
before his assassination.

I come to this magnificent house
of worship tonight

because my conscience leaves me
no other choice.

A time comes when silence is betrayal,

and that time has come for us
in relation to Vietnam.

He reminded
President Johnson he could count.

How was there gonna be any money
for the war on poverty,

when all the money that was being
set aside for the war on poverty

was being spent to build bombs?

You know, America is a rich nation,

richest nation on the face of the Earth.

Now, you know, what's wrong?

Our national priorities are mixed up.

And I'm afraid

the national administration
of our country is more concerned

about winning the war in Vietnam
than winning the war

against poverty
right here in the United States.

He was attacked
from coast to coast,

simply from describing
the world as it really is.

And this was not
the racist Southern press.

This was the "New York Times,"
and the "Washington Post,"

and the "LA Times,"
and, you know, I mean, everybody,

blasted him for having an opinion.

King went to Communist training school,

Are you sure of this?

Look right here.

Is that your only proof?

We have proof,
and we are satisfied that it's true proof.

When he publicly
spoke out against the war,

the persons he had known
and been close to...

for years
turned against him.

And we don't see any reason
for downgrading civil rights

and elevating the peace movement
above it, especially, uh,

the indignities our people are suffering.

The main show for us is
right here, civil rights.

Yeah. He was hurt
and depressed, and he, you know,

the pressure of the home
and his marriage and so forth, you know,

it was-- it was getting to him.

It wasn't that
he was right or wrong.

He didn't have any business
having an opinion.

He realised how sick this country was,

and he felt that he couldn't slow down,

and he had to push on, regardless.

I weighed the criticisms that I would get.

Yes, sir.

I thought about even the fact
that some Negroes wouldn't understand

and some respectable,

Negro leaders who are more concerned
about being invited to the White House

than invited to the cause of justice
would be against me.

In the wake of Dr. King's
Riverside Church speech,

Lyndon Johnson's White House
very explicitly identifies King

as a major threat
to the president's policies.

I'm convinced that it will lead
to widespread discontent

and disenchantment with the administration
if there isn't a change in the policy

and an all-out effort to de-escalate
the war and bring an end to it.

Stick with Civil rights!

Leave the war to the generals,
back to Hanoi!

Now, Lyndon Johnson's
White House had always been privy

to the FBI's sexual sun/eillances
of Dr. King.

But now...

Lyndon Johnson comes to view
Martin Luther King as an enemy.

And the FBI is eager
to strengthen its own relationship

with President Johnson
byjumping on this anti-King bandwagon

with greater fervour.

I just got word
that Martin Luther King will give

King has, uh, uh, was told by Levison,

who is his principal advisor
and who is a secret communist,

that he has more to gain nationally
by agreeing with the violence

that is coming out against it.

That's the substance of information.

We've got that highly confidentially
over the tacticals,

and I'll have for you tomorrow
that memorandum you want

on all the riots in the country.

That's right.
And I want you to keep your men busy

to find a central connection,
but I wouldn't be a damn bit surprised

if this poverty group here is not
stirring up some of this.

We'll dig into that very thoroughly.

All right. Okay, fine.

Thank you, Mr. President.

So many resources are mobilised

against suppressing dissent in the US.

The FBI has done extensive surveillance

of all kinds of Black organisations.

Don't be afraid. Don't be ashamed.

We want Black power.

-We want Black power.
-Black power!

- We want Black power.
-That's right.

When you look
at the social movements

from the point of view

of these law enforcement agencies,

it looks very different.

We stand on the eve
of a Black revolution, brothers.

Masses of our people are in the streets.

We are fighting lit for tat,
tooth for tooth,

an eye for an eye,
and a life for a life.

The rebellions
that we see are merely

dress rehearsals for
the revolution that's to come.

We better get ourselves
some guns and prepare ourselves.

The Bureau was
of course anti-communist,

but I'd say its most consistent campaigns

were against Black people.

Whether it's William Sullivan
or J. Edgar Hoover,

the policy was consistent.

They saw African-Americans as,

you know, J. Edgar Hoover has said
about the Black Panther party

that they were the greatest threat

to the internal security
of the United States.

The use of informants has existed

for years and years
by law enforcement agencies.

You even find reference to it
in the Bible,

uh, in the time of Moses.

Uh, certainly you cannot expect

to be able to penetrate

the secret conspiratorial organisations

without using secret agents.

There were FBI informants

in most domestic groups
in the United States.

That was the only way
you could investigate them,

especially if they were
Black organisations.

You know, we didn't have
that many Black agents back then,

so you had to have individuals
inside that organisation

to get inside information.

It was just-- you had to.

The general strategy
of intelligence services

is that they use surveillance
in order to figure out

how to break apart these organisations.

So it's notjust surveillance
for surveillance sake.

It is to observe the organisations,

to figure out what their points
of vulnerability are

and then purposely insert people
into those conflicts.

It's in the late 1950's that the FBI founds

this super-secret program,

COINTELPRO,
Counter-Intelligence Program,

that allows them not
just to conduct surveillance

but to begin to disrupt the organisations

quite explicitly,

spread rumours within the organisation,

foment violence, et cetera.

You have to be astonished just
at the number of sources that they had.

When you look through
these FBI reports,

I mean, they've got scores
and scores of people.

Ernest Withers was probably
the most successful

civil rights photographer
you never heard of.

He was very much a movement insider

and covered the civil rights movement

from its very dawn.

He shot a very monumental
picture of Dr. King

on the bus at the end
of the Montgomery Bus boycott.

You know, a very radical revolutionary
moment in American history,

Ernest Withers is right there
in the middle of it.

Ernest had a completely
different side to him

that no one knew about,
and that was that

he doubled as an informant for the FBI

for, as many as 18 years.

We had an informant in ouroffice.

James Harrison?

I'm not calling the names.

Jim Harrison is a paid
FBI informant in SCLC's office,

sitting a few yards
from Martin Luther King, Jr.

Having someone like Harrison

would allow for a very
efficient daily reporting

on where's King gonna be travelling,

what's he gonna be doing,

what are people in the office
concerned about.

I did not know...

that he was in fact an FBI informant.

I did not know it in fact,

but I believed that he was,

and I tried to counsel Martin

that-- don't let him know
more than he needs to know.

We now know that Harrison had

worked as an informant
for the FBI in two other cities.

It seems beyond a possible coincidence

that he moves to Atlanta
and volunteers to work at SCLC,

without some suggestion or instruction

from the FBI.

It's not really that surprising,

knowing now what we know
about what the FBI was doing.

Anybody who was to the left of mainstream,

anyone who supported
the anti-war movement,

anyone who got
what they considered militant

in civil rights
was deemed a subversive.

And they were keeping files on them.

They were running a surveillance state.

This is where it began,

the rural south.

And here where it began,

for the Negro, the problem remains.

There's no ghetto here, just poverty.

The worst kind of poverty.

The kind of poverty that makes you wonder,

can this be the United States of America,

the richest country in the world,

in the year 1967?

It is notjust material poverty.

There is also a poverty of the spirit.

What is it about the Negro?

I mean, every other group that
came as an immigrant somehow,

not easily, but somehow got around it.

ls itjust the fact that Negros are black?

The fact is that the Negro was a slave

in this country for 244 years.

That led to the thing-ification
of the Negro,

so he was not looked upon as a person,

he was not looked upon as a human being

with the same status and worth
as other human beings.

And it seems to me
that white America must see

that no other ethnic group
has been a slave

on American soil,

and so emancipation for the Negro

was really freedom to hunger.

It was freedom, uh, to the winds
and rains of heaven.

It was freedom without food
to eat or land to cultivate,

and therefore, it was freedom
and famine at the same time.

And when white Americans tell
the Negro to lift himself

by his own bootstraps,

they don't look over

the legacy of slavery and segregation.

I believe we ought to do all we can

and seek to lift ourselves
by our own bootstraps,

but, uh, it's a cruel jest
to say to a bootless man

that he ought to lift himself
by his own bootstraps.

Hello, everybody back here.

King is deeply pessimistic

that America will ever undertake

the pursuit of real equality
for Black people.

Ladies and gentlemen of the press,

I'm gonna read, uh, an opening statement.

And that leads him
to announce the idea

of holding a poor people's
campaign in Washington

in the spring of 1968.

The Southern Christian
Leadership Conference

will lead waves of the nation's
poor and disinherited

to Washington, D.C. next spring

to demand a redress of their grievances

by the United States government.

We will go there.

We will demand to be heard,

and we will stay until America responds.

The FBI was deeply alarmed by these plans.

For Hoover, you know,
this was his home turf.

But they're also very concerned
about the kind of conflict

that might emerge cut of this.

They thought it could be
a significant threat

to the national capital
in particular.

Power for poor people

will really mean having the ability,

the togetherness,

the assertiveness,
and the aggressiveness

to make the power structure

of this nation say yes

when they may be desirous of saying no.

Black people, Mexican-Americans,
American-Indians,

Puerto Ricans, Appalachian whites

all working together

to solve the problem of poverty.

It bears emphasis
that William Sullivan,

the head of American
domestic intelligence,

in late March of 1968,

begins revising and expanding

the FBI's primary document

to indict Dr. King

and chooses to add for the first time

the rape participation allegation

to his revision of this document.

It's unclear how
much we're ever going to know

about any particular incident

in King's sexual history,

particularly the most explosive
allegation that's been made.

Handwritten annotations
on this document allege that,

King was present at the rape

of a Black female parishioner
by a Baltimore minister,

and that he, quote,
looked on and laughed.

I have many, many questions about this.

It's supposed to be an audio tape,

but concluded within this document

is the assertion that King looked on,

which I thought was strange.

That in itself to me was a huge red flag.

The agents
who were listening in in live time

in a room right next door

to where this was taking place,
did nothing.

Their focus was on gaining
embarrassing material.

We're gonna have to not assume

that everything that's said
in those documents is true.

I think also not assume
that everything that's said

in those documents is false.

And I also thinkthat
we have to understand

that FBI agents were making their own

very subjective judgments

about what's actually happening.

One of the things
I was really struck by this

is how much it adheres to

J. Edgar Hoover and William C. Sullivan

and the FBI's representations of King.

The agents were really rewarded
for finding this kind of material

that would undermine
the civil rights movement

and other Black organisations.

And so in some ways
it provides this grand narrative

that has this allegedly big revelation,

in the context of this
larger life of misconduct.

Sullivan is updating
and expanding this document

because of the political threat
to the Johnson administration

that this poor people's
campaign represents.

All of a sudden,

Sullivan's work on this revision halts,

and it halts because Dr. King is murdered.

King gave one of the most
remarkable speeches

of his whole career.

One of the themes was

the idea that protest itself
was really in peril.

You were seeing crackdowns
all across the country,

uh, increasing concerns about violence,

and he was really making
the claim that in Memphis

it wasn'tjust the rights of workers,

it wasn't just racial justice
that was on the line,

but it was also, uh, the right to speech,

the right to protest,
the First Amendment itself.

If I lived in China or even Russia

or any totalitarian country,

maybe I could understand

the denial of certain basic
First Amendment privileges

because they haven't committed
themselves to that over there,

but somewhere I read

of the freedom of assembly.

Somewhere I read

-of the freedom of speech.
-Yeah.

Somewhere I read

- of the freedom of press.
-Yeah.

Somewhere I read that
the greatness of America

is the right to protest for rights.

Good evening.
The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King,

39-years-old
and a Nobel Peace Prize winner

and the leader of the non-violent

civil rights movement
in the United States,

was assassinated in Memphis tonight.

A sniper's bullet cut down Dr. King

as he stood
on a hotel balcony in Memphis.

A special bulletin flashed
on the television

that Dr. King had been shot,

and | just stood there,
you know, a long time.

And then a little while later,

they said Dr. King was dead.

And H was angry,

as a whole lot
of other people were angry.

because we lost in our generation

somebody like a father.

In our lifetimes, people 25 and 26,

he's the first major man we ever saw

who started a bus riot
and everything like that,

and today many people
are out here on the street

wondering which way
they're gonna turn

because we don't know
where we're gonna do.

Do we go to the right?
Do we go to the left?

We're not sure today.

I don't think
the FBI had a deep interest

in protecting King.

In fact, there are many moments

in which the FBI refused to act

in a kind of bodyguard capacity,

or even a warning capacity

when King was under threat.

In the end, after Hoover felt

that he was under enormous pressure,

the FBI did conduct
a pretty decent wide-ranging,

incredibly labour-intensive investigation

to find someone who was involved

in King's assassination.

The man named as James Earl Ray

was arrested at quarter past 11
this morning

by two Scotland Yard detectives,

as he passed through
the British Immigration Offices

for a flight to Brussels.

An announcement
by the American FBI Director

J. Edgar Hoover said the man was
fully armed with a loaded pistol,

and he carried two Canadian
passports and a false name.

I think once they understood

that the FBI's investigative reputation

was gonna be at stake in this case,

uh, they poured enormous resources

into trying to bring that case home.

Ray's life and civil rights

were being guarded more closely

than those of Martin Luther King,

whcm Ray is accused of murdering.

I am always
amazed that, you know,

with the surveillance by the FBI

24/7 around Dr. King and the SCLC

that they wouldn't be aware
of James Earl Ray

at Lorraine Motel.

I don't think James Earl Ray

had anything to do
with Dr. King's assassination,

so I can't really comment on that.

The assassination of King

and the fact that we were doing
surveillance that day

when he was shot, uh, is always
in the back of your mind going,

you know, did we not know this?

Could we not prevent this?

I didn't hear anything that would indicate

that headquarters knew,

uh, and chose not to do anything.

I never saw that. I never heard that.

But it was the question everybody had

because it was a legitimate
question, you know, why?

Why did we not intercede if we were there?

This was an emotional

frustrated outraged nation.

Other people were trying
to incite to violence.

We always said that
the only thing that could defeat us

was violence.

I think
that's still true in this country.

I don't think--
violence will not succeed

in changing this nation.

Whether it's white violence
or Black violence...

or any other colour violence.

Dr. King used to laugh
and joke about his death.

He said, "Look, you gonna die.

"Death is the ultimate democracy.

"Everybody's got to die,
and you don't have anything to say

"about when you die, where you die.

"Your only choice is
what is it you give your life for."

Here's my first question to you.

What do you see your
responsibility as a historian

when you're dealing with someone
like Martin Luther King?

What's your responsibility?

Hmm.

It varies over time.

So when these tapes
come out in 2027,

I think it's gonna be
very interesting to see

what the reaction is.

I don‘t know that it
will create a fundamental,

uh, re-understanding of King
as a political figure,

but I do thinkthat
it will probably give us

a slightly more complicated sense
of him as a human being.

There's always
been this unresolved,

uh, tension in who we are

and who we say we are

and who we want to be.

But there was always this...

emotional enthusiasm

that we could change the world.

Did he have, uh,

sexual relationships with women

other than his married wife?

Yes, he did.

I can't change that.

That's a matter of factual history.

Does that...

make him in my mind...

less of an historic civil rights leader?

No, it does not.

I just don't think that the tapes
should see the light of day.

As I said, it would serve
no purpose whatsoever,

and I don't see anything good
that could come about it.

I see bad things
that could come about it.

I don't know enough about
what might be in the tapes to react,

There are no perfect humans.

There's not one speaking to you now.

And so I would hope that
no matter what is revealed,

and maybe there'll be nothing
new revealed about Dr. King,

people are able to understand

that people are complex,
and it doesn't detract from

what a person did for the good.

I think
it's easy for us to look back

at what the FBI was doing

during Hoover's years
and be outraged by it,

and rightly so,

but I also think there's an image

ofJ. Edgar Hoover as being

some sort of rogue actcr behind the scenes

and being kind of out of step
with the American mainstream,

but the truth is that

a lot of this wasn't particularly secret.

Um, a lot of people understood
what the FBI was up to

and in fact, they supported it.

The FBI was not
a renegade agency.

It was fundamentally a part,

a core part of the existing mainstream

American political order.

I don't know
what‘s in the 2027 releases,

but I don't think that this will impact

the assessment of Dr. King's legacy.

The 1960's, the post-war years,

are a period of real transformation.

One thing that's really important

is that we acknowledge that Black people

have only truly had citizen rights
for the last 50 plus years.

It's so recent.

Looking at the FBI campaigns against King,

the Black Panther Party,
and many other people,

I think there's a core component to this

that really is structural and functional.

People hold these attitudes,
and we focus on J. Edgar Hoovers own

particular history and person,

but I think that these are attitudes

that have been core

to how the racial order
operates in the US.

What helped motivate these campaigns

was the real fear

that Black people could undermine

the way the country wanted to see itself,

and this manifested itself

not only in the targeting of leaders

and people that were visible,
but of ordinary people.

So this core of fear and aggressions

towards African-Americans,
I think has a lot to do

with white people's own
conception of themselves

and the danger of Black people
forcing a reckoning

with the violence of the American past.