8 ms·

Martin Luther King Jr. was wiretapped

258 points by ghosh 13y ago

martin luther king jr was wiretapped and sent an anonymous letter from J hoover encouraging him to-kill himself

tptacek 13y ago
Yes. This times 100. Prior to (I think) '68, there was no federal prohibition on wiretaps of any sort. Think about that before you say that the USG has never respected the 4th Amendment less than it does today.
- iamdave 13y ago
  Who cares how long it’s been going on, you need to take severe umbrage that at multiple points in our nation’s history the Government has taken the 4th amendment out back and beat it with a lead pipe. The difference is now, a court is allowing them to get away with it. That’s a scary proposition, because before you know it, it’ll be you going outside for some love taps from the FBI. And after that, it’ll be your kids. You don’t trade Constitutionality for antiquity. It’s wrong now, just as much as it was wrong then because if you found out about it then, you'd have been just as mad about it as you are now.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    The court is allowing NSA to get away with something different than what Hoover's FBI got away with.
    - iamdave 13y ago
      I didn't think about it that way, I guess it's time to put away the pitchfork then. Sidebar: It's not.
      - tptacek_ 13y ago
        No.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    The problem is the "slippery slope," "it always gets worse," "the government is hopelessly broken," ranting that has become pervasive on HN lately. In the middle of the last century, the Supreme Court allowed the federal government to put tens of thousands of japanese americans in internment camps, including U.S. citizens. In the early 2000's, the same court said that even non-citizens caught in Afghanistan fighting against the U.S. had certain due process and habeas rights as long as they were on U.S. soil.
    - rdl 13y ago
      It seems like punctuated equilibrium with a slight downward slippery slope -- it generally gets worse (due to investigators pushing the limits little by little) until legal decisions or technological changes push back and make big changes one way or another (not always for the better).
      - timr 13y ago
        "It seems like punctuated equilibrium with a slight downward slippery slope -- it generally gets worse." Istanbul has been in the grips of a military crackdown of a peaceful protest about a park. In Syria, something like 90,000 people have died fighting an authoritarian regime, with no end in sight. In Iran, people won't even vote in the election (where voting is compulsory) because they know that the elections are rigged. On the other side of the coin, in the UK, you're subject to government surveillance in every public space. It's a trade-off, and the choices aren't as clear as you might believe if you limited your knowledge to what you read on Reddit and HN. My point is that you have to be pretty cynical to suggest that the USA -- where we let the Occupy protesters linger in front of federal buildings until they were nothing but de facto homeless encampments -- has been on an endlessly downward slippery slope. We live in one of the most free and privileged countries on earth, and it's important to keep a sense of perspective on these things. I don't necessarily like that the NSA is tracking phone calls, but I'm also keenly aware of the fact that they aren't dragging people out of their homes in the middle of the night, and that we don't have cars exploding daily in New York City. All things considered, we have it pretty damned well.
- Jd 13y ago
  Very true, and I think is great that Garry here is including a little historical perspective on this. Civil liberties are something that have to be fought for by every generation. It may be a battle that can never be won completely, but if you stop fighting it you always lose your freedoms one by one. That said, this White House petition makes me nervous since we still don't know the extent of what Snowden leaked.
- jivatmanx 13y ago
  1964 was two years after the Cuban missile crisis, when Che Guevara was nearly successful in instigating Nuclear War. Perhaps some paranoia was understandable. But here we are, over 10 years after 9/11, and an enemy who simply does not pose any existential threat to the U.S. And yet no limits have been passed on Patriot act powers.
  - PavlovsCat 13y ago
    > "the Cuban missile crisis, when Che Guevara was nearly successful in instigating Nuclear War" Wait, what? Even if you meant to say Khrushchev, that's extremely one-sided.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_missile_crisis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_missile_crisis After provocative political moves and the failed US attempt to overthrow the Cuban regime (Bay of Pigs, Operation Mongoose), in May 1962 Nikita Khrushchev proposed the idea of placing Soviet nuclear missiles on Cuba to deter any future invasion attempt. and from the section "Responses considered": The Joint Chiefs of Staff believed that the missiles would seriously alter the military balance, but Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara disagreed. He was convinced that the missiles would not affect the strategic balance at all. An extra forty, he reasoned, would make little difference to the overall strategic balance. The US already had approximately 5,000 strategic warheads, while the Soviet Union had only 300. He concluded that the Soviets having 340 would not therefore substantially alter the strategic balance. In 1990, he reiterated that "it made no difference ... The military balance wasn't changed. I didn't believe it then, and I don't believe it now." But yes, if you consider that in a way it was a rather benign thing done to defend an ally, and compare that with the panic and hypocritical indignation about it, then the paranoia was understandable indeed; I can understand how and why it was engineered, that is.
    - glurgh 13y ago
      Perhaps the OP meant Castro, many historians have interpreted some of Castro's communications to the Soviet Union at the time as calls for pre-emptive or first-use nuclear strikes - this is mentioned a couple of times in the wikipedia page you linked.
    - jivatmanx 13y ago
- Lagged2Death 13y ago
  https://ssd.eff.org/wire/govt/wiretapping-protections https://ssd.eff.org/wire/govt/wiretapping-protections Before 1967, the Fourth Amendment didn't require police to get a warrant to tap conversations occurring over phone company lines. But that year, in two key decisions (including the Katz case), the Supreme Court made clear that eavesdropping — bugging private conversations or wiretapping phone lines — counted as a search that required a warrant. Well I've thought about it. And I think it's fair to say the USG has never respected the 4th amendment less than it does today.
  - glurgh 13y ago
    How hard have you thought about it? What's the line of thought that makes the current government less respectful of the 4th amendment than, say, a government that, with the knowledge and approval of the president, sends a bunch of goons to commit burglary and dig up dirt on its political opponents?
    - Lagged2Death 13y ago
      Nixon's goon squads were reprehensible, but they involved a small number of actors and a small number of actions. It's not strictly incorrect to refer to those actors as "the government," but it's a little misleading. Nixon didn't brief congress on his burglary program. It wasn't a matter of official policy. When these activities were brought to light, the citizens were the first to know. The bulk of "the government" was just as shocked as we were. No one seriously tried to defend the actions as somehow legal because of a state of national emergency. The current official policy, which has spanned at least two and possibly three presidential administrations, is to use a huge network of government employees and private sector labor working together to spy on virtually every single person in the country, continuously, for years. And this time, it's been sort of an open secret, endorsed and defended as legal from the highest levels, and known to Senators and rank-and-file FBI agents alike. We, the ordinary citizens, were the last to know. I think it's much more accurate to describe the current surveillance as an activity of "the government," and I think the scale, the audacity, the hubris involved makes it clear that an awful lot of "the government" views the fourth amendment as an outdated relic that must be stamped out or revised away into meaninglessness. I think the difference between the two examples is extreme and obvious. They are actually more different than they are alike.
- glurgh 13y ago
  Had me until he drew an analogy between MLK Jr and Edward Snowden.
jivatmanx 13y ago
"In 1964, after Hoover called King the most "notorious liar in the country" in a press conference, a package was sent to King in the mail, a package the House select committee ultimately traced back to the FBI. " What I find most amazing about this story is that the House would actually do something to serve as a check on executive power.
- tptacek 13y ago
  You mean like they did when they prevented Obama from shutting down Guantanamo?
  - mh- 13y ago
    no, I believe he was talking about a house committee investigating actions by the executive branch. you're thinking of politicking.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      Oh so you mean like the Fast & Furious investigations? Or the Benghazi hearings? Or, I don't know, the impeachment of Bill Clinton?
      - anonyfuss 13y ago
        Let's say we all listened to your constant posting, and put down the pitchforks. Now what? What would you have us do differently? Should we be quiet? Is there some other avenue of outrage you'd rather we follow? What?
hooande 13y ago
This story needs some historical context. This is pointed out in the blog post, but the main reason for wiretapping King wasn't his civil rights advocacy, but his communist leanings. This in no way excuses or apologizes for the dirty tricks used by the federal government against a non-violent protestor. But this should make sense to students of US history. Communism was the absolute defining political issue of the 20th century in America. Today communism seems like a failed political ideology, a cute thing that hippies like along with pot and drum circles. But in the 50s and 60s communism was the most evil thing imaginable, like aids spreading terrorists who block cell phone signals. Hoover in particular had spent his entire life fighting communism and saw it as the greatest threat our country had ever faced. Many of our parents or grandparents had nuclear bomb drills in elementary school, ducking and covering under their desks to protect themselves from the communist threat. Growing up like that, you can imagine the fear and rabid hatred that people had for the ideology. This isn't a story of "Evil US government subverts wiretapping power to go after peaceful protestor". This is a case of the government executing the will of the people at the time. Hindsight is 20/20 and looking back their actions seem evil, but in historical context the FBI was doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing: fighting communism with everything they had. It may sound silly to us, but back then that was the only fight that mattered. The FBI and the public didn't see it as wiretapping a private citizen, but as a part of a decades long political struggle. Recently on HN people have been acting like the government can dominate the world through wiretapping. As if the NSA can find out a few secrets and people will bow their heads and be silent. Government wiretapping found a true dirty secret involving MLK and threatened to reveal it if he didn't change what he was saying. Did he stop? No. Did he slow down for a single second? Fuck no. True political reformers aren't cowed by blackmail and intimidation. As long as we have leaders like Martin Luther King, democracy will live forever.
- foobarqux 13y ago
  COINTELPRO did not only target suspected communists. > As if the NSA can find out a few secrets and people will bow their heads and be silent. To say that it doesn't have a significant influence is not credible.
- glurgh 13y ago
  The government at the time saw communism everywhere and Hoover's FBI was eager to paint any dissenter as a communist. The civil rights movement and racial relations in the US themselves were used for propaganda purposes by the Soviet Union. The evidence of MLK's 'communist leanings' of any significance is pretty weak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.#Allegations_of_communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.#Allega... The idea that Hoover's FBI was somehow 'executing the will of the people' rather than the will of J. Edgar Hoover seems pretty tenuous.
karissa 13y ago
Forget wiretapped. He was assassinated in a conspiracy with 'unspecified governmental agencies.' "...the jury ruled that Loyd Jowers and others, including unspecified governmental agencies, were all part of the conspiracy to kill Martin Luther King Jr.[3][4]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Martin_Luther_King,_Jr http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Martin_Luther_....
coldtea 13y ago
>Martin Luther King Jr. was wiretapped Well, DUH, of course he was. Even minor players in the civil rights movement were wiretapped. And tons of others besides. And those findings were used to: to blackmail, to plan police reactions, to spin, etc. Also check: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-us-vs-john-lennon/ http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-us-vs-john-lennon/
- pstuart 13y ago
  That's all they were intended for.
lifeguard 13y ago
"Some of those forces are ones that burn crosses" An evil chapter in the FBI's history.

258 points by ghosh 13y ago

martin luther king jr was wiretapped and sent an anonymous letter from J hoover encouraging him to-kill himself

Yes. This times 100. Prior to (I think) '68, there was no federal prohibition on wiretaps of any sort. Think about that before you say that the USG has never respected the 4th Amendment less than it does today.

iamdave 13y ago
Who cares how long it’s been going on, you need to take severe umbrage that at multiple points in our nation’s history the Government has taken the 4th amendment out back and beat it with a lead pipe. The difference is now, a court is allowing them to get away with it. That’s a scary proposition, because before you know it, it’ll be you going outside for some love taps from the FBI. And after that, it’ll be your kids. You don’t trade Constitutionality for antiquity. It’s wrong now, just as much as it was wrong then because if you found out about it then, you'd have been just as mad about it as you are now.
- tptacek 13y ago
  The court is allowing NSA to get away with something different than what Hoover's FBI got away with.
  - iamdave 13y ago
    I didn't think about it that way, I guess it's time to put away the pitchfork then. Sidebar: It's not.
    - tptacek_ 13y ago
      No.
- rayiner 13y ago
  The problem is the "slippery slope," "it always gets worse," "the government is hopelessly broken," ranting that has become pervasive on HN lately. In the middle of the last century, the Supreme Court allowed the federal government to put tens of thousands of japanese americans in internment camps, including U.S. citizens. In the early 2000's, the same court said that even non-citizens caught in Afghanistan fighting against the U.S. had certain due process and habeas rights as long as they were on U.S. soil.
  - rdl 13y ago
    It seems like punctuated equilibrium with a slight downward slippery slope -- it generally gets worse (due to investigators pushing the limits little by little) until legal decisions or technological changes push back and make big changes one way or another (not always for the better).
    - timr 13y ago
      "It seems like punctuated equilibrium with a slight downward slippery slope -- it generally gets worse." Istanbul has been in the grips of a military crackdown of a peaceful protest about a park. In Syria, something like 90,000 people have died fighting an authoritarian regime, with no end in sight. In Iran, people won't even vote in the election (where voting is compulsory) because they know that the elections are rigged. On the other side of the coin, in the UK, you're subject to government surveillance in every public space. It's a trade-off, and the choices aren't as clear as you might believe if you limited your knowledge to what you read on Reddit and HN. My point is that you have to be pretty cynical to suggest that the USA -- where we let the Occupy protesters linger in front of federal buildings until they were nothing but de facto homeless encampments -- has been on an endlessly downward slippery slope. We live in one of the most free and privileged countries on earth, and it's important to keep a sense of perspective on these things. I don't necessarily like that the NSA is tracking phone calls, but I'm also keenly aware of the fact that they aren't dragging people out of their homes in the middle of the night, and that we don't have cars exploding daily in New York City. All things considered, we have it pretty damned well.
Jd 13y ago
Very true, and I think is great that Garry here is including a little historical perspective on this. Civil liberties are something that have to be fought for by every generation. It may be a battle that can never be won completely, but if you stop fighting it you always lose your freedoms one by one. That said, this White House petition makes me nervous since we still don't know the extent of what Snowden leaked.
jivatmanx 13y ago
1964 was two years after the Cuban missile crisis, when Che Guevara was nearly successful in instigating Nuclear War. Perhaps some paranoia was understandable. But here we are, over 10 years after 9/11, and an enemy who simply does not pose any existential threat to the U.S. And yet no limits have been passed on Patriot act powers.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  > "the Cuban missile crisis, when Che Guevara was nearly successful in instigating Nuclear War" Wait, what? Even if you meant to say Khrushchev, that's extremely one-sided.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_missile_crisis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_missile_crisis After provocative political moves and the failed US attempt to overthrow the Cuban regime (Bay of Pigs, Operation Mongoose), in May 1962 Nikita Khrushchev proposed the idea of placing Soviet nuclear missiles on Cuba to deter any future invasion attempt. and from the section "Responses considered": The Joint Chiefs of Staff believed that the missiles would seriously alter the military balance, but Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara disagreed. He was convinced that the missiles would not affect the strategic balance at all. An extra forty, he reasoned, would make little difference to the overall strategic balance. The US already had approximately 5,000 strategic warheads, while the Soviet Union had only 300. He concluded that the Soviets having 340 would not therefore substantially alter the strategic balance. In 1990, he reiterated that "it made no difference ... The military balance wasn't changed. I didn't believe it then, and I don't believe it now." But yes, if you consider that in a way it was a rather benign thing done to defend an ally, and compare that with the panic and hypocritical indignation about it, then the paranoia was understandable indeed; I can understand how and why it was engineered, that is.
  - glurgh 13y ago
    Perhaps the OP meant Castro, many historians have interpreted some of Castro's communications to the Soviet Union at the time as calls for pre-emptive or first-use nuclear strikes - this is mentioned a couple of times in the wikipedia page you linked.
  - jivatmanx 13y ago
Lagged2Death 13y ago
https://ssd.eff.org/wire/govt/wiretapping-protections https://ssd.eff.org/wire/govt/wiretapping-protections Before 1967, the Fourth Amendment didn't require police to get a warrant to tap conversations occurring over phone company lines. But that year, in two key decisions (including the Katz case), the Supreme Court made clear that eavesdropping — bugging private conversations or wiretapping phone lines — counted as a search that required a warrant. Well I've thought about it. And I think it's fair to say the USG has never respected the 4th amendment less than it does today.
- glurgh 13y ago
  How hard have you thought about it? What's the line of thought that makes the current government less respectful of the 4th amendment than, say, a government that, with the knowledge and approval of the president, sends a bunch of goons to commit burglary and dig up dirt on its political opponents?
  - Lagged2Death 13y ago
    Nixon's goon squads were reprehensible, but they involved a small number of actors and a small number of actions. It's not strictly incorrect to refer to those actors as "the government," but it's a little misleading. Nixon didn't brief congress on his burglary program. It wasn't a matter of official policy. When these activities were brought to light, the citizens were the first to know. The bulk of "the government" was just as shocked as we were. No one seriously tried to defend the actions as somehow legal because of a state of national emergency. The current official policy, which has spanned at least two and possibly three presidential administrations, is to use a huge network of government employees and private sector labor working together to spy on virtually every single person in the country, continuously, for years. And this time, it's been sort of an open secret, endorsed and defended as legal from the highest levels, and known to Senators and rank-and-file FBI agents alike. We, the ordinary citizens, were the last to know. I think it's much more accurate to describe the current surveillance as an activity of "the government," and I think the scale, the audacity, the hubris involved makes it clear that an awful lot of "the government" views the fourth amendment as an outdated relic that must be stamped out or revised away into meaninglessness. I think the difference between the two examples is extreme and obvious. They are actually more different than they are alike.
glurgh 13y ago
Had me until he drew an analogy between MLK Jr and Edward Snowden.

jivatmanx 13y ago

"In 1964, after Hoover called King the most "notorious liar in the country" in a press conference, a package was sent to King in the mail, a package the House select committee ultimately traced back to the FBI. " What I find most amazing about this story is that the House would actually do something to serve as a check on executive power.

tptacek 13y ago
You mean like they did when they prevented Obama from shutting down Guantanamo?
- mh- 13y ago
  no, I believe he was talking about a house committee investigating actions by the executive branch. you're thinking of politicking.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Oh so you mean like the Fast & Furious investigations? Or the Benghazi hearings? Or, I don't know, the impeachment of Bill Clinton?
    - anonyfuss 13y ago
      Let's say we all listened to your constant posting, and put down the pitchforks. Now what? What would you have us do differently? Should we be quiet? Is there some other avenue of outrage you'd rather we follow? What?

hooande 13y ago

This story needs some historical context. This is pointed out in the blog post, but the main reason for wiretapping King wasn't his civil rights advocacy, but his communist leanings. This in no way excuses or apologizes for the dirty tricks used by the federal government against a non-violent protestor. But this should make sense to students of US history. Communism was the absolute defining political issue of the 20th century in America. Today communism seems like a failed political ideology, a cute thing that hippies like along with pot and drum circles. But in the 50s and 60s communism was the most evil thing imaginable, like aids spreading terrorists who block cell phone signals. Hoover in particular had spent his entire life fighting communism and saw it as the greatest threat our country had ever faced. Many of our parents or grandparents had nuclear bomb drills in elementary school, ducking and covering under their desks to protect themselves from the communist threat. Growing up like that, you can imagine the fear and rabid hatred that people had for the ideology. This isn't a story of "Evil US government subverts wiretapping power to go after peaceful protestor". This is a case of the government executing the will of the people at the time. Hindsight is 20/20 and looking back their actions seem evil, but in historical context the FBI was doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing: fighting communism with everything they had. It may sound silly to us, but back then that was the only fight that mattered. The FBI and the public didn't see it as wiretapping a private citizen, but as a part of a decades long political struggle. Recently on HN people have been acting like the government can dominate the world through wiretapping. As if the NSA can find out a few secrets and people will bow their heads and be silent. Government wiretapping found a true dirty secret involving MLK and threatened to reveal it if he didn't change what he was saying. Did he stop? No. Did he slow down for a single second? Fuck no. True political reformers aren't cowed by blackmail and intimidation. As long as we have leaders like Martin Luther King, democracy will live forever.

foobarqux 13y ago
COINTELPRO did not only target suspected communists. > As if the NSA can find out a few secrets and people will bow their heads and be silent. To say that it doesn't have a significant influence is not credible.
glurgh 13y ago
The government at the time saw communism everywhere and Hoover's FBI was eager to paint any dissenter as a communist. The civil rights movement and racial relations in the US themselves were used for propaganda purposes by the Soviet Union. The evidence of MLK's 'communist leanings' of any significance is pretty weak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.#Allegations_of_communism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.#Allega... The idea that Hoover's FBI was somehow 'executing the will of the people' rather than the will of J. Edgar Hoover seems pretty tenuous.

karissa 13y ago

Forget wiretapped. He was assassinated in a conspiracy with 'unspecified governmental agencies.' "...the jury ruled that Loyd Jowers and others, including unspecified governmental agencies, were all part of the conspiracy to kill Martin Luther King Jr.[3][4]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Martin_Luther_King,_Jr http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Martin_Luther_....

coldtea 13y ago

>Martin Luther King Jr. was wiretapped Well, DUH, of course he was. Even minor players in the civil rights movement were wiretapped. And tons of others besides. And those findings were used to: to blackmail, to plan police reactions, to spin, etc. Also check: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-us-vs-john-lennon/ http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-us-vs-john-lennon/

pstuart 13y ago
That's all they were intended for.

lifeguard 13y ago

"Some of those forces are ones that burn crosses" An evil chapter in the FBI's history.