FBI's "Suicide Letter" to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Dangers of Unchecked Surveillance

The New York Times has published an unredacted version of the famous “suicide letter” from the FBI to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The letter, recently discovered by historian and professor Beverly Gage, is a disturbing document. But it’s also something that everyone in the United States should read, because it demonstrates exactly what lengths the intelligence community is willing to go to—and what happens when they take the fruits of the surveillance they’ve done and unleash it on a target.

The anonymous letter was the result of the FBI’s comprehensive surveillance and harassment strategy against Dr. King, which included bugging his hotel rooms, photographic surveillance, and physical observation of King’s movements by FBI agents. The agency also attempted to break up his marriage by sending selectively edited “personal moments he shared with friends and women” to his wife.

Portions of the letter had been previously redacted. One of these portions contains a claim that the letter was written by another African-American: “King, look into your heart. You know you are a complete fraud and a great liability to all us Negroes.” It goes on to say “We will now have to depend on our older leaders like Wilkins, a man of character and thank God we have others like him. But you are done.” This line is key, because part of the FBI’s strategy was to try to fracture movements and pit leaders against one another.

FBI's "Suicide Letter" to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Dangers of Unchecked Surveillance

to be fully honest i am not shocked at all, i mean if the FBI were willing to these things "back then" ,whose to say that have have changed ?

this just convinces me more that the FBI clipped Dr . King

but i think this should serve as a reminder that none of US are free from the tentacles of the Alphabet agency's



so what do you think ATS ?

Also you can find more on the story

HERE

a reply to: Walsh

After reading this post I am even more sure TPTB killed this true hero. Mr. King is a personal hero of mine for many reasons and this makes my stomach turn.


Look at what happened to the the Black culture after his murder the progressive mindset was brainwashed into an entire generation. The seeds that were planted grew into the issues we see today. If he had lived the black culture would not still be enslaved with self imposed chains of apathy and deflection.


If the PTB are willing to do this what else are they willing to do?

The PTB will use any method that produces the desired results...in the short term...apparently....
This has been the modus operandi of those who work to enslave the people .....they are traitors to the HUMAN race....(there is only one race)......the FBI, The CIA, the alphabet agencies have all sold their souls to the PTB long ago.....
Since JFK we have been living under a sinister shadow government.....

I suggest you read the book Death of a King. It's a new book about MLK focusing on his final year. The big part is that he wasn't taken out for his civil rights stuff. He was taken out for speaking for love and against war.. Specifically for condemning the Vietnam War.

Truly saddening how low American democracy has fallen. Indeed, I think we can no longer call the USA a "democracy" - killing it's own people and being downright nasty and cruel - even back then - is shameful and disgraceful.

All Americans express their horror at what has become of their once promising country. If they don't then they are guilty too. IMHO.

I just hope that the revolution is still possible. The world needs systemic change.

a reply to: Blister

People are trying. It's a monumental task but not hopeless.

well the us government was found guilty of his assassination, a long time ago

www.youtube.com...

sad as it is, by killing him they made him even more of a hero.

If I'm not mistaken wasn't Jesse Jackson standing beside him when he was assassinated? I always thought that he was an accomplice to his murder, because after he was killed Jesse Jackson took over his position in the Civil rights movement. (not literally) But, I can see the FBI/CIA buttering Mr. Jackson up to go along with the plan, and I can just hear Mr. Jackson saying to Dr. King, "Hey let's go outside for some fresh air." I know this is not the topic of this post but it's just my opinion. This letter is truly sick and dirty, just low... Which is on par for FBI.

originally posted by: Blister
Truly saddening how low American democracy has fallen. Indeed, I think we can no longer call the USA a "democracy" - killing it's own people and being downright nasty and cruel - even back then - is shameful and disgraceful.

All Americans express their horror at what has become of their once promising country. If they don't then they are guilty too. IMHO.

I just hope that the revolution is still possible. The world needs systemic change.

I don't think our country has fallen. I think that many are now able to see it for what it has always been.

When you are a child you think like a child. With time and experience, one day you wake up. It may have been a shock to find out there is no Easter Bunny or Santa Claus, it is life changing when you wake up to the real state of our united fate in America.

USA! USA! Has become a cry. It is no longer a boast.

All people do things which can be pointed to, built up, and change both their lives and the course of how history will view them. Dr. King's greatness was in his actions, the way he could hold and love an audience, his inspirational persona, and much more. The U.S. government in the unprincipled guise of J. Edgar Hoover tried to make him commit suicide because he liked the company of women. This reflects more on Hoover's legacy than it does King's, whose private moments were just that, his private moments.

As for King's anti-war stance, by the time he was killed he had backed away from being one of the perceived leaders of the anti-war movement, and was concentrating on his Poor People's encampment in Washington D.C. (his participation in the Memphis garbage workers strike, the activity he was involved in when he was assassinated, wasn't a movement but a set of marches and speeches directed at a job situation). So if he was killed for his limited but important anti-war activity (he gave one great speech on the subject - in April of 1967 entitled "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" - and participated and was a speaker on one very prominent march that same month which had been enlarged and organized by James Bevel when Bevel took over the directorship of the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam), that was already completed.

If Dr. King had lived would he have gotten back into a real anti-war movement, or would he have attended the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests? I don't think he would have, but he died in April, four months before the Chicago event (the activist who took over the Chairmanship of SCLC, his long-time friend Ralph Abernathy, did lead a group of people in those protests), so nobody can really know if he would have attended it. It's much more likely he would have accepted a speaking position during the October 15, 1969 Anti-War Moratorium, a massive teach-in and protest spanning the United States. In fact it's very likely he would have participated in that one, but less likely he would have come to Washington to attend the November 15th protest that year - he didn't attend the October 1967 March on the Pentagon for example. His future role in the anti-war movement can't be known for sure, but it is possible that at some point he would have gotten involved again.

Edit: Just want to add that I don't think King's murder was on the order of a government assassination. Having read the books and gone over the available evidence it seems to me that James Ray did the actual shooting, and then probably had monetary help - likely from his brother or friends (just a guess) - in order to leave the country and hide for awhile. I am far from a conversant expert on the subject of Dr. King's assassination.

a reply to: Walsh

Dude(or dudette), check this one out. It's part 6 of a twelve hour documentary (the rest is really killer but not necessary to this topic) but if you still think James Earl Ray had anything to do with MLK being assassinated then explain the last bit of info in this doc. It's a twist ending comparable to The Usual Suspects.

And the elite have been lying to us since way back before when. Befuddlement, misinformation, disinformation, they are good at that.

Counter measures are no good. They have the monopoly on lies. They just never figured on us getting the internet. Thank Tim Berners-Lee for that one. Still, it matter little. Those frakkers in power lie better than We The People ever could and assassination is no big deal to them.

Seriously. I'm not joking. Explain how James Earl Ray had contact with Jack Ruby.

Cointelpro,Iran Contra where TPTB introduced crack into many urban communities read Black and Hispanic with the rise of crack coc aine African American pop culture went from this

To this.

From this

To this.

But the vast majority literally buy into this..ssht
If Dr King had lived maybe he could have inspire people away from the crap that
passes for urban pop culture today.

Dulles...the psychopath that I believe is behind the killing of JFK, RFK, King, and a few others (possibly Monroe)

originally posted by: tavi45
I suggest you read the book Death of a King. It's a new book about MLK focusing on his final year. The big part is that he wasn't taken out for his civil rights stuff. He was taken out for speaking for love and against war.. Specifically for condemning the Vietnam War.

I tend to think that as well.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. Martin Luther King, Jr. Beyond Vietnam: Time to Break the silence

www.americanrhetoric.com...

This particular speech here as spoken by Dr. King was both beautiful and terrible. He was killed exactly a year after making this speech, oddly enough. This FBI letter, however, came before Dr. King, Jr turned his eye towards Vietnam as it is from 1964. That's three years before this speech. A lot of people perceive King as being solely against segregation and racism. However, his movement also tacked issues as varied as workers' rights and pay and protections from police brutality. I think that that is what led him to be perceived as a dangerous force within the US, not unlike the view that the FBI also had of Mario Savio. Having a great orator that speaks out against the status quo must be a truly scary thing.

I do think, however, that it is most likely when King's eye turned towards Vietnam after capturing the ears of so many, is when it went from pressure for him to kill himself to his death. Totally agree there. It's bad enough, after all, to shake up the status quo but god forbid, somebody target the war machine. Made for a deadly combination.

Linkin Park actually snipped portions of that speech in a song titled "Wisdom, Justice and Love" and I'll admit to listening to it whenever I need a little extra dose of strength. It's a 1:40 minute injection of the principles that King stood for in his last year of life.

i think after reading more into this , and the whole JFK conspiracy . My gut feeling is that JFK was a victim of Assassination by the F.B.I & C.I.A no doubt ...

originally posted by: TheSpanishArcher

EXCELLENT documentary. See and hear for yourself our "hidden" history. I started watching one day and watched the whole series. Best US history lesson I've ever received and it's ALL from news reports and documents. Totally fascinating and uber-revealing.

I've been meaning to do a thread on it to get more folk to see it.

a reply to: Aleister

What do you think of Abernathy's claim that he saw men with rifles?

I've been thinking of how I wanted to respond to this. That letter is just sick.

originally posted by: Walsh
i think after reading more into this , and the whole JFK conspiracy . My gut feeling is that JFK was a victim of Assassination by the F.B.I & C.I.A no doubt ...

JFK had a lot of enemies. You do not kill a sitting president in a very public fashion like that without having a lot of people involved. Every president after JFK until Clinton was involved with the coverup, you don't get more dirty than that. My honest hope is for a deathbed confession from Bush Sr. He was involved with Kennedy and tried to take out Reagan too.

originally posted by: Aazadan
I've been thinking of how I wanted to respond to this. That letter is just sick.

originally posted by: Walsh
i think after reading more into this , and the whole JFK conspiracy . My gut feeling is that JFK was a victim of Assassination by the F.B.I & C.I.A no doubt ...

JFK had a lot of enemies. You do not kill a sitting president in a very public fashion like that without having a lot of people involved. Every president after JFK until Clinton was involved with the coverup, you don't get more dirty than that. My honest hope is for a deathbed confession from Bush Sr. He was involved with Kennedy and tried to take out Reagan too.

you know i think you are correct , we can only hope ...

but sadly i doubt we will get to see that :/

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