[MORE CORRUPTION WITHIN THE FBI]
Church Committee Investigates FBI's Letter to MLK [suggesting he commit suicide]
REAL AMERICA REPORTER: “In this installment they are looking into the Church Committee’s hearing on possible excesses by the FBI. On November 18, 1975, you (Richard Schwarz, former Chief Council for the Church Committee) testified before the Senate Committee to share the staff’s findings on an investigation of FBI Intelligence activities. We’re going to show a clip of you reading an anonymous letter the FBI sent to Martin Luther King.”
SCHWARZ (in 1975): “The Bureau went so far as to mail anonymous letters to Dr. King and his wife, which were mailed shortly before he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and finishes with this suggestion, “King, there is only one thing left for you to do; you know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do it. [This exact number has been selected for a specific reason; it has definite practical significance. It was 34 days before the award.] “You are done.”
REAL AMERICA REPORTER: Give us some context for what we just saw. Why was the FBI looking into the activities of Martin Luther King?
SCHWARZ: Well, right after I made that statement, Fritz Mondale …he asked me a question.
MONDALE (in 1975): That was taken by Dr. King to mean a suggestion for suicide, was it not?
SCHWARZ (in 1975): That’s our understanding Senator.
SCHWARZ: And the answer was it was intended and it was taken as an effort by the King family and the King associates like Andy Young to get him to commit suicide. Hoover hated King. J. Edgar Hoover hated King. A. Hoover had a negative view of what were then called negroes. On the very afternoon of King's "I have a Dream" speech in Washington, D.C., in the bowels of the FBI’s office, they resolved to destroy Martin Luther King, and they set out to do that in lots of ways. They persuaded the Kennedy brothers to agree to wire-tapping of King and King’s close associates.
They did that by exaggerating the role of an advisor to King, his closest white advisor, Stanley Levison, who had left been a member of the Communist Party, but who left the party and the party turned against him. But, what the FBI told John and Robert Kennedy was that he was a member of the communist party and a close advisor of King and they wanted to get the wire taps. They didn't have to obtain permission. Under the rules then, the FBI could put a bug in anybody’s house, in anybody’s bedroom. They put bugs in hotel rooms that King was going to use and they made recordings from that and then sent them to King with the letter.
SENATOR FRANK CHURCH (to Schwarz in 1975): Now, if you had received such a letter, how would you have interpreted it? What would you have thought it meant?
JAMES ADAMS, DEPUTY ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, FBI (1975): I have read that statement. I have heard the conclusions of your staff that it was a suicide urging. I can’t find any basis upon which they drew that conclusion. I think that approaching it from an objective standpoint, as I read it, I don’t know what it means.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7H9Sp1sD3s