The Civil Rights Movement
Later on, anti-war protesters and civil rights leaders were added to Hoover's list.
"Hoover saw the civil rights movement from the 1950s onward and the anti-war movement from the 1960s onward, as presenting the greatest threats to the stability of the American government since the Civil War," he says. "These people were enemies of the state, and in particular Martin Luther King [Jr.] was an enemy of the state. And Hoover aimed to watch over them. If they twitched in the wrong direction, the hammer would come down."
Hoover was intent on planting bugs around civil rights leaders — including King — because he thought communists had infiltrated the civil rights movement, says Weiner. Hoover had his intelligence chief bug King's bedroom, and then sent the civil rights leader a copy of the sex recordings his intelligence chief had taken of King — along with an anonymous letter from the FBI.
"It was a poison pen letter, it was a hate letter; it wasn't from anyone in particular, but Martin Luther King and his wife would certainly know the source of the tapes, that it had to be the FBI," says Weiner. "And the poison pen letter read: 'King, look into your heart. The American people would know you for what you are — an evil, abnormal beast. There is only one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.' "
Weiner says King ignored the letter, even as the FBI tried diligently to defame him.
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