◆ SpookStack

e vune 19, 1969 «. 4 Clyde: @@Phouzht 'd a meciay athe co! ‘bot o> lia! ww the followins, neszards m - F) BI ’s tapping of King phones | The FBI has a jot more explaining to do about its motives for spying on the late Dr. Martin Luther King. It has publicly described as “‘malicious” a column written 1. by Carl Rowan that criticized the tapping of Dr. King’s \. «Clyde Totson, associate FBI director, says the wiretapping 5 ‘was done for ‘national security’ reasons, with the approval Ne - of the Jate Robert Kennedy, then attorney general. That doesn’t come even close to telling it. \. ~ _ONE THING IT DOESN’T EXPLAIN, is the following inci- dent: ’ ._ About four years ago, an ex-FBI agent I knew asked me to \ * Join him for a round of golf. After the round, we sat in the clubhouse chatting. He NN worked the conversation around to Dr. King. He told me the FB] had been using a variety of electronic \ eavesdropping devices on Dr. King. Besides tapping his ' phone, they had planted listening @evices in hotel rooms he used while traveling. : . + The result, he said,was a very thick file on Dr. King. He gave me some“examples. . They were very personal things. They were things I'm sure Dr. King would not want anyone else to know about. If 1+, you bugged almost anyone’s bedroom long enough, you - would hear things that person didn’t want anyone else to __. , know about. “2. BUT_NONE OF THE THINGS this ex-FBI agent told me reflected in any way on Dr. King’s loyalty, his Americanism, or seemed to be remotely related to national security. ’ Nor did they reflect on his role as a leader in the civil fights crusade, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, or a *” figure of historic importance. “* '~1 asked the ex-FBI agent if his information was merely , ‘Bossip or if he was sure about it. — \{ He said he had visited J. Edgar Hoover in Washington and * had been briefed on the contents of the King file. It was not uncommon, be said, for trusted ex-agents to be ] let in on such things. - Obviously, 1 was supposed to be shocked by the things he told me. And I was. But not for the reasons he assumed. The shocking part of it was that he was actually sitting there telling me such things. . They were none of my business, and they were none of his business. They. were nobody’s business but Dr. King's. ; IT WAS PLAIN OLD MUD-SLINGING, on a level with the lowest scandal magazines and transom-peeking publications. - — There was no doubt in my mind then, and none now, that '4t was being leaked to me for the purpose of discrediting Dr. ~. , The same type of thing, I have since learned, occurred in : -. Other cities,‘ with other newsmen. And it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out why. | _ Dr. King and Hoover had engaged in a furious public quar- rel. Hoover, quite clearly, did not like Dr. King. That’s why I micrect the FRI hagn’t civen an andennate ey.