A secret FBI letter condemning Martin Luther King Jr. reveals the malicious nature of the bureau, The Washington Post reported.
The letter was written from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to William C. Sullivan, the FBI's head of domestic intelligence, and tucked into the pages of the FBI director's 1938 book, "Persons in Hiding," which was later discovered by Washington scholar James L. Swanson.
The letter was written the day after Hoover had publicly declared King as "the most notorious liar in the country" at a press conference in response to criticism of how the FBI was handling civil rights cases, the King Institute Encyclopedia said.
In response to a note of praise from Sullivan, Hoover wrote, "I share your view in thinking that [King's] exposure is long overdue," according to The Washington Post.
Not long after Hoover's press conference, an anonymous letter was sent to King, calling him "a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that," The New York Times reported.
The note suggests an audiotape accompanied the letter featuring a recording of "immoral conduct" in action.
"Lend your sexually psychotic ear to the enclosure," the letter said, giving a 34-day deadline "before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation."
According to The New York Times, the author concludes "there is only one thing left for you to do… You know what it is."
The letter was submitted anonymously but King had suspected that the FBI was behind it, attempting to blackmail him into committing suicide.
The FBI's entanglement with King has been well documented and, according to a U.S. Senate Committee convened in the 1970s to investigate the FBI's domestic intelligence operations, the impact of the FBI's efforts to discredit King on the civil rights movement "is unquestionable," the King Institute Encyclopedia noted.
The committee determined that: "Rather than trying to discredit the alleged Communists it believed were attempting to influence Dr. King, the Bureau adopted the curious tactic of trying to discredit the supposed target of Communist Party interest — Dr. King himself."
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