Here is Part 1: www.adultfyi.com/read.php?ID=32367
Boston progressive Examiner: J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a strong dislike of Martin Luther King, Jr. and was determined to destroy King’s reputation. Years of FBI surveillance reached its peak when King’s hotel rooms were bugged to record King’s marital infidelities.
Although the FBI held listening sessions of the illicit recordings for members of Congress, reporters, clergy and others, the goal to destroy King failed. When King was selected for the Nobel Peace Prize the FBI made a compilation tape of the bedroom recordings and mailed it to King along with a threatening letter urging King to commit suicide to prevent public disclosure of the tape.
William Cornelius Sullivan, head of the Domestic Intelligence section, had the FBI Crime Laboratory make the tape and sent an agent to Florida to mail the recording to King. Although Sullivan denied authoring the anonymous letter that accompanied the tape, a copy was found in his file cabinet at FBI headquarters after he was fired for leaking information to the White House about Hoover. Mark Felt, “Deep Throat” of Watergate infamy, maintained that the tape and letter were Sullivan’s project.
Coretta Scott King opened the package on January 5, 1965, a month and a half after it was sent. Although the letter did not result in King’s suicide the tape did cause considerable emotional damage within the King marriage.
Excerpts from the anonymous FBI letter:
“King, look into your heart. You know you are a complete fraud and a great liability to all of us Negroes. White people in this country have enough frauds of their own but I am sure they don’t have one at this time that is anywhere near your equal….I repeat you are a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that.”
“King, like all frauds your end is approaching. You could have been our greatest leader.”
“The American public, the church organizations that you have been helping–Protestant, Catholic and Jews will know you for what you are–an evil, abnormal beast.”
“King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is….There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.”
Martin Luther King was shaken by the tape and letter and told friends, “They are trying to break me.” However, King pushed forward with his civil rights crusade and the rest is history.