The New Yorker Radio Hour - How Far Has the F.B.I. Gone to Protect White Supremacy?

Episode Date: January 18, 2021

Today, Martin Luther King, Jr.,’s work on civil rights is celebrated as bringing about one of the turning points of the twentieth century in America. But, in his own time, King was a divisive figure, unloved by millions of Americans—many members of government among them. The F.B.I. surveilled him constantly. President Lyndon Johnson worked with King to shape benchmark civil-rights legislation, but, after King spoke out against the Vietnam War, he was effectively alienated by the Administration. Meanwhile, J. Edgar Hoover’s agents at the F.B.I. began active measures to destroy King’s reputation and end his public influence, threatening to expose an extramarital affair. The documentary “MLK/FBI,” directed by Sam Pollard, examines this low point in the federal government’s abuse of power. Pollard tells Jelani Cobb that Hoover must have wondered, “ ‘How dare a Black man try to change the America I grew up in?’ The America he knew and loved was on a road to change. And he was totally against it.” Even today, as a leaked document shows, some within the F.B.I. see Black activists’ calls for justice and recognition as potential dangers to be watched carefully. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. On Monday, we'll honor Martin Luther King, Jr., whose work on civil rights was one of the turning points of the 20th century in America. but King in his time was a wholly divisive figure unloved by millions of Americans, particularly white Americans, who despised him for his righteous opposition to white supremacy, and for his holding up a mirror to American history and our violent realities. The same government that eventually cooperated with some of Martin Luther King's legislative agenda also tried to end his public life. Jay Edgar Hoover and the FBI went to fantastic lengths to disgrace Dr.

King to get him off the political map once and for all. This FBI effort is the subject of a new documentary film called MLK FBI. Here's Jelani Cobb, a staff writer, and a historian. As we see in the film, the FBI opened a dossier on Dr. King in 1955, purportedly out of concern that the movement had been infiltrated by people with ties to the Communist Party. But as the movement grew and developed, the FBI's tactics switched from mere surveillance to an active campaign to discredit King and his work.

The film was directed by Sam Pollard, whose documentaries on American history go back to his work on Eyes on the Prize, the series from the late 1980s. So can you talk about how the surveillance of Dr. King began? The surveillance began around when King started becoming. a nationally prominent figure in the late 50, 20, 60. Now, remember, the FBI started a thing called Cointel Pro,

counterintelligence programming, where they were surveilling and wiretapping, you know, and eavesdropping on people who they thought were dangerous. I mean, it went beyond King. It was also Mountain X. It was the nation of Islam. It would later be the Black Panther Party. It would be Angela Davis.

Anybody they thought that they felt was going to change their status quo of America that they wanted to surveil and keep constant vigilance over. Jagahooving, William Sullivan, saw him as a, basically saw him as a terrorist, a domestic terrorist. And they felt like what he was doing, you know, it was going to change what America was supposed to be like.

I mean, the America of the 40s and 50s during the time of segregation and Jim Crow, here's America where black people are in the periphery. And now all of a sudden you have this leader, you know, from who became, who developed his reputation from Montgomery Bus Boy, got basically saying America needs to integrate, they need to recognize black people.

And this was absolutely frightening to Hoover and Sullivan and to basically many white Americans. I mean, if you go back and you look at the film, there's the television show that Kings on. And the white journalist says to him, What excuse or what reason do you offer for this approach of creating a crisis atmosphere in a community, which leads to bloodshed, as it has in many southern cities? some northern. Well, I think we should see the source of the bloodshed first, and we must understand the real nonviolent creed. Well, doesn't this crisis atmosphere, though, create or endanger the Negroes caused by creating among the whites a resentment of feeling that the Negro is moving too rapidly,

asking too much so suddenly? Does this worry you that this atmosphere could be created, or is? Well, I think this is a temporary response in any social revolution. Or doesn't that hurt your cause? I don't think so. It's kind of an astounding moment. It's an astounding man. The number of times, the sheer number of times where you see a king being accused of creating the problem, simply by highlighting that, you know, segregation is immoral.

It's amazing. But you know what's sad about it, though, is you fast forward to today and you, think back to the campaigning of Donald J. Trump. And what's he saying, you know, Jalani? He's saying to his group of people, you should be frightened because these people, these radical people on the left are going to come into your suburbs and destroy your community, you know. Code words, code words for black people, you know. And that communism has been switched to Antifa, you know. They're going to destroy democracy.

A socialism. Yeah, the radical left. You know, James Comey, the former FBI director and kind of embattled figure in American politics during the course of the Trump administration makes an appearance in this film. And I was a little bit surprised to see him. And could you tell me about how that came about and why you thought it was significant to have him involved? Well, about two and a half years ago, my producer, Benadine, who I had worked with in the previous film, said, you know, why don't we reach out to James? Comey, see if he would do an interview. I said, you really think he will? All the stuff, all the turbulence he had gone through with the Trump administration and being fired. And he felt like

he just wanted to set the record straight about his feelings about the FBI back then and the and the importance of the FBI to, you know, to remind him of the FBI's past, the letter to that basically suggesting that King should kill himself. Unbelievable. In the film, you have a clip with James Comey describes how he felt the first time he actually read that letter. I'm sick to my stomach, actually. I mean, it didn't throw up, but I felt ill reading it. And that's what I mean when I say, I think this entire episode represents the darkest

part of the Bureau's history. And you also have Andrew Young, who worked closely with King at the SCLC, and he recalls the moment where Coretta Scott King got that package at her home. It was put in a box and sent to Greta. so she opened it up and she played it and then she called the office and said look somebody has sent a tape in here trying to get Martin to kill himself

and they have a recording of some man and woman in the bed I didn't even want to hear it you know this was designed to upset him We always assume that Hoover was behind it. My philosophy about the movement is that unless I saw something with my own eyes, you really have to be careful what you believe.

It's something that people who've studied this, I think, know fairly well that these things happened. But it's still a pretty amazing thing to think that this happened under the auspices of the federal government. It's appalling where they would sit down and create a letter supposedly from a black person. You know, you know what to do. I mean, this can really just try to destroy his marriage. It's really appalling. One of the horrific things was that Hoover was enabled to be in power for so long. I mean, he became, you know, he became like a dictator.

I mean, nobody can be in power that long. Yeah, yeah. He essentially ran the FBI for. nearly half a century until he died in 1972. You also talked to Beverly Gage, who is a Hoover biographer. One of the most important things that Hoover did was to create a bureau really in his own image. That meant that he hired a very particular kind of person as an agent,

a relatively conservative white man of a certain height and a certain weight. You particularly liked fraternity boys and football players. What do you make of Jay Eger Hoover's single-minded fixation with Martin Luther King? I think the rationale, his obsession was the fact that his brain was saying, how dare a black man is trying to change what America is, the America that I grew up in, that the America that he knew and loved was on a road to change and he was he was totally against it and his first obsession was with the communist party which again he thought was going to destroy the fabric of

American democracy and then when he felt that the king was associated with that how could he and then when he learned the king was not you know this upright Christian man he felt there he was a disgrace to his to his robes he was disgraced to the community and he wanted to destroy And there were attempts to kind of filter this through the media. Absolutely. Absolutely. But the media didn't bite back then. I mean, you know, it's different, it was a different world.

They respected people's personal and private lives. As you know, they don't do today. Yeah. What really also happened, too, is they were surveilling King constantly, and King's agenda started to change. And he became part of the anti-Vietnam movement. Ben Jago, who was able to get the support of LBJ, who had been a close ally of,

of King before, but then when King basically at the Riverside Church gave that speech, they're opposing the Vietnam War, then all of a sudden he became pried to the LPJ administration. I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me nor the choice. A time comes when silence is betrayal. That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam. One of the things I take from your film is the astounding amount of pressure, the almost unbearable amount of pressure that King must have been under. You know, because he's being, especially in the latter points of the film,

being criticized by the younger wing, which views him as too moderate, being criticized by the moderate wing because of his opposition to Vietnam, being surveilled as every movement is being seen and observed by the federal government. Because it complicated relationship with Lyndon B. Johnson and then in the midst of this, you know, half the country hates him and a significant portion of it was looking forward to his death. and attempting to orchestrate and organize social reform in the context of that was just an unbelievable feat for me. It's mind-boggling that he had so much on his shoulders.

And you can see in the film, there's a certain weariness that seems, weariness that seems to set in as you see King going from year to year to year. You know, I mean, talk about multitasking, dealing with so much. It's amazing. None of us ever considered that. Do you think the FBI had anything to do with King's assassination? And is that something that people you talked to for the film believe? You know, when I was a young man, I, you know, I always bought into the idea it was a one-man thing, you know, that killed King.

But now as I've gotten older and done a lot of films about the movement, I'm of the mind that it was conspiratorial, that there were more people involved. And possibly the FBI could have been involved. Who knows, man. I mean, you know. Was this something that other people might kind of say to you off camera? Nobody, no, nobody said, the only person who even hinted that it was not, not just, it was James R. R. W. W.R. W. W. Andrew Young? But he wouldn't, he wouldn't go any further when I pushed him. So what did you mean, Reverend Young? And he wouldn't, he said he didn't want to talk about it.

No one else has said anything about it at all. So what about now? Do you think that this kind of surveillance or overreach is possible or that if we had significant figures in Black Life, that there would be institutional mechanisms that would prevent this from happening again? The cynical part of me, July says, you know, particularly with the world we live in today, everything is being surveilled. We're being recorded. We're being watched.

We're being monitored. The FBI was doing it back then. they're still doing it today. I'm a true believer that within organizations like the Black Lives Matter movement, there's informants. You know, there's people who are providing information to the FBI. I'm sure. You know, I think it's notable that the FBI report that was leaked, I guess, about two years

ago now, said that they were concerned about the rise of a quote-unquote black identity extremist movement. Yeah. Although later in the report, they concede that they don't. actually know anyone that fits that description or falls into that category. And it seems that they're just alarmed about the idea, I presume. Yeah, well, I bet you they're monitoring people on a daily basis. You know, King is seen as a respected figure now. Hoover would have been thought of as a villain. I guess what does that say about the history that has intervened

between the time that you cover in this film and our contemporary moment? You know, I grew up at a time where the notion of being an American was, even as a person of color, to forget who you are, where you came from, and become part of this so-called American melting pot, right? Now, people understand that you can hold onto your identity. You can still be an American, but you can challenge many of the things that America says they're about. Now, sometimes that challenging can lead to people saying that this election that we just had, you know, of Joe Biden was fraudulent. sometimes that challenge can make you say, well, this is what I thought of Jaguar and the FBI back in 60s,

but this is what I understand about them today and the federal government. You know, so what's happened in America, for good or bad, is people question and challenge everything about what America is supposed to be. For poor people will really mean having the ability, their togetherness, the assertiveness, the assertiveness, the aggressiveness to make the power structure of this nation say yes, when they may be desirous of saying no, black people, Mexican Americans, American Indians, Puerto Ricans, Appalachian whites, all working together to solve the problem of poverty. The film MLK FBI is out in theaters and available on demand. I heard director Sam Pollard speaking with staff writer Jelani Cobb.

And the FBI's tapes of Dr. King are going to be made public in 2027. I'm David Remnick. Have a good week and stay safe. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin,

Avae Carrillo, Riannon Corby, Callalia, David Krasnow, Gauphin and Putubuele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Alison McAdam, Mengfei Chen, and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.