11 News exclusive: Inside the FBI’s secret files on Coretta Scott King

Friday, August 31, 2007 

11 News Defenders

By David Raziq & Mark Greenblatt

She had an unforgettable face: serene, beautiful and yet with a trace of sadness that few would say she did not earn. Indeed, Coretta Scott King’s life was filled with trouble and adversity caused by those opposed to her cause.

And among those opponents? J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.

Now, after more than a year’s work, KHOU-TV in Houston and its investigative unit, 11 News Defenders, have obtained a world-exclusive first look at the FBI’s file on Coretta Scott King.

Comprised of nearly 500 pages, with some of those documents partially or totally censored, the intelligence file paints a disturbing picture.

For example: The FBI very closely spied and did surveillance on Scott King for years, keeping close track of her public appearances, speeches and especially anytime she traveled.

Why would a federal agency go to such trouble?

For most of his life FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover ruled the Bureau with a tight grip. In addition he opposed the civil rights movement as being an “un-American” and “subversive cause” and even called Martin Luther King Jr. “the Black Messiah,” saying he was too powerful. In public statements Hoover also called the leader “immoral” and accused him of being influenced by the Communists. (Regarding that last accusation, the FBI would later admit in a document submitted to Congress that “the veracity of the sources and the characterization are remaining questions.”)

Hence began an intense “counter-intelligence” campaign of surveillance, bugging, and harassment by the FBI’s “Racial Intelligence Section” that centered around MLK, his relatives, and associates.

But KHOU has found that even after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, the FBI’s Scott King file shows the Bureau actually intensified their spying and surveillance of the new widow.

The newly released documents show the Bureau closely tracked and scrutinized Scott King’s comings and goings, including public appearances (”Mrs. King is due to arrive…at 10:40 a.m.”) and what was said there. Agents also kept particular notice of any of her plane flights. They even kept tabs on a King family outing to Las Vegas and what security company Scott King was using.

Far more invasive though was the Bureau’s interception of private letters she had written.

One agent even read and reviewed her 1969 book “My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr.” and made a point to say Scott King’s “selfless, magnanimous, decorous attitude is belied by.. (her) ..actual shrewd, calculating, businesslike activities.”

But the file also shows that the Bureau’s real worry about Scott King was not the civil rights movement but instead her involvement with the peace and “anti-Vietnam War” movement. Government officials were afraid that she might try to complete what her husband had been doing when he died: “attempt to tie the anti-Vietnam war movement to the civil rights movement,” as one FBI agent put it.

During the late ‘60s, the anti-war movement was snowballing in strength and was considered a real danger to the war effort by both the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Adding the hundreds of thousands involved in the civil rights effort to the war protest was thus considered “a danger.”

In fact, the file shows the FBI was copying various military intelligence organizations on her activities including the 115 th M.I. of the U.S. Army, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and a number of military bases.

Other reports also show the White House being in the loop on this surveillance. One Agent reported on then New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s phone call to Scott King after her husband’s death, offering his condolences and ongoing help. Another reported to the Nixon White House and then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger about what they had learned about Scott King.

But perhaps the most disturbing single document in the Scott King file is a March 1969 report from the FBI’s Atlanta office to Hoover. The subject was the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, MLK’s No. 2 man, and the then-new president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the spearhead organization for the civil rights movement.

In the report the FBI details an uncertain and “shaky” Abernathy who was “concerned about his possible assassination as well as his position as President of the SCLC…” So the agent makes a recommendation: “It is felt that by notifying Abernathy directly upon receipt of information relating to threats against his life, some rapport may be developed with him…” The report also adds that doing this would give the benefit of “the disruptive effect of confusing and worrying him by reminding him of continuous threats against his life.”

KHOU requested an interview with the FBI regarding the Scott King file and what we found. However the FBI declined comment except to say that the Bureau has changed.

And the Scott King file may back up that claim.

Several months after J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972, finally the Atlanta FBI office sent a memo to the Acting Director saying, “no information has come to the attention of Atlanta which indicates a propensity for violence or affiliation with subversive elements,” and concluded, “In view of all of the above, Atlanta is closing the case concerning Mrs. King.”

The FBI’s reply? “Yes, definitely.”

11 News told Isaac Newton Farris Jr., King’s nephew, about the documents. “Here was a woman who was trying to be supportive to her husband. Raise their four kids and continue on in his footsteps. It just shows what a sad and tragic period we were going through during the 60s.”