How the FBI spied on the civil rights movement

Memphis Commercial Appeal ^ | September 12, 2010 | Marc Perrusquia

[gandalftb]

Ernest Withers raised his camera. This wasn't just a murder. This was history. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood here a few hours earlier chatting with aides when a sniper squeezed off a shot from a hunting rifle. Now, as night set over Memphis, Withers was on the story.

A veteran freelancer for America's black press, Withers was known as "the original civil rights photographer," an insider who'd covered it all, from the Emmett Till murder that jump-started the movement in 1955 to the Little Rock school crisis, the integration of Ole Miss and, now, the 1968 sanitation strike that brought King to Memphis and his death.

The grief-stricken aides photographed by Withers on April 4, 1968, had no clue, but the man they invited in that night was an FBI informant -- evidence of how far the agency went to spy on private citizens in Memphis during one of the nation's most volatile periods.

The April 10, 1968, report, which identifies Withers only by his confidential informant number -- ME 338-R -- is among numerous reports reviewed by The Commercial Appeal that reveal a covert, previously unknown side of the beloved photographer who died in 2007 at age 85.

Those reports portray Withers as a prolific informant who, from at least 1968 until 1970, passed on tips and photographs detailing an insider's view of politics, business and everyday life in Memphis' black community.

As a foot soldier in J. Edgar Hoover's domestic intelligence program, Withers helped the FBI gain a front-row seat to the civil rights and anti-war movements in Memphis.

[Navy Patriot]

rather how it is implemented is

Bingo! dead on.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Here in PA, Fast Eddie Rendell just got busted for having his “Homeland Security” people compiling surveillance on Enviroweenie groups that were opposing Marcellus Shale Drilling.

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2010/09/rendell_ends_monitoring_of_opp.html

Never get between Governor Soprano and a big revenue stream, kids!

[Ammo Republic 15]

My friend, I wasn’t trying to be smart with you or anything like that.

I was just a little bit confused over you comment.

[The_Media_never_lie]

No discussion on how the FBI spied would be complete without an investigation on why the FBI would be interested in spying. Did these civil rights groups get support from foreign sources? Remember, this alledgely took place during the cold war when America's enemies had in interest in stirring discontent.

I am not saying there were not reasons for discontent regarding civil rights, but if foreign powers were supporting domestic dissidents, that is a big story.

[UCANSEE2]

Frankly, it is quite well known of King’s communist associations...he also had associations with some of America’s worst enemies. He and the Kennedy’s worked hand in hand passing the Civil Rights Act and also the 1965 Immigration Act.

Yes, but he was a very clean, and articulate negro.

[UCANSEE2]

POWER TO THE PEOPLE.

Odd how, when someone says that, it actually entails the exact opposite.

MLK was trying to unite the blacks to make them a powerful political force. Since he was Republican, one would assume he would ‘lead’ them that way.

The DEMS and COMMIES didn’t like that. They had him killed and put Jesse Jackson, a good commie, in his place.

End of story.

[Navy Patriot]

The FBI, like all the alphabet agencies has political factions, and has some infiltrators from the Rat left.

There are some Constitutionalists as well, however the leftists have been able to sabotage the exposure (by the FBI) of the Communist left's infiltration into so much of American liberal institutions. This sabotage and SELECTED leaks is in violation of the law but has always been protected by Rat Presidents. Republican Presidents have been weak in prosecution or completely cooperative in appointing Rat ringer special prosecutors.

The Marxist Rats consistently want to stop ANY LEO domestic intelligence because the criminal evidence gathered would be devastating if they ever lost control of the sabotage and selective leaking from those law enforcement agencies.

Like maybe a leak by the Constitutionalists faction of the FBI.

[Navy Patriot]

Useful idiots always have hard line commies hanging around the.

[Ammo Republic 15]

I think we’d have been better off with the Commie King rather than the Commie Jackson!

[Ammo Republic 15]

I think we’d have been better off with the Commie King rather than the Commie Jackson!

[Ammo Republic 15]

How true.

[trumandogz]

Wow!

MLK was a Communist and a Republican.

[a fool in paradise]

Yep, the Saint Kennedys, half brothers to MLK himself, are sainted and their own treatment of MLK is always overlooked.

Historical revisions only serve The Party.

[a fool in paradise]

Towards the end of his life, MLK was being lured into a class war message.

He certainly wouldn’t see anything positive about a Democrat Party that raises up identity politics and then calls black republicans Uncle Toms, Aunt Jemimahs, and Sarah Palin a C*N*.

[gandalftb]

"Did these civil rights groups get support from foreign sources?"

There was foreign support. Cubans and others, Stokely Carmichael had significant foreign ties.

Check this out from the NSA archives:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/family_jewels_pt2.pdf

[Spike Knotts]

Wow!

"So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers."

MLK--1967

What an interesting viewpoint on our Vietnam Veterans, made during wartime. Imagine the pride on our faces of our servicemen as they heard this great "Republican" defending their sacrifice. I bet once your heard MLK accuse you of killing a "million Vietnamese, mostly children" then getting spit on at the airport was nothing. Thank you, MLK!

Here is the most "Republican" paragraph he ever composed, in my opinion.

"I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about "Where do we go from here," that we honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, "Why are there forty million poor people in America?" And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, "Who owns the oil?" You begin to ask the question, "Who owns the iron ore?" You begin to ask the question, "Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two-thirds water?" These are questions that must be asked."

MLK--1967

Wow! Powerful words condemning the entire capitalistic structure. He was the World's first "Republican Community Organizer." But his rhetoric is entirely different from Obama's...seriously.

[UCANSEE2]

Useful idiots always have hard line commies hanging around the(m).

Rather like Obama and his 'crew'.

[UCANSEE2]

I think we’d have been better off with the Commie King rather than the Commie Jackson!

We will never know.