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Comment by mynameishere | Hacker News Reader

Eventually we'll know what's in his file:

The FBI spied on Martin Luther King Jr. in an unsuccessful effort to prove he had ties to Communist organizations. In 1963, Attorney General Robert Kennedy granted an FBI request to surreptitiously record King and his associates by tapping their phones and placing hidden microphones in their homes, hotel rooms and offices. A 1977 court order sealed transcripts of the surveillance tapes for 50 years.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/40th-anniversary/nine-historic...

...some people think he made extensive use of prostitutes, but I expect the FBI would have pulled an "Eliot Spitzer" on him had that been the case. Still, there's something there or they wouldn't be covering it up to protect his saintly image.

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What Dr. King did or did not do isn't the point: the point is that the FBI abused its power (in a drastic fashion) in an attempt to suppress and damage King's political speech.

"... Still, there's something there or they wouldn't be covering it up to protect his saintly image..."

It's interesting... but why would it matter ???

Isn't the issue that Americans endure INVASION of private time... not necessarily how Americans USE their private time ???

Serious question. Just wondering if there is some legal justification for invading privacy to find out ... say ... what a political enemy is doing ??? I don't think they're supposed to do that ... but I'm not a lawyer.

While he was not a communist, his plans for social justice were very threatening to the establishment

If you read "Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?" (which he wrote towards the end of his life), he basically says that the Civil Rights movement needs to shift from racial agenda to an agenda of helping the poor. However he never presents an actual plan other than some vague idea of a massive transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_People%27s_Campaign

I'd go farther to argue that he's not a communist b/c he wasn't really thinking in those terms and he actively tried to avoid the label (that's why he took for ever to stand up against the war in Vietnam)

It's likely that people still alive are also recorded on the tapes. Whatever else it does, the court order also protects their privacy.

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