COINTELPRO: the King letter, the authorization memos, and what the Church Committee confirmed

The August 28, 1956 memo established the program's framework and stated its objective in Hoover's own language:

"The purpose of this program is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of the [Communist Party] and its leadership."

The memo then listed specific methods: use of informants, anonymous mailings, encouraging factionalism, and what the memo described as creating a situation calculated to bring about the desired results.

The August 25, 1967 memo expanding COINTELPRO to Black nationalist organizations stated the program's goals explicitly:

"1. Prevent the coalition of militant black nationalist groups. 2. Prevent the rise of a 'messiah' who could unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement. Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael and Elijah Muhammed all aspire to this position."

"3. Prevent violence on the part of black nationalist groups."

"4. Prevent militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining respectability, by discrediting them to three separate segments of the community."

"5. A final goal should be to prevent the long-range growth of militant black nationalist organizations, especially among youth."

The memo specifically named King as a target for neutralization despite explicitly noting, in the same document, that King was not violence-prone.

In November 1964, Dr. King had recently been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and was preparing to travel to Oslo for the December ceremony. The FBI sent a package to King at SCLC headquarters in Atlanta containing a letter and audio recordings obtained through warrantless surveillance of King in hotel rooms. The letter is reproduced in Church Committee Book III. Key passages follow.

"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 any where near your equal. You are no clergyman and you know it. 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. You, even at an early age have turned out to be not a leader but a dissolute, abnormal moral imbecile. We will now have to depend on our older leaders like Wilkins a man of character and thank God we have others like him. But you are done. Your 'honorary' degrees, your Nobel Prize (what a grim farce) and other awards will not save you. King, I repeat you are done."

"No person can overcome facts, not even a fraud like yourself. Lend your sexually psychotic ear to the enclosure. You will find yourself in all your dirt, filth, evil and moronic talk exposed on the record for all time. I repeat -- no person can overcome the facts. You are finished. You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation."

The letter was unsigned except for the phrase: "A 'FRIEND'"

The Committee confirmed the letter was written by FBI Domestic Intelligence Division agent William Sullivan and approved by Associate Director Alan Belmont before being sent. Sullivan later rose to become the FBI's Assistant Director for Domestic Intelligence. The letter was mailed from Tampa, Florida to obscure its origin. King received it at SCLC headquarters in Atlanta while preparing for the Nobel ceremony.

"The Committee finds that the domestic activities of the intelligence community at times violated specific statutory prohibitions and infringed the constitutional rights of American citizens."

"COINTELPRO began in 1956, in part because of frustration with Supreme Court rulings limiting the Government's power to proceed overtly against dissident groups."

"The Committee has found cases where the FBI attempted to destroy Dr. King's marriage, and where the FBI proposed to 'expose' Dr. King to public embarrassment in order to undermine his position as leader of the civil rights movement."

"At least one proposed COINTELPRO operation was intended to 'expose' Dr. King to public embarrassment in order to undermine his position as leader of the civil rights movement."

The Committee documented 295 separate COINTELPRO actions against King and the SCLC. It documented that the FBI had intercepted King's communications with President Kennedy. It documented that the FBI had attempted to prevent King from receiving an honorary degree from Marquette University. It documented that the FBI had sent material to Cardinal Spellman in an attempt to prevent King from meeting with Pope Paul VI.

An internal FBI memo dated January 8, 1964, cited by the Committee, described King as "the most dangerous Negro in America." The memo was approved by Hoover personally.

The snitch jacket technique involved creating the impression that a genuine member of a target organization was actually an FBI informant, without that person's knowledge. The FBI would plant false information, forge documents, or arrange anonymous communications designed to make the target's colleagues believe they were an informer. The goal was to get the target expelled from the organization, to undermine trust within the organization, or in some cases to expose the target to violence from within their own group.

The Church Committee documented the use of this technique against Black nationalist organizations. It noted that the FBI was aware the technique could lead to physical harm to the person falsely labeled as an informant, and that in at least some cases FBI field offices considered this outcome an acceptable result.