Dr King was surveilled in the name of national security

[Rose Siding]

A bracing reminder from Laura Rozen at War and Piece:

When the FBI told Martin Luther King Jr. to Commit Suicide. As Nixon press aide David Gergen reminded NPR listeners this morning, the FBI monitored King, and then sent the tapes to his wife to try to "neutralize" him as a civil rights leader. It also sent him a note with a copy of the tapes suggesting he commit suicide or they would release the tapes. It's worth remembering how recently and how grossly the government has abused the civil liberties of Americans in the very recent past - and may be again (check out the NYT stories today on the agent provocateur activities of the NYPD, as well as the NYT and WP stories this week on the Bureau counterterrorism division investigating PETA, vegan groups, a group protesting the use of llama fur, etc.), all in the name of national security. Here are excerpts of the King case study from the Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Book III, Final Report, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations, United States Senate, April 23, 1976:

(extensive excerpt from rpt, as well as link, here)

I doubt the FBI has gone so far off the rails in the current atmosphere but the point is that our whole system is designed to reject the arguments this administration is making - that we should just trust them because the threat is so great. Our whole system is designed *not to trust* their or anybody else's intentions to operate honorably in secret, without true oversight, contrary to most people's understanding of the rule of law, especially when it pertains to government monitoring of Americans by the full force of the US government intelligence apparatus.

Our system is designed *not to trust* that those operating with the powers of the government, often in secret, are wise, are judicious, are fair, are incorruptable. As the King case shows, history demonstrates that terrible abuses happen, in just such an atmosphere. Our system is designed to have checks and balances, oversight, strict limits to power of any single federal branch or agency, to limit these types of stunning, shameful, gross abuses, to make people accountable, to preserve individual liberties. Why? Because the wisdom of our system is to recognize, as Gergen said today, that power corrupts. The American public should never be asked by its leaders to just trust them. We should never be asked by our leaders to tolerate their acting outside the law in secret without active oversight for a sustained amount of time. Our system is designed to reject such arguments as a very dangerous slippery slope.

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