J. Edgar Hoover's 'Suicide Letter' to Martin Luther King Jr. Is Even Worse Than We Knew

So we all came to believe that Senator Joe McCarthy was evil. We had
no inkling of an idea as to what honest to goodness Evil was. My dad
always told me that J. Edgar Hoover should be America's Number One
most wanted. Back in those carefree,"There's a Commie under every
rock", days, we didn't use the term "Terrorist". But if we had,
Hoover would be the poster boy.

Carl Jarvis
On 11/13/14, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> If Newsline has the whole NY Times on Sunday, maybe we can read the
> article.
> One day this week I looked for something in the NYT, and most of the paper
> wasn't there, I mean, not on Newsline.
> Miriam
>
>
> J. Edgar Hoover's 'Suicide Letter' to Martin Luther King Jr. Is Even Worse
> Than We Knew
> http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/j_edgar_hoovers_fake_threat_lett
> er_to_martin_luther_king_jr_20141112/
> Posted on Nov 12, 2014
>
> This 1964 photo of Martin Luther King Jr. was taken by a New York
> World-Telegram & Sun photographer. Wikimedia Commons
> Half a century ago, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover had what he clearly
> considered
> to be a big problem in the form of civil rights galvanizer Martin Luther
> King Jr. In late November 1964, one of Hoover's underlings typed out a
> letter, posing as a disillusioned African-American excoriating King for his
> moral failings and calling for a reckoning, as Beverly Gage details in a
> report for The New York Times Magazine.
> By that time, King had become a renowned leader occupying a very visible
> stance on the global stage; as Gage notes, he was months shy of receiving
> the Nobel Peace Prize, and Congress had passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964
> a few months prior. So Hoover and his deputy William Sullivan produced
> another indirect plan (attempts to stage a smear campaign in the press
> hadn't been so productive) to tear King down.
> "King, look into your heart," the letter says. "You know you are a complete
> fraud and a great liability to all of us Negroes." Gage, an American
> history
> professor at Yale, sums up the letter thusly in her write-up:
> The word "evil" makes six appearances in the text, beginning with an
> accusation: "You are a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that." In
> the paragraphs that follow, the recipient's alleged lovers get the worst of
> it. They are described as "filthy dirty evil companions" and "evil
> playmates," all engaged in "dirt, filth, evil and moronic talk." The effect
> is at once grotesque and hypnotic, an obsessive's account of carnal rage
> and
> personal betrayal. "What incredible evilness," the letter proclaims,
> listing
> off "sexual orgies," "adulterous acts" and "immoral conduct." Near the end,
> it circles back to its initial target, denouncing him as an "evil, abnormal
> beast."
> The unnamed author suggests intimate knowledge of his correspondent's sex
> life, identifying one possible lover by name and claiming to have specific
> evidence about others. Another passage hints of an audiotape accompanying
> the letter, apparently a recording of "immoral conduct" in action. "Lend
> your sexually psychotic ear to the enclosure," the letter demands. It
> concludes with a deadline of 34 days "before your filthy, abnormal
> fraudulent self is bared to the nation."
> "There is only one thing left for you to do," the author warns vaguely in
> the final paragraph. "You know what it is."
> Although more general information about Hoover's "suicide letter," as it
> has
> come to be called, was made public for decades, sizable portions of it were
> redacted-until Gage made the kind of discovery that those in her field
> dream
> of: "This summer, while researching a biography of Hoover," she says in her
> Times story, "I was surprised to find a full, uncensored version of the
> letter tucked away in a reprocessed set of his official and confidential
> files at the National Archives."
> Gage draws a timely link across five decades by pointing out that "the
> letter offers a potent warning for readers today about the danger of
> domestic surveillance in an age with less reserved mass media."
> Scary and true. Now, if only we could find out about more of these
> incidents
> closer to the time when they actually happen.
> -Posted by Kasia Anderson
> http://www.truthdig.com/ http://www.truthdig.com/
>
> J. Edgar Hoover's 'Suicide Letter' to Martin Luther King Jr. Is Even Worse
> Than We Knew
> http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/j_edgar_hoovers_fake_threat_lett
> er_to_martin_luther_king_jr_20141112/
> Posted on Nov 12, 2014
>
> This 1964 photo of Martin Luther King Jr. was taken by a New York
> World-Telegram & Sun photographer. Wikimedia Commons
> Half a century ago, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover had what he clearly
> considered
> to be a big problem in the form of civil rights galvanizer Martin Luther
> King Jr. In late November 1964, one of Hoover's underlings typed out a
> letter, posing as a disillusioned African-American excoriating King for his
> moral failings and calling for a reckoning, as Beverly Gage details in a
> report for The New York Times Magazine.
> By that time, King had become a renowned leader occupying a very visible
> stance on the global stage; as Gage notes, he was months shy of receiving
> the Nobel Peace Prize, and Congress had passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964
> a few months prior. So Hoover and his deputy William Sullivan produced
> another indirect plan (attempts to stage a smear campaign in the press
> hadn't been so productive) to tear King down.
> "King, look into your heart," the letter says. "You know you are a complete
> fraud and a great liability to all of us Negroes." Gage, an American
> history
> professor at Yale, sums up the letter thusly in her write-up:
> The word "evil" makes six appearances in the text, beginning with an
> accusation: "You are a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that." In
> the paragraphs that follow, the recipient's alleged lovers get the worst of
> it. They are described as "filthy dirty evil companions" and "evil
> playmates," all engaged in "dirt, filth, evil and moronic talk." The effect
> is at once grotesque and hypnotic, an obsessive's account of carnal rage
> and
> personal betrayal. "What incredible evilness," the letter proclaims,
> listing
> off "sexual orgies," "adulterous acts" and "immoral conduct." Near the end,
> it circles back to its initial target, denouncing him as an "evil, abnormal
> beast."
> The unnamed author suggests intimate knowledge of his correspondent's sex
> life, identifying one possible lover by name and claiming to have specific
> evidence about others. Another passage hints of an audiotape accompanying
> the letter, apparently a recording of "immoral conduct" in action. "Lend
> your sexually psychotic ear to the enclosure," the letter demands. It
> concludes with a deadline of 34 days "before your filthy, abnormal
> fraudulent self is bared to the nation."
> "There is only one thing left for you to do," the author warns vaguely in
> the final paragraph. "You know what it is."
> Although more general information about Hoover's "suicide letter," as it
> has
> come to be called, was made public for decades, sizable portions of it were
> redacted-until Gage made the kind of discovery that those in her field
> dream
> of: "This summer, while researching a biography of Hoover," she says in her
> Times story, "I was surprised to find a full, uncensored version of the
> letter tucked away in a reprocessed set of his official and confidential
> files at the National Archives."
> Gage draws a timely link across five decades by pointing out that "the
> letter offers a potent warning for readers today about the danger of
> domestic surveillance in an age with less reserved mass media."
> Scary and true. Now, if only we could find out about more of these
> incidents
> closer to the time when they actually happen.
> -Posted by Kasia Anderson
>
> A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion Publisher, Zuade Kaufman Editor,
> Robert Scheer
> C 2014 Truthdig, LLC. All rights reserved.
>
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>
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