J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (84 page)

Later in the year another unsubstantiated phrase made its way into the
language of the FBI memos to RFK. O’Dell was “a member of the National Committee of the Communist Party.”
²⁰

Just say it.

But for now, it was only established that King associated with the party’s “secret member,” sufficient reason to ask Atlanta and other field offices concerned whether or not a COMINFIL investigation should be opened on the civil rights leader.
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Evidently, a Hoover probe back in February had failed. He had ordered SACs to cull their files for undescribed “subversive” information about King and then hie themselves to the typewriter. SOG wanted reports “suitable for dissemination.”
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Finally, after about nine months of inexplicable delay, the train left the station. In October the COMINFIL investigation was opened. Oddly, its focus would not be the alleged Communist affiliations and intrigues of King’s advisers.

Many noted Hoover’s growing obsession with destroying King. And they expected him to attack in the usual way, by leaking rumors that would tarnish the minister’s reputation.

Already a world-renowned figure, King had risen from obscurity because of the power of his message and the music of his uniquely impassioned, articulate speaking style. He was rapidly on his way to becoming a kind of secular saint.

The FBI director wanted to prove that the saint was actually made of plaster. But for a long time, he was off course, using the Communist angle because he did not yet suspect that King was very vulnerable on quite a different level.

On October 8 DeLoach received a summary of old news articles about O’Dell for “possible use by his contacts in the news media field in such Southern states as Alabama where Dr. King has announced that the next targets for integration of universities are located.”
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At least one newspaper took the bait.

Under pressure, King announced that O’Dell would resign temporarily while the SCLC looked into the allegations. “This is not getting any better,” RFK would write to an aide.
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He meant that King continued to meet frequently with O’Dell and Levison. Their contacts were promptly reported by J. Edgar Hoover.

King met with Justice Department officials about the accusations, but they were never able to provide substantiation, and the months dragged on. In June of 1963 Robert Kennedy called Hoover to say that he was sending an aide to warn King once and for all about his dangerous friends. In his memo recording the call, the FBI director wrote piously that he “pointed out that if Dr. King continues this association, he is going to hurt his own cause…Bigots down
South who are against integration are beginning to charge Dr. King is tied in with Communists.”
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He did not tell Kennedy where the “bigots” were getting their information.

But there was something else now. For some months J. Edgar Hoover had been the aggrieved party.

When King had criticized the FBI’s southern agents, the Bureau’s Alex Rosen reacted in the proper key, writing that his criticisms “would appear to dovetail with information…indicating that King’s advisors are Communist Party (CP) members and he is under the domination of the CP.”
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In order to “set him straight”,
²⁶
in Belmont’s words, Sullivan, a northerner, and DeLoach, a southerner, were to meet with King. The FBI called him twice, and secretaries took the messages. For whatever reason, the civil rights leader never called back. And the image-conscious Bureau, hypersensitive both to published criticism and to the slightest appearance of insult, bristled.

If Hoover was “distraught” over the initial attacks, as Sullivan later claimed, DeLoach hardly seems measured in the following memo: “It would appear obvious that Rev. King does not desire to be told the true facts. He obviously used deceit, lies, and treachery as propaganda to further his own causes.”

This was the infamous memo of January 15, 1962, in which the assistant director not only called the minister “a vicious liar” but proved the charge by citing his dominance by Communists. But Hoover was impressed by this reasoning. “I concur,” he wrote.
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From that day forward, the man who did not answer the FBI’s telephone calls was spared at least one kind of further contact from the Bureau. As a matter of routine, the civil rights leaders were warned when the FBI learned of potential murder plots against them.

But not King. Not anymore.

He was too busy to take the calls, anyway.

King was jailed during demonstrations in Birmingham in April. Early the following month police use of dogs and high-pressure hoses to repulse protesters produced images that shocked millions of Americans. Birmingham’s leaders agreed to a negotiated settlement on May 10, reluctantly ending some official practices of segregation.

King took the realistic view before a jubilant crowd of supporters. “Now don’t let anybody fool you…These things would
not
have been granted without your presenting your bodies and your very lives before the dogs and the tanks and the water hoses of this city!”
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Indeed, the television clips of the police assaults produced a major civil rights victory. “This nation,” said President Kennedy on June 11, “for all its hopes and boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.” At last, his administration was responding to Dr. King’s frequent requests for a kind of second Emancipation Proclamation. Proposed legislation would guarantee
voting rights and job opportunities for minorities as well as end segregation in all public facilities.

And in all these months, Hoover’s steady stream of memos about Communist influence had continued without check. Once again, as King headed for an off-the-record meeting at the White House, he would be prepared to discuss major social issues—but be blindsided.

First, it was Burke Marshall, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, whispering into his ear. Levison and O’Dell must go. Concrete evidence, which neither he nor King could be allowed to see, proved that the pair were working for the Communist party. And if word got out, John Kennedy’s political future would be threatened. John Kennedy, supporter of civil rights legislation…

King was mystified. The charges made no sense to him. Marshall, converted at last by the sheer tonnage of the memos from Hoover, was equally mystified. Why was King not taking this matter seriously?

If King had thought about it, he might have considered still another mystery. If only the very top national-security officials had this smoldering evidence—say, the president, the head of the FBI, the attorney general, a few others—which one was going to release it?

Next came Robert Kennedy, primed after asking Hoover for help on specifics. In private, the attorney general built on his aide’s dark hints that dangerous international conspiracies were afoot. Moreover, the truth about Levison was so awful that it could not be shared.

This was even less convincing to King, who felt he knew a thing or two about a couple of his most loyal supporters—and quite a bit more about typical redneck smears of the movement.

But he and Kennedy were not hearing each other. The president’s brother was astonished that this significant revelation did not unsettle King, who was becoming increasingly skeptical as the insinuations became more extravagant.

Within minutes he was hearing even more on this subject as he strolled beside the president of the United States in the Rose Garden outside the White House.

“I assume you know you’re under close surveillance,” the president said first. King wondered if they had come outside because Kennedy knew, or feared, that the White House was bugged.

“They’re Communists,” Kennedy said softly, putting a hand on King’s shoulder. O’Dell was the “Number Five Communist in the United States.” Levison was so high up in party hierarchy that Kennedy couldn’t discuss it. Both were “agents of a foreign power.”

His immediate concern, JFK explained, was for the success of the upcoming march on Washington, a huge demonstration to be held in August. Hoover, believing the idea Communist inspired, would certainly leak his conviction to favored journalists—and conservatives would accept his opinion as fact.

King tried to laugh the matter off, but Kennedy was dead serious and determined.
He brought up the Profumo sex scandal
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in Britain, which threatened the government of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Perhaps Macmillan had made the serious political mistake of remaining loyal to Profumo, an old friend. Kennedy made the parallel explicit: “If they shoot
you
down, they’ll shoot
us
down, too.”
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This bizarre conversation was necessarily brief. The two men were due back inside for a public meeting with a large number of civil rights leaders.

King agreed to reconsider his doubts. Kennedy promised to send him proof, at least about Levison. It would come in surprising form.

Levison was in South America for an annual month-long vacation, but O’Dell met with King and several activists two days after the White House event. Everyone agreed that Hoover had somehow frightened the Kennedys into calling for a purge. And that the loss of O’Dell and Levison would be extremely damaging to the movement Jack Kennedy had committed himself to support.

But King understood the need to compromise, if Saturday was any indication. Marshall, Robert Kennedy, and the president had spoken to him on one subject only. This thing had gotten in the way of the major goal.

Reluctantly, on June 26, he informed O’Dell he had to go. The White House was not impressed. On June 30 a Birmingham newspaper attacked King’s connection with O’Dell in a front-page story based on material in FBI files. The reporter was known to be especially close to the attorney general.

Stung but practical, King wrote a letter dismissing O’Dell and sent a copy to Marshall. He still hoped to continue his relationship with Levison. He did not expect the president to come through with the promised “proof.”

Marshall was the messenger. Unable to get anything definite from Hoover, Robert Kennedy had not been able to set down anything on paper, but someone came up with a harrowing little comparison. Adopting the now familiar air of mystery, Marshall met with Andrew Young in a hallway of the New Orleans Federal Courthouse. He could speak only indirectly, it seemed, but here was the “proof” King requested: Levison was like Colonel Rudolf Abel.

And that was that. Abel was a KGB officer caught spying in the United States. He had assumed an identity as a starving Brooklyn artist and successfully used the “cover” for years. Had Levison, then, been infiltrated into the country by the Russians?

This was so preposterous that King had to throw in the towel. He was dealing with people who were either unusually credulous or just implacably determined.

Levison couldn’t be fired, though. He wasn’t on the SCLC payroll. Hoover and the Kennedys were demanding something much more profoundly disturbing,
going to the heart of freedom of association. King was supposed to cut off all personal contact with his friend and counselor.

When he tried to effect a compromise, suggesting to Marshall through Clarence Jones that the Justice Department hint which phones were tapped so that King and Levison could elude Hoover’s surveillance, RFK blew up. Already distrustful of Jones,
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the attorney general immediately ordered wiretaps on him and his leader, Martin Luther King, Jr.

In effect, he was asking Hoover to ask him for permission to install the taps. The director’s formal requests were prepared with unusual speed. Jones would be covered by three permanent taps. Kennedy signed.

The King request required more thought. For one thing, Hoover had inserted the phrase “at his current residence or at any future address to which he may move.”
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Interpreted to the letter, this would authorize taps on King wherever he went, even to a hotel room for one night. For another, Kennedy was doing a dangerous gavotte with the FBI chief. Hoover lusted for the authorization, but the record would show that the attorney general bore the responsibility for having it installed. Hoover wanted to discredit King, but allegations against him might well rub off on the Kennedys, who publicly defended him.

After two days, Kennedy decided. To Hoover’s chagrin, the tap was not authorized.

Not aware what his attempted compromise had provoked, King nonetheless saw that it had failed to achieve his aim. Levison saw, too, and decided to make the break himself, for the greater good of the civil rights movement.

O’Dell and Levison were gone, and Jones was being tapped, the subject of a surveillance that would delight Hoover with a cornucopia of completely unpredictable material.

But his attention had been caught by Rustin, who was chosen to organize the march on Washington, despite the fears of many civil rights leaders that his many personal liabilities—pacifism, socialism, homosexuality—could be used to embarrass the cause. King had not been close to Rustin for a couple of years, but the man’s hard work and brilliant organizational skills were essential to the planning of the demonstration. He could make it happen.

Taylor Branch has unforgettably captured the FBI director’s reaction: “Hoover did not welcome a giant march for freedom by a race he had known over a long lifetime as maids, chauffeurs, and criminal suspects, led by a preacher he loathed.”
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So it was that, two weeks before the march, Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina entered into the
Congressional Record
a booking slip from California. He informed his fellow solons at work on the nation’s business that
one Bayard Rustin had been arrested in 1953 for vagrancy, lewdness, and sexual perversion.

Thurmond had been attacking Rustin for some time for his past Communist connections, citing chapter and verse. This scripture, like the copy of the booking slip, had been conveyed to him from SOG. The press yawned, but two days later California agents informed Washington that Rustin had been “taking the active part” in oral sodomy with two white men.
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The Los Angeles field office was thereafter besieged with Bureau demands for more details.