" You must enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself." -James Madison

Hoover's priority was to monitor the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Immediately following the war, approximately 80,000 Americans were card-carrying members of the party. In 1946 the "Communist Index" was created. The bureau began to piece together information on as many members of the CPUSA as possible. The following year the Loyalty and Security Program was passed into law. This authorized government boards to investigate the loyalty of federal workers.

In the wake of the McCarthy hearings, more legislation was passed by Congress. The Emergency Detention Act of 1950 declared the FBI to be the agency with congressional authority which could determine which Americans could be incarcerated in the event of a national emergency. The same year the Subversive Activities Control Board required communist groups as well as other action organizations to register with the government.

By 1953 the FBI had complete checks on over 6 million Americans suspected of corroborating with the CPUSA and other "subversive" groups. The FBI worked alongside congressional antisubversion committees. In the next three years, federal authorities used the Smith Act of 1940 to bring 42 indictments against party members, and some CPUSA leaders were deported.

However, in 1956 the Supreme Court handed down a decision which hampered the FBI's investigation of alleged subversives. The court ruled that simple advocacy -- such as membership in the CPUSA -- was not punishable. Yet Hoover solicited the approval of President Eisenhower to pursue his crusade against the CPUSA. The FBI expanded its domestic intelligence operation, setting up COINTELPRO -- the counterintelligence program. Five programs eventually were created under this umbrella, the first and most significant being CPUSA COINTELPRO which was set up in May 1956. CPUSA COINTELPRO ordered FBI field offices throughout the country to investigate citizens who had ties to the communist party. The FBI was to monitor, analyze, and infiltrate the CPUSA with the ultimate goal of destroying the party.

Between 1956 and 1970, CPUSA COINTELPRO carried out 1,388 programs with about 30 percent of them being turned down. Approximately 40 percent of the agency's operations involved sending anonymous and inflammatory information to groups and individuals; disseminating information to the news medium to publicize various "subversive" organizations; contacting the employers and credit unions of suspected party members in order to discredit them; directly contacting the groups and telling them of their questionable activities in the hope of intimidating them; and infiltrating various CPUSA groups with FBI agents.

In 1961 the second COINTELPRO operation was created and directed at the Socialist Worker's Party (SWP). SWP COINTELPRO had only 46 operations directed at the SWP and the Youth Socialist Alliance. In 1964 the White Hate COINTELPRO was set up, and this targeted the Ku Klux Klan, American Nazi Party, and the National States Rights Party. Three years later the Black Hate COINTELPRO was established. Twenty-three FBI offices were set up throughout the country with the mission to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" various left-leaning groups which were designated by Congress. These included the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Nation of Islam, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Deacons of Defense and Justice, and the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC). Black Hate COINTELPRO carried out 301 actions.

By 1971 membership in the CPUSA had dwindled to approximately 3,000 members, many of whom were undercover FBI agents. And the term "COINTELPRO" was still unknown to the American public.

The first attempt on Martin Luther King's life came in January 1956 only several weeks after he led a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. Someone threw a bomb onto the porch of his home, and no one was injured. On January 27, 1957 an unidentified gunman fired a shotgun blast into the front door of his home, and again there were no injuries.

In September 1958 King was first arrested and charged with loitering while on his way to Montgomery. Two months later, while signing copies of his book, Stride toward Freedom, and he was stabbed in the chest with a letter opener which barely missed his heart. He was hospitalized for 13 days in Harlem.

Soon after King led the Freedom Rides in May 1961, a mob of 1,000 angry whites menaced King while he held a meeting at the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, and the National Guard was summoned to escort him back to his home. In September 1962 a self-professed neo-nazi twice struck the civil rights leader in the face, but King refused to file charges. The attacker was fined $25 and sentenced to 30 days in jail. Several months later, King's car was egged as he drove to a Harlem church.

In 1962 the FBI began an investigation of the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) and of King. The probe fell under the category "Communist Infiltration" (COMINFIL).

Following a Ku Klux Klan meeting in May 1963, an explosion ripped through the motel where King had registered earlier in the day. Later that evening, a group of night-riders hurled dynamite from a speeding car, demolishing the home of A.D. King, the oldest brother. Five months later, a massive explosion destroyed the all-black Atlanta 16th Street Baptist Church, killing four young girls.

In August 1963 Hoover was alerted to the SCLC's August 1963's March on Washington. The FBI director authorized the Domestic Intelligence Division (DID) to investigate the covert elements of the civil rights movement. The director decided on a counterintelligence program aimed at discrediting Dr. Martin Luther King. Hoover expanded the parameters of COINTELPRO, using the special unit to attempt to destroy the civil rights leader's reputation and his influence within the black community.

For the next five years, DID's primary goal was to destroy King and to immobilize the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC). FBI agents recruited as many high ranking civil rights officials as possible. However, the agency failed to land moderate leader Roy Wilkens. The executive director of the NAACP. If the agency could bring down King, they hoped to replace him with a conservative Republican black lawyer, Samuel Pierce Jr. of Manhatten. Pierce was not an activist in the civil rights movement, and the FBI never told him of their plans.

In 1964 Hoover approved of a plan in his efforts to dethrone King. The FBI fabricated a tape-recording about King's alleged sexual activities in the Willard Hotel in Washington D.C. They mailed the tape and a threatening note to the civil rights leader at SCLC headquarters in Atlanta. The note was meant to panic King into committing suicide.

In June 1964 King was informed of an assassination plot against him but still led a SCLC demonstration to protest racial segregation in St. Augustine, Florida. King charged police with brutality after they used cattle prods to attack people who attempted to desegregate a hotel. Six months later, King attempted to register at an all-white hotel in Selma, Alabama and was punched and kicked by a member of the National States Rights Party. The attacker was fined $100 and was sentenced to 60 days in jail.

While King led a demonstration on the South side of Chicago in August 1966, he was struck in the head by a rock. He continued to march and then someone threw a knife at him and struck him in the neck.

KING PUBLICLY DENOUNCES THE VIETNAM WAR. By 1966 more and more anti-war sentiment was spreading throughout the country. However, King refused to attend peace rallies and refused to hold public dialogue on the Vietnam War. He believed that it would be contentious to add the war to his agenda, since that would undoubtedly jeopardize his relationship with President Johnson. King's primary goal was to fight for economic justice and that overshadowed secondary issues such as the war in Vietnam. By the mid-1960s, most blacks looked upon King as the greatest civil rights leader, primarily as his result for lobbying for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. However, by year's end, the budget for the War on Poverty was slashed by $500,000 and community action programs were sliced by 33 percent.

In March 1967 King made the decision to publicly disclose his anti-war sentiments. On April 4 he spoke before 3,000 people at New York's Riverside Church to oppose American involvement in Vietnam. This created a backlash among almost all the traditional national black leaders, and some began to distance themselves from the civil rights leader. Additionally, the media and federal government pounced on opportunity, criticizing King for taking an anti-establishment position and meddling in foreign affairs of the government.

THE FBI STEPS UP SURVEILLANCE. Hoover and his top lieutenants escalated their political warfare against King. Six days after his Riverside Church address, DID responded by sending letters to the White House and high ranking government officials accusing King of embracing communist ideals. The FBI concealed a microphone into a hotel room where King stayed. According to the Justice Department, agents picked up conversations which indicated sexual activity. However, the agency was not able to conclusively say that it related to King, and one could barely detect his voice. Hoover decided to send the tape to the SCLC and to King's wife. First, he ordered the FBI to improve or doctor the tape so that King's voice could be easily understood.

Hoover theorized that King would be emotionally weakened from a subsequent confrontation with his wife. So the FBI director ordered a letter be sent to King which was interpreted to mean that he would be publicly exposed if he did not commit suicide within 34 days. The letter was sent exactly 34 days before King was to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. The day after King received the letter, he told Ralph Abernathy and Andrew Young that he could never again trust the FBI to protect him.

By the end of 1967 Hoover was alerted to King's plan to stage a non-violent march on Washington D.C. At the beginning of January in 1968 Hoover advised 22 field offices of the plans. When he learned that the SCLC began to recruit for the Poor People's Campaign (PPC), he directed the field offices to escalate the agency's activities among ghetto informers. Operation POCAM was the fits time that the FBI activated its Ghetto Informant Program (GIP). Hoover continuously provided the White House with a steady flow of information about activities in the black community.

At SCLC headquarters in Atlanta, the FBI used its spies to infiltrate the organization. Jim Harrison, the comptroller of the SCLC, was a paid informant at $10,000 a year since 1964. He furnished the FBI with financial statements as well as travel and protest plans. On January 4, 1968 Hoover secretly ordered his field offices to conduct background information on all SCLC activists who were recruited by the PPC. The FBI's Rabble Rouser Index -- a list of civil rights protesters who were a threat to "domestic security" -- was compiled. Within a month the FBI completed a list of names of SCLC recruiters with no history of violent behavior in over 17 major cities. In addition Hoover attempted to recruit more SCLC leaders to become FBI informants. FBI agents posed as journalists who interviewed civil rights leaders in order to obtain more information about future activities. Hoover also had agents photograph "militant and aggressive looking" protesters at rallies and have their pictures along with stories depicting them as violent aggressors published in newspapers.

The FBI also compiled a list of Washington-based organizations which endorsed the PPC. These included the Interreligious Committee on Racial Relations, the Council of Churches of Greater Washington, the Cooperative Lutheran Parish Council, the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington, the Potomac Presbytery. The Baptist Ministers Council, the Greater Washington Unitarian Ministers Association, the local chapter of the NAACP, the Black Student Union, the Washington Teachers Union, the National Association of Social Workers, and SANE.

THE MEMPHIS GARBAGE STRIKE. The February 1968 Memphis garbage strike of 1,300 workers attracted little national attention until King enlisted his support. Unknown to him, the FBI continued its surveillance of him and others in the Memphis community. Even the local NAACP executive director, Maxine Smith, provided information about local racial matters to the Miami field office, attempting to sensitive the FBI to the grievances of blacks in that area. Striking because of low wages and poor working conditions, the vast majority of them were "unclassified" workers, meaning that they were not covered by workmen's compensation.

King spoke to a crowd of 15,000 at Memphis' Mason Temple. However, it was Rev. James Lawson who emerged as the most influential figure in the strike, making him the prime target for FBI surveillance. The Memphis field office recorded the names of high school truants and distributed them to the Secret Service and intelligence services of the various branches of the armed forces. When an anonymous source informed the local authorities that Lawson was planning a trip to Eastern Europe to attend a conference ion Czechoslovakia, the FBI upgraded his file from "Racial Matter" to "SC" ("Security Matter - Communism"). The local police department created the Domestic Intelligence Unit (DIU) or local "red squad" which collected and evaluated information on the sanitation strike.

The blame for the riots was placed on the Black Organizing Project (BOP) in Memphis. The purpose of the BOP was to reach the older bitter adults in Memphis' black community. The activities of the BOP included an activities center, local cooperatives, schools which taught black history and art, and a training program to improve employment for the city's black youth. The BOP attempted to use the strike to gain leverage within the black community of Memphis.

In March between 10,000 and 15,000 blacks assembled at the Clayborn Temple AME Church in Memphis. Violence erupted and stores were looted and burned. A 17 year old was killed by police, 50 protesters were hospitalized, and 125 were arrested. Damage was assessed at over $400,000. The governor sent in 4,000 National Guardsmen and Memphis was shut down with a dusk-to-dawn curfew. The FBI seized on this opportunity to lash out against King as a man of peace and non-violence. Anonymous letters to newspapers depicted King as a "hypocritical, demagogic, faint-hearted scoundrel who fled the scene of a riot he provoked by his own heedless actions."

The Memphis Commercial Clarion included an article which castigated King's tactics. The newspaper stated: "Yesterday's march, ostensibly a protest on behalf of the city's striking sanitation workers, was generally considered to be a "dress rehearsal" by Dr. King for his planned march on Washington, April 22." Another article read: "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Memphis to star in what was billed as a `dress rehearsal' for his April 22 `Poor People's Crusade' on Washington. By his own nonviolent standards, the rehearsal was a flop."

The DID drafted a letter which was distributed to various news groups. It read in part: "Martin Luther King, during the sanitation workers' strike in Memphis, Tennessee, has urged Negroes to boycott downtown white merchants to achieve Negro demands. Like Juda leading lambs to slaughter, King led the marchers to violence, and when violence broke out, King disappeared." Another letter distributed by the DID read: "Martin Luther King, Jr. today led a march composed of 5,000 to 6,000 people through the streets of Memphis. King was in an automobile preceding the marchers. As the march developed, acts of violence and vandalism broke out including the breaking of windows in stores and some looting. This clearly demonstrates that acts of so-called non-violence advocated by King cannot be controlled. The same thing could happen in his planned massive civil disobedience for Washington in April."

Hoover vehemently objected to Resurrection City and proposed that the demonstrators should be evicted or prosecuted, but he was overruled by Attorney General Ramsey Clark who believed that their non-violent actions were protected under the Constitution. Under Clark's orders, the Justice

Department coordinated all negotiations with the PPC leaders. But Hoover continued with his surveillance of the residents of Resurrection City. His agents still reported on not only the events at Resurrection City but on racial activities through their informants in ghettos across the nation. On May 24 Hoover instructed his field offices to prevent subversive elements from using the PPC to further their own "nefarious purposes." Agents were stationed around the perimeter of Resurrection City and reported on demonstrations. Hoover used agents who were given fictitious press passes to infiltrate the camp. He further penetrated Resurrection City by authorizing the use of an expensive informant coverage program. Military intelligence became the single most important component next to the FBI.

Under General William Yarborough, the Army conducted an unlawful surveillance program. Army Security Agency (ASA) vehicles were equipped to intercept radio transmissions and monitored civilian radio traffic in its surveillance operation. All SCLC communications were intercepted and passed on to the FBI and Secret Service. Military agents joined members of the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), Park Police, and FBI to overlook proceedings at Resurrection City. The Army also used fictitious media passes to cover PRC news conferences. The MPD's "red squad" took mug shots of the members of Resurrection City and sent undercover officers into the camp.

The PPC staged the May 30 a Solidarity Day rally, similar to the 1963 March on Washington which focused on the nation's poverty and hunger problems. Th demonstration around the Washington Monument was non-violent. Between 50,000 and 100,000 people -- depending on if the FBI or the PPC was counting -- attended the rally. However, the mood of the crowd as compared to seven years before was very sedate.

After five weeks of sputtering around, marked by sporadic demonstrations, the PPC tried to refocus on other issues. Leaders attempted to energize Resurrection City by turning their attention on the politics of hunger. Their non-violent philosophy began to unravel. SCLC leader Ralph Abernathy threatened a "racist Congress" with escalating PPC demonstrations if his demands were not met. One hundred marchers met at the Agriculture Department, but violence broke out and demonstrators returned to Resurrection City. Chaos, violence, and arguing broke out within the camp Steady rains poured down for a week. A riot nearly broke out in West Potomac Park.

Abernathy sought a dignified way to withdraw from Washington D.C. On June 24 federal authorities shut down Resurrection City. It was a dismal failure. The SCLC had failed to mobilize the nation's poor and powerless.