Speaker 1: Welcome to the MLK Tapes, a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Tenderfoot TV. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast
Speaker 1: are solely those of the podcast author for individuals participating
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Speaker 2: Hl Hunt was a Illinois farm boy who came down
Speaker 2: the Mississippi River as a gambler and became the world's
Speaker 2: richest man in oil and along the way. He had
Speaker 2: three families, two of which he started in secret. Well
Speaker 2: he was still living with and married to his first wife.
Speaker 3: We're talking to author Harry Hurt, whose book Texas Rich
Speaker 3: is an in depth portrait of hl Hunt, a man
Speaker 3: whose extraordinary fortune came out of the ground, liquid and black.
Speaker 3: Hunt was an unusual person in that he was happy
Speaker 3: to spend his wealth on political goals, but he didn't
Speaker 3: feel the need to spend it on himself.
Speaker 2: He drove an old car. He drove himself to work
Speaker 2: as he posed having a chauffeur. He took his lunch
Speaker 2: to work in a brown paper bag. He didn't adorn
Speaker 2: himself with jewelry and fancy clothes. And that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Beyond those for his families and as many female partners.
Speaker 3: Hunt's passions extended into the social and political fabric around him.
Speaker 3: He was against government rules of any kind and government
Speaker 3: aid of any kind. He even opposed private charity. Hunt
Speaker 3: didn't believe in one man, one vote. He thought the
Speaker 3: number of votes you cast should be determined by how
Speaker 3: much you pay in taxes. He was opposed to the
Speaker 3: United Nations, the War on poverty and social security. He
Speaker 3: didn't like President Kennedy, and he really really didn't like
Speaker 3: Martin Luther King.
Speaker 4: I call the Union Hall, I says about of life
Speaker 4: and day. Yeah, I said, I thank these people are
Speaker 4: planning to kill doctor King.
Speaker 5: The authorities were parade. Oh, we found a gun that
Speaker 5: James o'ray bought in Birmingham that killed doctor King. Except
Speaker 5: it wasn't the gun that killed doctor King.
Speaker 2: James Lray was a pawn for the official story.
Speaker 3: From My Heart Radio and Tender for TV.
Speaker 6: The plan was to get King to the city because
Speaker 6: they wanted it handled in Memphis where Daddy and then
Speaker 6: could handle it.
Speaker 4: And I've lived with it so long that my year,
Speaker 4: and they scared for me.
Speaker 7: The Lord told me not the word.
Speaker 4: I've been wanting to tell it all my life.
Speaker 3: I'm Bill Clayburgh and this is the MLK tapes. After
Speaker 3: he staked his claim and made his fortune and oil,
Speaker 3: Haroldson Lafayette Hunt moved Dallas, where he took ten acres
Speaker 3: overlooking a nearby lake. And for whatever it said about him,
Speaker 3: he built a house that mimicked every detail of the
Speaker 3: House of George Washington.
Speaker 2: His house in Dallas was made to look like a
Speaker 2: replica of Mount Vernon in Virginia to Washington, the George
Speaker 2: Washington Estate. And that is about as lavish as a god.
Speaker 2: And that's not a particularly ornate structure. It looks almost
Speaker 2: like a toy house.
Speaker 3: And just in case someone didn't recognize it, the place
Speaker 3: was called Mount Vernon. And when Hunt and his wife
Speaker 3: Ruth moved in, they were approached by local charities, as
Speaker 3: were all the newly wealthy families in Dallas, and.
Speaker 7: There were a good number of them.
Speaker 3: The petitioners would usually come away with some easily afforded contribution,
Speaker 3: which made everyone feel good as though they had all
Speaker 3: done their part, But to their utter shock, Hunt refused
Speaker 3: to give.
Speaker 7: He didn't believe in it.
Speaker 3: He said, thought it made people week. This cost him
Speaker 3: and Ruth some social standing in Dallas, but he didn't care.
Speaker 3: People should learn to stand up on their own, as
Speaker 3: he had done.
Speaker 7: He would say.
Speaker 3: Author Harry Hurt found this attitude a touch hypocritical.
Speaker 2: You know, I think that there are pieces of an
Speaker 2: American myth of the rugged individual who pulled himself up
Speaker 2: by his bootstraps. And I don't need help from anybody.
Speaker 2: And you shouldn't need help either. And your problem if
Speaker 2: you're struggling financially or in some other ways, because you
Speaker 2: don't work hard enough. So it's this kind of puritan
Speaker 2: work ethic sort of stuff. There is embedded in that,
Speaker 2: of course, a great deal of hypocrisy. I mean, for
Speaker 2: one thing, he, like everyone else in the oil business
Speaker 2: in that era, benefited from government tax structures which included
Speaker 2: the oil depletion allowance and intake right off for intangible
Speaker 2: drilling costs, so that you know, he would say, well,
Speaker 2: I don't need any help from the government. Well, you
Speaker 2: get help from the government. You get big tax breaks
Speaker 2: for the government.
Speaker 3: Considering the wealthy, commanded Hunt led a relatively simple life,
Speaker 3: and in that respect he wasn't a phony. He didn't
Speaker 3: own a yacht or a house on the riviera, or
Speaker 3: even a fancy car. He didn't take vacations.
Speaker 2: I guess he harkened to a simpler time in America
Speaker 2: where you didn't have those kind of luxuries commonly.
Speaker 8: And he had this.
Speaker 2: Sort of ethos with his third wife of being just
Speaker 2: playing folks, you know, regular people, And so that was
Speaker 2: his sort of ethos.
Speaker 3: Hunt wasn't just plain folks when it came to his
Speaker 3: opposition to John F.
Speaker 7: Kennedy.
Speaker 3: As Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson moved toward their showdown at
Speaker 3: the nineteen sixty convention in Los Angeles, Hunt thought to
Speaker 3: put his thumb on the scale. At that time, the
Speaker 3: largest Protestant church in America was the First Baptist Church
Speaker 3: of Dallas, with some twenty five thousand members, including Hunt
Speaker 3: and his wife Ruth. The leader of that church was W. A. Criswell,
Speaker 3: a man with strident political views often referred to as
Speaker 3: the father of the religious right. As a Democratic convention approached,
Speaker 3: Griswell gave a rousing sermon where he said that Kennedy
Speaker 3: was unfit to be president because he was a Roman Catholic.
Speaker 3: Roman Catholicism is not a religion, he said, it's a
Speaker 3: political tyranny.
Speaker 7: If John F.
Speaker 3: Kennedy is elected, religious liberty will die in America.
Speaker 7: Hunt liked this sermon.
Speaker 3: So he had it reproduced and sent anonymously to two
Speaker 3: hundred thousand Protestant ministers and community leaders across the country
Speaker 3: with the hope that they would reject Kennedy and tell
Speaker 3: their congregations or friends to do the same. As to
Speaker 3: its effect, this effort was too late to derail the
Speaker 3: Kennedy campaign, which won the nomination in LA on the
Speaker 3: first vote, but it did demonstrate Hunt's willingness to be
Speaker 3: a behind the scenes player in national politics again.
Speaker 7: Author Harry Hurt.
Speaker 2: He was for a McCarthys right wing vision of America
Speaker 2: in the fifties, and he had radio programs that got
Speaker 2: to be I think on five hundred stations between something
Speaker 2: called Fax Forum and a successor Lifeline that were basically
Speaker 2: the four runners of Fox News and Newsmax, except that
Speaker 2: you know they were privately funded by him, and they
Speaker 2: were essentially fake news. Now, you can dismiss it on
Speaker 2: one level, but the equal fact of the matter is
Speaker 2: that people bought into it and drank the.
Speaker 3: Kule In Hunt's world and in that of many others
Speaker 3: back then, the great satan in the universe was communism,
Speaker 3: which had to be fought in every venue. For example,
Speaker 3: if you thought that the United Nations was a good thing,
Speaker 3: you were probably a communist, or at least willing to
Speaker 3: do their work they had termed for people like you.
Speaker 3: You were a fellow traveler, or worse, a pinko Lifeline
Speaker 3: gave a daily fifteen minute talk on the evils of communism,
Speaker 3: or how certain political figures like Kennedy and King were
Speaker 3: bringing the dreaded disease to your very door. This is
Speaker 3: what Hunt himself had to say about it, and you
Speaker 3: might notice who he says is most to blame.
Speaker 9: The land should be drawn between those who love liberty
Speaker 9: and our far freedom and those who are in favor
Speaker 9: of communism. And I am quite generally in favor of
Speaker 9: anyone that is fighting communism. But the communication media rather
Speaker 9: is owned and controlled eighty five percent by the opposition.
Speaker 9: The newspapers, radio, TV stations, networks are largely in the hands,
Speaker 9: we'll say the enemy.
Speaker 3: As part of his crusade to fight against a press
Speaker 3: that was soft on communism, Hunt began what was called
Speaker 3: the Youth Freedom Speakers, though it never got much beyond Dallas.
Speaker 3: In its conception, there were to be thousands of young
Speaker 3: people all across the nation who, like Paul Revere, would
Speaker 3: spread the alarm by giving fifteen minute talks to roadery
Speaker 3: clubs groups on the hidden dangers of communism.
Speaker 10: Many people in the United States really don't believe that
Speaker 10: communism is a serious threat, while these people are in
Speaker 10: for a big shock because the Communists have every intention
Speaker 10: of doing exactly what they've said they'll do, and they
Speaker 10: do not hesitate to use force and violence any time
Speaker 10: they think that it will further their calls.
Speaker 3: In the nineteen fifties and sixties, the red scare was
Speaker 3: on better Dead than Red, was a right wing slogan
Speaker 3: with enough true believers that it might be the acceptable
Speaker 3: subject for a debate in a high school civics class.
Speaker 3: In the military, there was a vocal faction that wanted
Speaker 3: to launch a first strike against the Russians, and Kennedy's
Speaker 3: choices not to invade Cuba or to pull back from
Speaker 3: Vietnam were not popular with many people, including Hunt, who
Speaker 3: regularly attacked Kennedy as well as King on his Lifeline
Speaker 3: radio program. On the fateful morning in November, when the
Speaker 3: President and First Lady would parade in an open car
Speaker 3: through downtown Dallas, the local radio station KPCN broadcast the
Speaker 3: latest from Lifeline, part of which we will read here.
Speaker 11: When communism comes to America, you will not be able
Speaker 11: to celebrate Independence Day, Memorial Day, or Labor Day. You
Speaker 11: would not be able to celebrate Thanksgiving as we know it,
Speaker 11: thanking the Lord for his blessings and fruitful harvest. You
Speaker 11: would not be able to celebrate any holiday of freedom.
Speaker 11: Never again would you be able to go off on
Speaker 11: a hunting trip with friends. Private ownership and private use
Speaker 11: of firearms would be strictly forbidden.
Speaker 3: Back in the nineteen sixties, Hunt and Lloyd a young
Speaker 3: lawyer named John Currington to be his right hand man
Speaker 3: what might be called a fixer. Today, Currington is still alive,
Speaker 3: still an attorney in the state of Texas, and he
Speaker 3: is also a rancher who, at age ninety three, still
Speaker 3: rides a horse and presides over cattle. And he has
Speaker 3: come forward to share with us his memories of things
Speaker 3: he witnessed and things he did while in the employ
Speaker 3: of H. L. Hunt, and particularly those relating to the
Speaker 3: murder of Martin Luther King. Curington was an East Texas
Speaker 3: country boy. He had a quick mind and did well
Speaker 3: at SMU, where he got his law degree. He served
Speaker 3: in Korea during the war, where he said it was
Speaker 3: so cold that the socks froze to his feet. When
Speaker 3: Currington got out of the army, he took his first
Speaker 3: ever paying job at the Hunt Oil Company, keeping track
Speaker 3: of the oil leases that were presiding over a river
Speaker 3: of money. He had been on the job a couple
Speaker 3: of years when he received a message that mister Hunt
Speaker 3: wanted to see him.
Speaker 12: There were several Hunts there in the company, but when
Speaker 12: the name mister Hunt was used, you knew it was
Speaker 12: h Old Hunt. And although I had worked for a
Speaker 12: Hunt Old Company for several years, part of that call
Speaker 12: I had never met mister Hunt, never talked to him.
Speaker 12: I immediately interpreted that call as some kind of an
Speaker 12: office prank. I didn't want to go, but I knew
Speaker 12: I had enough sensor Oh I had to go.
Speaker 3: So, not being able to imagine anything good coming out
Speaker 3: of this occasion, Carrington took the elevator up to the
Speaker 3: seventh floor, where Hunt had his office. The first person
Speaker 3: he encountered was mister Hunt's secretary.
Speaker 12: She just motioned me on end, and Miss Hunt didn't
Speaker 12: introduce himself or ask about my health or what I
Speaker 12: thought about, no political race. He just stated that he
Speaker 12: had been told that I had a reputation of getting
Speaker 12: some things done, and he wanted me to start working
Speaker 12: directly for him.
Speaker 7: And that was that.
Speaker 3: Curington was instantly moved to the seventh floor of the
Speaker 3: Mercantile Bank building, where he began to work for H. L.
Speaker 7: Hunt.
Speaker 8: I was given an office immediately next to his, and
Speaker 8: the door was normally open between the two of us,
Speaker 8: and if he wasn't open, he had a buzzer on
Speaker 8: his desk that he could push, and I could answer
Speaker 8: that buzzer within a matter of seconds.
Speaker 3: Turington was a quick learner, and he sensed that Hunt
Speaker 3: was unlike any person he had ever met.
Speaker 7: Right away.
Speaker 3: He understood that he was not to speak unless spoken to.
Speaker 3: He was not to offer an uninvited thought, ever, and
Speaker 3: that included saying good morning. In Hunt's way of thinking,
Speaker 3: such a greeting was a waste of time.
Speaker 12: I never exchanged any pleasant trees with mister Hunt. I
Speaker 12: never asked him out his hells. I never said good morning.
Speaker 12: I'd never asked him if he'd enjoyed the football game.
Speaker 12: I had no personal contact relationship with him, and I
Speaker 12: think Miss Hunt appreciated that he had no interest in
Speaker 12: my background or what I was doing. His only interest
Speaker 12: was what he wanted to do and how he wanted
Speaker 12: it done.
Speaker 3: And Hunt had a lot of things he wanted. His
Speaker 3: mind was full of them, and many of those ideas
Speaker 3: came to him at odd hours.
Speaker 12: As far as I know, he only slept for or
Speaker 12: four hours a night. He was up late at night,
Speaker 12: up early of the morning, and he had a forever
Speaker 12: idea that I might have or you might have. Miss
Speaker 12: Hunt would have a hundred ideas on any different subject.
Speaker 12: I had standard orders. I had to call him at
Speaker 12: six o'clock am every morning and at ten o'clock pm
Speaker 12: every night, and even if we'd talked at nine thirty
Speaker 12: pm at night, I'd still call him at ten pm.
Speaker 3: Given those responsibilities, one might say that Carrington had a
Speaker 3: sixteen hour a day job, but it was worse than that.
Speaker 3: He was required to have a telephone next to his bed,
Speaker 3: and most nights Hunt would call at some point with
Speaker 3: something that was on his mind.
Speaker 12: I don't ever recall not receiving a telephone call from
Speaker 12: miss Hunt during the wee hours of the night, and
Speaker 12: I'm talking anywhere from eight thirty, nine, thirty ten one,
Speaker 12: or two o'clock the next morning there. But he never
Speaker 12: made any come in as thank you for answering the phone.
Speaker 12: I hope I didn't work you up, but I have
Speaker 12: a question. He went directly into a question, and some
Speaker 12: of his questions just defied the interpretation of what a
Speaker 12: reasonable prudent man might know.
Speaker 3: As mister Hunt's right hand, Currington would manage a wide
Speaker 3: variety of things. He handled squabbles between the members of
Speaker 3: Hunt's three families. He kept track of all the deals
Speaker 3: on the five hundred radio stations that carried Hunt's Lifeline program.
Speaker 3: He might carry large amounts of cash from one city
Speaker 3: to another, seventy thousand dollars or two hundred thousand, or
Speaker 3: even a million, and then hand the money to some
Speaker 3: person for a purpose he wasn't privy to. As diverse
Speaker 3: and strange as they were, these stories rang true to me.
Speaker 3: But there is one piece of Currington's account that I
Speaker 3: absolutely don't believe. Carrington says, that whenever he and mister
Speaker 3: Hunt flew in a commercial airplane, which they did from
Speaker 3: time to time, they always flew in coach, never in
Speaker 3: first class. Hunt wouldn't spring for the extra dollars. Remember,
Speaker 3: Hunt is the richest man in America and he flies
Speaker 3: in coach. Carrington swears it is true. H. L. Hunt
Speaker 3: didn't drink and didn't smoke. He stayed away from white flour,
Speaker 3: white bread, and white sugar. And the bread he did
Speaker 3: eat had to come from a certain county in Texas
Speaker 3: which had some mineral in the soil that Hunt felt
Speaker 3: was important. But Hunt had one huge bad habit. He
Speaker 3: loved to gambell. He loved to bet on horses and
Speaker 3: football games, and most of all, he loved to play
Speaker 3: in high stakes poker games. He would fly across the
Speaker 3: country with John Kirrrington and Coach.
Speaker 7: We were asked to believe so that.
Speaker 3: Hunt could play in a game of poker where hundreds
Speaker 3: of thousands of dollars would change hands.
Speaker 12: Mister Hunt and I we normally always stay that the
Speaker 12: waldolph A story when we were there in New York,
Speaker 12: and quite frequently that's where the poker games would occur.
Speaker 3: During the games Carrington would be stationed nearby, and if
Speaker 3: Hunt were losing, he would be sent downtown to pick
Speaker 3: up more money, like maybe eighty grand, which was a
Speaker 3: lot of money back then, And this happened often enough
Speaker 3: that Carrington got to know the president of the bank.
Speaker 12: Miss Hunt had a bank account in New York. I
Speaker 12: was called a Handover bank, and if my memory shirts
Speaker 12: MC correct, the fellow named Adolph Houser was the president
Speaker 12: of it. And over the course of years I became
Speaker 12: pretty well acquainted with mister Houser. And when Miss Hunt
Speaker 12: was in a big card game, if money was needed,
Speaker 12: I would catch a subway from the Waldorfer Story down
Speaker 12: to Wall Street, pick up the money, put it in
Speaker 12: my pockets, and go back. But I had instruction Miss
Speaker 12: Hunt not to take a taxi to pick that money up,
Speaker 12: because taxis rides in New York in were about seventy
Speaker 12: five or eighty cents a trip, so I was instructed
Speaker 12: to take the subway as it was a little cheaper
Speaker 12: mode of transportation.
Speaker 3: In nineteen sixty three, Hunt and Keirrrington would spend a
Speaker 3: hunk of time in New York. Time that had nothing
Speaker 3: to do with poker. It had to do with an
Speaker 3: idea that came to Hunt in the middle of the night.
Speaker 3: One they had to do with the World's Fair, which
Speaker 3: was set to open in New York in the summer
Speaker 3: of nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 12: For many years we always had a display at State
Speaker 12: Ferry there in Dallas for the State of Texas. There
Speaker 12: every year, we had a pretty leverage set up. We
Speaker 12: had free drinks for people of cool area chairs. But
Speaker 12: he used it primarily to distribute material on his Lifeline program.
Speaker 12: So he came up with the idea that if it
Speaker 12: worked in Dallas at the State Fair, then it would
Speaker 12: work in New York at the New York's Worldfare, but
Speaker 12: on a much bigger scale, and it would be used
Speaker 12: as a money making venture for amusement rides and concession stands.
Speaker 12: Plus it would be a distribution center for his Lifeline
Speaker 12: radio program material and his Lifeline TV material. And negotiations
Speaker 12: were made and a fellow named Robert Moses. He lets
Speaker 12: you know very promptly when meeting him that he was
Speaker 12: a top dog and he didn't expect any conversation from
Speaker 12: anybody else.
Speaker 3: For decades, Robert Moses had been the most powerful man
Speaker 3: in the state of New York. He wasn't mayor, he
Speaker 3: wasn't governor. He was the chairman of the Triburial Bridge
Speaker 3: and Tunnel Authority, along with a dozen other important positions,
Speaker 3: including President of the New York World's Fair.
Speaker 7: When it came to building.
Speaker 3: Bridges, highways, and parks, Moses had the final say. So
Speaker 3: when the richest man in America came to him with
Speaker 3: a proposal, he let that man know who was boss.
Speaker 3: But they did come to an agreement on a rather
Speaker 3: large deal.
Speaker 12: Negotiations were made to lease a multi acre of state
Speaker 12: there at the World Fair. We would put amusement rides
Speaker 12: throughout our area that we were going to operate, plus
Speaker 12: there would be numerous concession stands, and in theory it
Speaker 12: would have been a great money making ideal. And immediately
Speaker 12: after we signed a contract for the land at the
Speaker 12: World's Fair, I went to Germany and bought several different
Speaker 12: kind of amusement rides, and they were expensive rides. Most
Speaker 12: of those rides came out of Germany and they were
Speaker 12: shipped from Germany to New York.
Speaker 3: So, after the deal was signed and big money had
Speaker 3: been spent on the rides and attractions, Moses called hunt
Speaker 3: and Carrington back to his office.
Speaker 12: At that time, we thought we were doing a great
Speaker 12: job of what we were supposed to do, and it
Speaker 12: was sort of patting ourselves on the back. But Robert
Speaker 12: Moses walked in and without any great fanfare, he said
Speaker 12: a decision had been made that he was going to
Speaker 12: cancel mister Hunt's contract for his amusement rides, and on
Speaker 12: the grounds that he felt like it was going to
Speaker 12: be outlet for mister propaganda material from his Lifeline program.
Speaker 3: In their contract, Moses had reserved the right to cancel
Speaker 3: if he felt it was in the best interests of
Speaker 3: the fair itself, and Hunt had no legal recourse, but
Speaker 3: he correctly suspected that this was some sort of payback
Speaker 3: for the nasty campaign Hunt had run against.
Speaker 7: President.
Speaker 3: Hunt called Vice President Lyndon Johnson to see if he
Speaker 3: could intervene, but Johnson said that the decision had been
Speaker 3: made above him.
Speaker 7: And that he could do nothing about it.
Speaker 12: From that moment, Miss Trunt was pretty well aware that
Speaker 12: Lyndon Johnson was going to be dropped from the ticket
Speaker 12: in nineteen sixty four, that Lyndon Johnson was losing his
Speaker 12: power and influence. Every day after we were kicked out
Speaker 12: of the World Fair. We probably stated in New York
Speaker 12: another thirty days to wind up a lot of activities.
Speaker 12: But on the way back to flying back to Dallas
Speaker 12: from New York, Miss Hunt and I shall ever engaged
Speaker 12: in personal conversations. We would fly side beside on an
Speaker 12: airplane if he wanted to say something. I listened, but
Speaker 12: I never volunteered any statements there. But on this particular trip,
Speaker 12: Miss Hunt looked over and he says, John, I've just
Speaker 12: about had a belly full of the Kennedy boys. They
Speaker 12: both need to go.
Speaker 3: We will return to hl Hunt and John Currington and
Speaker 3: Currington's revelations about the murder of Martin Luther King, But
Speaker 3: for that story to make sense, we need to first
Speaker 3: visit another man with whom hl Hunt had an unusual relationship,
Speaker 3: J A. Garhover, the lifelong director of the FBI. Shortly
Speaker 3: after James Earl Ray was captured in London, j Edgar Hoover,
Speaker 3: director of the FBI, met with Attorney General Ramsey Clark
Speaker 3: and told him quote, we are dealing with a man
Speaker 3: who is not an ordinary criminal. Ray is a racist
Speaker 3: and detests negroes and Martin Luther King The question here
Speaker 3: is why, before Ray had even been charged with the murder,
Speaker 3: was j Edgar Hoover so eager to get give him
Speaker 3: a motive? And how did he know that Ray detested
Speaker 3: Martin Luther King in courtroom law. Motive is not a
Speaker 3: necessary element of murder. If you can prove a person
Speaker 3: killed someone, you don't have to know why. But if
Speaker 3: you're looking at an unsolved murder, motive is normally the
Speaker 3: first thing to consider. Who might want this person dead?
Speaker 3: Or better still, was someone already.
Speaker 7: Trying to harm him?
Speaker 3: Any TV cop worth his salt starts with this. There were,
Speaker 3: of course many people who did not like doctor King,
Speaker 3: and perhaps many who wished him dead, But there was
Speaker 3: one person with great resources who was already.
Speaker 7: Trying to harm him.
Speaker 3: It was the director of the FBI, j Edgar Hoover,
Speaker 3: the same man who was the first to give Ray
Speaker 3: his motive. No one, of course, dared question Hoover about
Speaker 3: this at the time, but once Hoover died in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy two, there were calls to look into the activities
Speaker 3: of the FBI, and particularly those in.
Speaker 7: Regard to Martin Luther King.
Speaker 3: The Committee under Senator Frank Church made their report in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy six, and this is what Senator Church had
Speaker 3: to say about the activities of the FBI.
Speaker 13: We have seen today the dark side of those activities,
Speaker 13: where many Americans who were not even suspected of crime
Speaker 13: were not only spied upon, but they were harassed, They
Speaker 13: were discredited and at times endangered through the covert operations
Speaker 13: of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Speaker 3: During the nineteen fifties, Jay Agar Hoover was at the
Speaker 3: height of his power. His g men had hunted the folk,
Speaker 3: Heiro bankroppers into extinction. Communists hiding in the halls of
Speaker 3: government were his very reason for being, and his ghost
Speaker 3: written book, Masters of Deceit was a best seller.
Speaker 7: But in nineteen sixty there.
Speaker 3: Was a collision of sorts between Hoover, the newly elected
Speaker 3: President John Kennedy, and the emerging civil rights movement. Blocks
Speaker 3: in the South were making demands, Whites were responding with violence,
Speaker 3: and public order was breaking down. Kennedy did have a
Speaker 3: federal force to devote to the problem, the five thousand
Speaker 3: men in the FBI, but Hoover had his own ideas
Speaker 3: about how they should be used, and as Council Chris
Speaker 3: mothers described to the Church committee. Kennedy got things off
Speaker 3: to a bad start by asking a simple question.
Speaker 14: So Kennedy wrote a memorandum asking mister Hoover how many
Speaker 14: Negro special agents he had. Mister Hoover wrote back, we
Speaker 14: don't catalog people by race, creed, or color. Mister Kennedy
Speaker 14: came back with another very nice letter. That's a little
Speaker 14: laudatory attitude. You are commended to have it, but I
Speaker 14: still want to know how many Negro special agents do
Speaker 14: you have? So we were in trouble. It so happened
Speaker 14: at during the war he had five Negro chauffeurs, so
Speaker 14: he automatically made them special agents. So now we wrote
Speaker 14: back and said we had five.
Speaker 3: The civil rights movement posed a particular problem for Hoover.
Speaker 3: The FBI had close relations with law enforcement, and many
Speaker 3: of the police chiefs in the South were former FBI agents.
Speaker 3: But reports started to come in about FBI men just
Speaker 3: standing around as finally crimes were committed right in front
Speaker 3: of them. In one incident, a plan was made to
Speaker 3: attack a bus carrying freedom writers as it arrived in Birmingham, Alabama.
Speaker 3: Thomas Rowe, an informant for the FBI, told the Church
Speaker 3: committee that he had informed the Bureau about the attack
Speaker 3: well before it happened.
Speaker 15: Sir, I gave FBI information pertanning to the Freedom Writers
Speaker 15: to so approximately three.
Speaker 16: Weeks before the gird And what did you tell him?
Speaker 15: I stated to him that I had been contacted by
Speaker 15: a Birmingham City detective to set a reception for the
Speaker 15: Freedom Writers. We were promised to fifteen minutes with absolutely
Speaker 15: no intervention from any police officer whatsoever. The information was
Speaker 15: passed on to the berread as route testified.
Speaker 3: The passengers on that bus were badly beaten, and a
Speaker 3: second bus was attacked outside of Birmingham and set on fire.
Speaker 3: In Montgomery, Alabama, Freedom Writers were viciously attacked, some sustaining
Speaker 3: life altering injuries as they were beaten on the head
Speaker 3: and face with pipes. And what did John Patterson, the
Speaker 3: governor of Alabama, have to say about it?
Speaker 12: We can't act as nurse maids to agitators.
Speaker 8: I think when they learned.
Speaker 4: That when they go somewhere to Creator to create a rhyme,
Speaker 4: that there's not.
Speaker 15: Going to be somebody there to stand between them and
Speaker 15: they're the crowd.
Speaker 8: They'll stay home.
Speaker 3: J Edgar Hoover voiced a similar hands off position.
Speaker 17: We certainly do not and will not get protection to
Speaker 17: civil rights workers. In the first place, The FBI is
Speaker 17: not a police organization. It's purely an investigated organization, and
Speaker 17: the protection of individual citizens, either natives of the state
Speaker 17: or coming into the state, is a matter.
Speaker 5: For the local authorities.
Speaker 17: The FBI will not participate in any such protection.
Speaker 3: Almost every student of the time knows that j Edgar
Speaker 3: Hoover wanted to bring down Martin Luther King.
Speaker 7: But why.
Speaker 3: The perfect person to ask is Beverly Gage, a professor
Speaker 3: of history at Yale who has written a biography of
Speaker 3: Hoover titled g Man, to be released by Viking later
Speaker 3: this year. We spoke a few months ago, and I
Speaker 3: asked Professor Gage what brought her to Hoover.
Speaker 18: What attracted me to writing this book was not only
Speaker 18: that Hoover himself is a fascinating figure and a fascinating
Speaker 18: personality in his own right, but that the scope of
Speaker 18: his career really covers almost all of the twentieth century.
Speaker 18: He became director of the FBI in nineteen twenty four,
Speaker 18: and he died in that job in nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 3: When looking back on the nineteen fifties and sixties, the
Speaker 3: standard rap on Hoover was that he did not and
Speaker 3: would not vigorously investigate organized crime to keep the record balance.
Speaker 3: Professor Gage mentioned a few modest crime programs that the
Speaker 3: FBI did initiate in the nineteen fifties. But then there
Speaker 3: was Hoover's big embarrassment.
Speaker 18: Hoover did say many times that he didn't think that
Speaker 18: there was some great cabal of organized crime figures who
Speaker 18: got together to consult with each other. So in nineteen
Speaker 18: fifty seven, when the great cabal of organized crime figures
Speaker 18: getting together to consult with each other was found at
Speaker 18: Appalachian in New York, he was quite surprised and chagrined
Speaker 18: by that.
Speaker 3: It happened in the rural town of Appalachian, New York.
Speaker 3: In August of nineteen fifty seven, mobster Joe Barbara hosted
Speaker 3: a gathering of crime bosses from across the country at
Speaker 3: his estate. The purpose was to keep the peace and
Speaker 3: decide who was to get what. But so many slick
Speaker 3: cars without a state plates brought the police, who netted
Speaker 3: sixty men in silk suits, some caught hiding in the woods,
Speaker 3: who were the virtual who's who of American crime. Of course,
Speaker 3: having a picnic with friends wasn't against the law, so
Speaker 3: none of them did any real time, But Hoover was
Speaker 3: severely embarrassed because, according to him, organized crime didn't exist.
Speaker 3: The FBI then did initiate some anti crime programs, but
Speaker 3: many observers feel that these were nothing more than something
Speaker 3: to point to rather than real attempts to bring down
Speaker 3: organized crime. As far as Martin Luther King, the official
Speaker 3: explanation for Hoover's abusive conduct was that he was protecting
Speaker 3: the country from communists who were supposedly infiltrating the civil
Speaker 3: rights movement. Hoover's big claim was that an advisor to King,
Speaker 3: a man named Stanley Levinson.
Speaker 7: Was said to be a communist. In the nineteen.
Speaker 3: Fifties, Levison did associate with members of the American Communist Party,
Speaker 3: a legal political organization, but this contact fell away after
Speaker 3: Levison devoted himself to helping King with such things as
Speaker 3: fundraising and speech writing. So was Levison a genuine concern
Speaker 3: of Hoover's or just a way for him to bargain
Speaker 3: for closer surveillance of King.
Speaker 18: I think it was a combination of things. So Hoover
Speaker 18: was deeply racist in many many ways. He was certainly
Speaker 18: seeing all of these things through a highly racialized lens.
Speaker 18: He also tended to exaggerate quite a lot when it
Speaker 18: came to the domestic communist threat, So he had his
Speaker 18: own ideological lens through which he would have interpreted the
Speaker 18: evidence about Odell and Levison in very, very alarmist ways.
Speaker 3: How alarmist consider this? In August nineteen sixty three, Martin
Speaker 3: Luther King led a march on Washington and touched the
Speaker 3: heart of a nation with a speech that invoked dreams
Speaker 3: of love, peace, and brotherhood. Two days later, Assistant Director
Speaker 3: of the FBI William Sullivan wrote a memo to Hoover
Speaker 3: in which he termed King the most dangerous Negro in America.
Speaker 3: But what came next was more chilling. It may be unrealistic.
Speaker 3: Sullivan wrote to Hoover to limit ourselves to legalistic proofs
Speaker 3: or evidence that would stand up in court or before
Speaker 3: congressional committees.
Speaker 7: What did you have in mind? Just three months.
Speaker 3: Later, President John Kennedy was murdered, and while Robert Kennedy
Speaker 3: stayed on for a time as Attorney General, his power
Speaker 3: over Hoover instantly disappeared. Exactly one month after President Kennedy
Speaker 3: was killed, there was a secret nine hour meeting at
Speaker 3: the FBI headquarters in Washington, which involved key higher ups
Speaker 3: in the Bureau and the regional directors from Atlanta, Birmingham,
Speaker 3: and Memphis. What was the meeting about, we asked Professor Gage.
Speaker 18: So the main focus of that meeting was really trying
Speaker 18: to figure out how to take down Martin Luther King,
Speaker 18: how to build a apparatus that was going to destroy
Speaker 18: King personally. That was the stated goal. They were quite
Speaker 18: explicit about laying out a campaign to destroy King.
Speaker 3: The FBI campaign against King that emerged from that all
Speaker 3: day meeting was vicious and relentless. This is how Council
Speaker 3: Fred Schwartz described it to the members of the Church
Speaker 3: Committee in nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 16: After the March on Washington, there was an acceleration. He
Speaker 16: was defined because of his speech in that demonstration in
Speaker 16: Washington as the most dangerous and effective leader in the country,
Speaker 16: and there was a paper battle between within the Bureau
Speaker 16: as to how best to attack him, and he was
Speaker 16: attacked after a Time magazine named him a Man of
Speaker 16: the Year again, the Bureau finds that reprehensible, believes it
Speaker 16: must attack and destroy it when he was given the
Speaker 16: Nobel Prize.
Speaker 5: Again, they seek to discredit doctor King.
Speaker 16: The FBI sought to prevent the Pope from meeting with
Speaker 16: Doctor King. His effort went.
Speaker 7: On and on and on.
Speaker 3: Most FBI agents who were involved in the anti King
Speaker 3: activities have said very little about it over the years.
Speaker 7: But there was.
Speaker 3: One agent, Arthur Murtaw, who was assigned to the anti
Speaker 3: King squad in Atlanta, who has come forward. This is
Speaker 3: what he had to say from the witness stand at
Speaker 3: race televised mock trial in nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 19: I was on a squad that was referred to as
Speaker 19: a security squad. I would say that probably ninety eight
Speaker 19: percent of the time of the people on that squad
Speaker 19: was involved in one way or another with the investigation
Speaker 19: of doctor King. They also were involved in counter intelligence
Speaker 19: operations which were designed to make up stories about doctor King,
Speaker 19: any kind of a story to detegrate his character and
Speaker 19: then go to what the Bureau referred to and the
Speaker 19: Bureau of Papers referred to as friendly members of the press.
Speaker 19: I was very ambivalent about what to do. I knew
Speaker 19: about a lot of this stuff at least by nineteen.
Speaker 11: Fifty five, and it bothered me.
Speaker 20: I didn't know whether to resign or stay in.
Speaker 19: One of my brothers said to me, we had a
Speaker 19: big family, eight of us.
Speaker 20: He said, art, if things are as bad in the
Speaker 20: FBI as you say they are, the whole system would crumble.
Speaker 20: I said, it won't crumble because Hoover has the power
Speaker 20: to keep it from crumbling. He has everybody scared to death.
Speaker 20: They do exactly as they tell him. He had everybody
Speaker 20: in his pocket with his secret files.
Speaker 3: As Mirtaja said, the ongoing operations against King were referred
Speaker 3: to in the FBI as counter intelligence, as the King
Speaker 3: were some sort of Russian spy. But once Hoover got
Speaker 3: permission to wiretap King, virtually none of the resulting reports
Speaker 3: dealt with Communist influence. They focused instead on embarrassing material
Speaker 3: in King's private life that could be used to bring
Speaker 3: him down. Virtually every hotel room King would occupy was bugged,
Speaker 3: and Hoover began collecting tapes that were sent to an
Speaker 3: FBI lab to be reconstructed or improved, tapes that he
Speaker 3: could share with political allies and various news outlets. But
Speaker 3: Hoover was frustrated when no one wanted to run with
Speaker 3: his story, so, as Professor Gage tells us, he had
Speaker 3: another idea.
Speaker 18: The FBI puts together an audio tape of some of
Speaker 18: what they've captured in King's hotel room, and Sullivan also
Speaker 18: writes a letter that purports to be from a former
Speaker 18: admirer of Kings who has found out about King's private
Speaker 18: and sexual life and is now rush by what he's discovered.
Speaker 18: It's really vicious and really over the top. It calls
Speaker 18: King a beast, a disgusting creature. It goes into details
Speaker 18: about some of the women that he's alleged to be seeing.
Speaker 18: It uses every kind of sexualized racial stereotype that you
Speaker 18: can imagine. And this letter concludes by saying, you know
Speaker 18: what you have to do? An attempt by the FBI
Speaker 18: to get him.
Speaker 7: To kill himself.
Speaker 18: That letter became public for the first time, or knowledge
Speaker 18: of that letter became public in the nineteen seventies, when
Speaker 18: the Church Committee were investigating what it was that the
Speaker 18: FBI had been up to in the sixties, what they
Speaker 18: have been doing against.
Speaker 3: King, sending the tape in the letter to King, trying
Speaker 3: to induce suicide or at least discredit him right before
Speaker 3: he was to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Was a
Speaker 3: vicious and highly illegal thing for the FBI to do,
Speaker 3: and it was clearly done with Hoover's blessing. It did
Speaker 3: not deter King from continuing to lead the fight for
Speaker 3: civil rights and economic justice, but he and those close
Speaker 3: to him were deeply wounded. Isaac Farris, King's nephew, feels
Speaker 3: particularly bitter about the government's assault on his family.
Speaker 21: My aunt had been the victim of j Egar Hoover,
Speaker 21: you know, lying to her. He actually sent a tte
Speaker 21: to my aunt and uncle's home. It was addressed to
Speaker 21: my aunt lay and Behald. It was a recording of
Speaker 21: someone sounding to have sex. By this time, my aunt
Speaker 21: had had four children by my uncle's so I mean
Speaker 21: she was the expert on what he sounded like when
Speaker 21: he was having sex, and so I mean she immediately
Speaker 21: knew that it was not him, as she said, that's
Speaker 21: not my husband.
Speaker 7: I mean, I know how he sounds.
Speaker 3: Farris was a young boy at the time King was murdered,
Speaker 3: and the version of these events he was given may
Speaker 3: have been sanitized, But whether the tapes were genuine faked
Speaker 3: or improved. Recording these events under the guise of looking
Speaker 3: for communists and then using these recordings to try to
Speaker 3: destroy King was a crime, a serious crime, perpetrated by
Speaker 3: j Edgar Hoover himself.
Speaker 7: Next time on the MLK tapes.
Speaker 22: Should the Committee take special note that the conduct of
Speaker 22: the FBI and this conspiracy of harassment of doctor King
Speaker 22: was not only unjustified as policy, it was also illegal
Speaker 22: and unconstitutional.
Speaker 12: Hoover used to send in Toulson on a regular basis
Speaker 12: to meet with the Adkins family to Dixie Mafia people.
Speaker 6: The plan was to get King to the city because
Speaker 6: Tolson said that they wanted it handled in Memphis where
Speaker 6: Detdie and Nim could handled. Now from Hoover, yeah, I
Speaker 6: don't think Cloud was doing that on his own.
Speaker 12: I've never heard such now language as Lenda Johnson used
Speaker 12: in describing here stealing from Martin Lusey King, and the
Speaker 12: same same with Jagor Hoover.
Speaker 23: I called him and I said, mister Hoover, I just
Speaker 23: got a telex message from our Memphis office said that
Speaker 23: Martin Luther King was shot while standing on a belt
Speaker 23: gat in that city, and his immediate reaction to me
Speaker 23: was is He Dead?
Speaker 24: Thanks for listening to The MLK Tapes, a production of
Speaker 24: iHeart Radio and Tenderfoot TV. This podcast is not specifically
Speaker 24: endorsed by the King Family or the King of State.
Speaker 24: The MLK Tapes is written and hosted by Bill Claper,
Speaker 24: Matt Frederick, and Alex Williams our executive producers on behalf
Speaker 24: of iHeart Radio with producers Trevor Young and Jesse Funk.
Speaker 24: Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay are executive producers on half
Speaker 24: of tender Foot TV with producers Jamie Albright and Meredith Stedman.
Speaker 24: Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Cover art by
Speaker 24: Mister Soul two one six with photography by Artemis Jenkins.
Speaker 24: Special thanks to Owin Rosenbaum and Grace Royer at UTA,
Speaker 24: the Nord Group, Beck Median Marketing, Envision Business Management, and
Speaker 24: Station sixteen. If you have questions, you can visit our website,
Speaker 24: the emailktapes dot com. We posted photos and videos related
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