Official and Confidential_ The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover - Anthony Summers [196]
Edgar’s aides now plotted to achieve the ‘desired result’ of ‘neutralizing King as an effective Negro leader.’ It could be done, they hoped, by exposing him as a ‘clerical fraud,’ an ‘immoral opportunist.’ There was to be a ‘counterintelligence move to discredit’ King, using ministers, ‘disgruntled acquaintances,’ ‘aggressive’ newsmen, ‘colored’ agents, even Dr King’s wife and housekeeper, and by ‘placing a good-looking female plant in King’s office.’ The Attorney General was told nothing of this plan.
A fortnight later, when it was learned King was about to arrive at Washington’s Willard Hotel, agents scrambled to install microphones and tape recorders. The resulting fifteen reels of tape, gathered during a two-day stay, included the sort of thing the FBI wanted – the sounds of a somewhat drunken party involving King and his colleagues and two women from the Philadelphia Naval Yard.
A day later, while FBI stenographers were still transcribing the tapes, Assistant Director Sullivan dictated a new memo. ‘King,’ it read:
must … be revealed to the people of this country and to his Negro followers as being what he actually is – a fraud, demagogue and moral scoundrel. When the true facts concerning his activities are presented, such should be enough, if handled properly, to take him off his pedestal … When this is done … the Negroes will be left without a national leader of sufficiently compelling personality to steer them in the proper direction. This is what could happen, but need not happen if the right kind of a national Negro leader could at this time be gradually developed so as to overshadow Dr King and be in a position to assume the role of leadership of the Negro people when King has become completely discredited.
Sullivan’s suggested replacement for King was Samuel Pierce, a Republican attorney who would one day, after serving as Secretary of Housing under President Reagan, became the target of a corruption probe. Edgar scribbled ‘OK’ beneath the suggestion, adding that he was ‘glad the “light” has finally, though dismally delayed, come to the Domestic Intelligence Division.’
‘Highlights’ of the Willard tapes were brought to Edgar like hunting trophies. ‘They will destroy the burrhead,’ he responded excitedly. Edgar personally phoned President Johnson’s aide Walter Jenkins to describe the material, then sent Cartha DeLoach to the White House with a transcript.
DeLoach, who heard one of the King surveillance tapes, claimed it featured King with ‘hundred-dollar-a-night prostitutes, committing sexual acts in front of eight, nine, ten, eleven men gathered around the bed, naked, drinking Black Russians …’ It is not clear how DeLoach could count how many men there were, or know they were naked, by listening to a sound tape.
Edgar thought King ‘a tomcat with obsessive degenerate urges,’ and insisted on coverage of what one FBI report called ‘the entertainment.’ When King went to Honolulu a crack Bureau team, complete with lock-picker, was flown in from the mainland. King’s party included two female companions, but the snoopers were frustrated on that occasion – the sound of the television and air-conditioning drowned out other sounds.
Edgar’s spies had more luck in Washington. King was overheard mockingly allotting his companions bawdy titles and telling off-color stories about sex and religion. They included a crude sex joke about the late President Kennedy and his widow, Jacqueline. Earlier, apparently because of fears the Attorney General would alert King, Edgar had withheld the results of the surveillance from Robert Kennedy. Now he saw to it