JFK and LBJ did much the same. Kennedy had the FBI spying on Martin Luther King, and Bill Moyers was playing the tapes for anyone who wanted to listen. LBJ was notorious for strongarming his opponents and is said to have equalled J Edgar Hoover in having dirt on his rivals.
Bill Moyers as a hypocrite and a liar...
The Johnson Administration's willingness to permit the FBI to continue its investigation of Dr. King also appears to have involved political considerations. Bill Moyers, President Johnson's assistant, testified that sometime around the spring of 1965 President Johnson "seemed satisfied that these allegations about Martin Luther King were not founded." Yet President Johnson did not order the investigation terminated. When asked the reason, Moyers explained that President Johnson:
was very concerned that his embracing the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King personally would not backfire politically. He didn't want to have a southern racist Senator produce something that would be politically embarassing to the President and to the civil rights movement. We had lots of conversations about that.... Johnson, as everybody knows, bordered on paranoia about his enemies or about being trapped by other people's activities over which he had no responsibility. 56
Intelligence reports submitted by the Bureau to the White House and the Justice Department contained considerable intelligence of potential political value to the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. The Attorneys General were informed of meetings between Dr. King and his advisers, including the details of advice that Dr. King received, the strategies of the civil rights movement, and the attitude, of civil rights leaders toward the Administrations and their policies.
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The Attempt to Discredit Dr. King During His Receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize
On October 14, 1964, Martin Luther King was named to win the Nobel Peace Prize. He received the prize in Europe on December 10, 1965. The FBI took measures to dampen Dr. King's welcome, both in Europe and on his return home.
On November 22, 1964 -- two weeks before Dr. King's trip to receive the prize -- the Domestic Intelligence Division assembled a thirteen-page updated printed version of the monograph which Attorney General Kennedy had ordered recalled in October 1963. 266 A copy was sent to Bill Moyers, Special Assistant to the President, on December 1, 1964, with a letter requesting his advice concerning whether the monograph should also be distributed to "responsible officials in the Executive Branch." 267 Moyers gave his permission on December 7, 268 and copies were distributed to the heads of several executive agencies. 269
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While there is some question concerning whether officials outside of the FBI were aware that the FBI was using microphones to cover Dr. King's activities, there is no doubt that the product of the microphone surveillance was widely disseminated within the executive branch. Indeed, dissemination of the printed "monograph" about Dr. King to several executive agencies was expressly approved by Bill Moyers, President Johnson's assistant, in January 1965.
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Walter Jenkins and Bill Moyers of the White House told him that Burke Marshall had called and "indicated that the Attorney General had thought it highly advisable for the President to see the Department of Justice file on Martin Luther King . . . to make certain that the President knew all about King." 304
The memorandum states that Marshall then:
told Moyers that he wanted to give the White House a little warning. He stated that he personally knew that the FBI had leaked information concerning Martin Luther King to a newspaper reporter. Marshall told Moyers that he thought the White House should know this inasmuch as information concerning King would undoubtedly be coming out before the public in the near future.
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Moyers testified that he had been generally aware that the FBI reports about Dr. King included information of a personal nature, unrelated to the purpose of the FBI's investigation. When asked if he had ever asked the FBI why it was disseminating this type of material to the White House, Moyers responded:
I don't remember. I just assumed it was related to a fallout of the investigations concerning the communist allegations, which is what the President was concerned about.
Question. Did you ever question the propriety of the FBI's disseminating that type of information?
Answer. I never questioned it, no. I thought it was spurious and irrelevant ... If they were looking for other alleged communist efforts to embarrass King and the President, which is what the President thought, Kennedy or Johnson, it would just seem natural that other irrelevant and spurious information would come along with that investigation.
Question. And you found nothing improper about the FBI's sending that information along also?
Answer. Unnecessary? Improper at that time, no.
Question. Do you recall anyone in the White House ever questioning the propriety of the FBIs disseminating this type of material?
Answer. I think there were comments that tended to ridicule the FBI's doing this, but no. 311
Moyers testified that he had not suspected that the FBI was covering Dr. King's activities with microphones, although he conceded, "I subsequently realized 1 should have assumed that. . . . The nature of the general references that were being made I realized later could only have come from that kind of knowledge unless there was an informer in Martin Luther King's presence a good bit of the time." 312
(4) According to Nicholas Katzenbach, on November 25, 1964, the Washington Bureau Chief of a national news publication told him that one of his reporters had been approached by the FBI and given an opportunity to listen to some "interesting" tapes involving Dr. King.
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The only record of this episode in the FBI files is a memorandum by DeLoach dated December 1, 1964, stating in part:
Bill Moyers, while I was at the White House, today, advised that word had gotten to the President this afternoon that [the newsman] was telling all over town . . . that the FBI had told him that Martin Luther King was [excised]. [The newsman] according to Moyers, had stated to several people that, "If the FBI will do this to Martin Luther King, they will undoubtedly do it to anyone for personal reasons."
Moyers stated the President wanted to get this word to us so we would know not to trust [the newsman]. Moyers also stated that the President felt that [the newsman] lacked integrity and was certainly no lover of the Johnson administration or the FBI. I told Moyers this was certainly obvious. 321
DeLoach testified that he could not recall the events surrounding this memorandum. Bill Moyers, after reviewing DeLoach's memorandum, testified that he recalled nothing about the incident involving the newsman or about Katzenbach's and Marshall's discussion with the President. He did not recall ever having heard that the Bureau had offered to play tape recordings of Dr. King to reporters, or ever having discussed the matter with DeLoach. He testified, however, that DeLoach's memorandum:
sounds very plausible. I'm sure the President called me or he told me to tell him whatever [DeLoach's document reflects].