Attorney General Robert Kennedy Authorizes FBI Wiretapping of Martin Luther King Jr.

On October 10, 1963, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy signed an authorization permitting the FBI to wiretap the telephones of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference offices in New York and Atlanta. The authorization, requested by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, marked the beginning of the most intensive surveillance operation ever conducted against an American civil rights leader.

Hoover justified the wiretaps by claiming that Stanley Levison, a white attorney and advisor to King, was a secret member of the Communist Party. Despite FBI investigations finding no evidence that Levison was influencing King’s politics or that the civil rights movement was under communist control, Hoover used the alleged connection to obtain authorization for surveillance that would last until King’s assassination in 1968.

Kennedy’s authorization reflected the FBI’s institutional power over the Justice Department. Hoover had amassed decades of political intelligence on government officials, giving him extraordinary leverage. Kennedy and his brother, President John F. Kennedy, were reluctant to challenge Hoover directly, fearing political retaliation and public accusations that they were “soft on communism.”

The wiretaps quickly expanded beyond their stated justification. FBI agents recorded King’s private conversations, including extramarital affairs, which Hoover attempted to use for blackmail. In November 1964, FBI Assistant Director William Sullivan sent King an anonymous package containing audio recordings and a letter urging him to commit suicide before receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. The letter stated: “There is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is.”

The Kennedy authorization legitimized the FBI’s campaign against King, demonstrating how Cold War anti-communism could be weaponized against domestic civil rights movements. It revealed the vulnerability of even sympathetic administrations to FBI manipulation and the danger of allowing intelligence agencies to define political movements as security threats. The surveillance continued under the Johnson administration and was only fully exposed during the Church Committee investigations of 1975-1976.