- The 1960s, the Federal Bureau of Investigation spied at civil rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Today's guests, tell that story at a powerful documentary that shines a light on race, power, and the politics of personal destruction.

There's Sam Pollard and Benjamin Hardin, this week on Story in the Public Square.

(upbeat music) Hello, and welcome to Story in the Public Square where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes, from the Pell Center at Salve Regina university.

Joining me as always is my great friend and Co-host G. Wayne Miller of the Providence Journal.

Each week, we talk about big issues with great guests.

Authors, journalists, filmmakers and more to make sense of the big stories shaping public life in the United States today.

This week we're joined by the moving force behind a remarkable new documentary MLK/FBI.

Joining us today is Director Sam Pollard and writer producer, Benjamin Hardin.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for being with us.

- Thanks for having us guys.

- Well, the film is really remarkable, powerful, timely.

I stress myself to think about the adjectives that I want to use to describe it but Sam, for our audience can you give us just a quick overview of the film itself?

- Well, the film looks at Dr. King's ascendancy in the fifties and early sixties.

And after he did his March in Washington I have a dream speech.

The FBI led by Jagger.

Who was said he's the most dangerous Negro in America.

And so their job from that point was to discredit and destroy his reputation.

They initially started by surveilling wiretapping him, with the consent of the attorney general Bobby Kennedy because they thought he was full of communism because of his very close relationship with gentlemen in standard 11 significant and former member of the communist party.

But in wiretapping, Dr. King and his associates, they realized and learned that he was having affairs with other women besides his wife, Coretta Scott King.

So they didn't get on that track to not only wiretap the buggies hotel rooms and travel around the country.

And they gathered together a lot of information on Dr. King with under women and other situations and they tried to get the press to grab onto it, the press didn't.

And then they went so far as to create a letter basically with written by Wayne Sullivan, telling King we know what you've done, you know who you are and you have something, you have to do something about it and basically intimated that he should kill himself.

And on top of that not only write that letter, they also say, why do you take to his wife Coretta Scott supposedly of Dr. King could situation the other women.

So it was the story of King's ascendancy in the struggles here at the phase at the same time as he was being surveilled by Jamie Hoover, the FBI looking at, in these invigorate into the mythology of the FBI and the FBI would've kept monitoring is really King except for his assassination of April 4th, 1968.

- So then, why was King such a threat to the FBI and specifically to J Edgar Hoover the long-time director and the director at that time?

What was it about King that alarmed him, disturbed him?

Why was he a threat?

- You know, first off I would say his popularity, Hoover's FBI surveilled everyone, they surveilled Malcolm X and other black activists but none of them had those words that King had, regionally, across different audiences in the United States.

That was what most alarmed him.

And then I think that, Hoover he couldn't control King, I mean he had relationships with figures at the end of Lacy P but King was sort of beyond the pale.

And that's what I think he feared the most.

- Well King's race obviously was a factor in, in that fear.

- Yeah, no question.

You know Hoover was a Washington DC native, at a time when DC was a thoroughly Southern city came of age early in the 20th century, no black agents in the FBI, the only African-Americans that Hoover interacted with drove his car and served them food.

So yeah, that goes without saying - Sam, I was struck watching the film by I guess it's the during power of Martin Luther King Jr's message and the power of the person.

Why do you think that message is still so relevant and so timely and so powerful today?

- It's really relevant today, Jim, because Dr. King was a nonviolent civil rights activist a radical in his own time.

Who basically was saying, if we want change we have to approach it in a peaceful nonviolent way.

And you saw the impact and the effect of that in the fifties and the sixties, breaking the back of segregation in cities like Birmingham, Alabama Albany, Georgia, Selma, Alabama, and Alabama.

He and his cohorts were really focused, that they knew they wanted to change the way we would look at African-Americans we'll look at in the world.

He felt we should no longer be second class citizens.

And I think the sense of nonviolent activism this is this sort of real purposes and energy is something that people still hold on to today.

I mean, that's why he's such an iconic presence in America and world history.

- So the FBI was initially interested in King because of his association with a communist or the former communists.

And so that's one thing, but they go so much further.

If that's the right word in terms of investigating his personal life, why would they go there?

I mean, what, what were they hoping to achieve, I guess besides completely discrediting him but they even went beyond that, so maybe both of you could take a crack at that.

- Well, think of it this way.

I mean, J Edgar Hoover and William Sullivan, who was one of his closest lieutenants, their feeling was they had to try to do anything they could to destroy Dr. King, because it's been said he was very popular.

I mean, I was saying to someone the other day that as a young African American who grew up in the sixties in our household, we had three images in our living room Martin Luther King, John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Jesus Christ, that shows you how popular he was in many African American households and for Diego who would see that.

And you see all of those people, you know and at the margin wanting to it had to be absolutely threatening and Ben's right.

He was a man who grew up in the South, whose attitude about black people, were they were in the shadows, they were on the fringes.

All of a sudden this man is having people rise up like Moses taking them to the promised land that scared baby Jesus to take over, those people in the FBI.

- So, Robert, I'm sorry, go ahead, Ben.

- I was just gonna add that, well Hoover did surveil everyone.

Once he sort of lights on King's personal life, we do move into a unique territory where it becomes an active campaign of blackmail.

And it's far beyond just wiretapping and monitoring his travel and his conversations, but it does become government sponsored character assassination.

And that's not something you're gonna find with the FBI, even in Hoover's bureau when it was essentially a lawless entity.

- That's actually the question that provoked in my mind, how was that legal?

- It wasn't legal.

It wasn't legal at all.

You're not supposed to go that far.

I mean, he went, they went beyond the panel.

That's not legal to do that.

I mean, he had got Bobby Kennedy that signed off on wiretapping Dr. King because of the communist thing because everybody was afraid of communism.

Everybody knew this was the period of the red scare.

So that was valid in terms of Bobby Kennedy signing off on that.

Now who Bobby Kennedy, how far if Bobby Kennedy knew how far Hoover and his associates were going, when they started burnt his hotel rooms.

I'm not sure if Bobby can do about it.

Like he turned a blind eye to it.

- Does it change our interpretation or our understanding of Bobby Kennedy's role in the 1960s and the, in his relationship with the civil rights movement in general?

- This is what I would say, as we all know Bobby Kennedy went through an evolution, he went through a change.

I mean, he has a certain attitude and philosophy in the late fifties, early sixties, by that time, as we all know he ran for president, he had evolved.

I mean, there's this great story that Harry Belafonte tells about how Bobby Kennedy came to his house with Dr. King was there and other activists or activists were there and they put Bobby Kennedy's feet to the fire about his philosophies and attitudes.

And I think Bobby Kennedy, he had a reckoning he came to an awakening about what he needed to do if he was one helped change America.

- So JFK is assassinated and obviously Lyndon Baines Johnson becomes president.

And so the FBI's infatuation or whatever the word here is continues under LBJ.

What was his role in this?

- Well, I mean, in some ways it goes back to what Jim just said.

It wasn't, it's worse that it was illegal or this activity wasn't sanctioned by law is it that it wasn't particularly a secret, spam, right.

Newspapers wouldn't jump on it.

But most powerful people in Washington knew it was going on and that includes LBJ, a consummate womanizer in his own right.

He loved listening to the tapes, they had high entertainment value for him.

So, you know, he's obviously what he did to get the voting rights act passed was monumental.

And it meant that he was bonded with in a sense in the public sphere.

But that doesn't mean he discouraged or dissuaded Hoover from continuing to monitor King.

- I'm curious about the role of the press.

You used the term that they did not jump on this, why?

- It was a different time.

It's a different world.

We lived in at the time.

I mean, the press's job at that time was to look at politicians just from the side of the political perspective.

They didn't go into their personal lives.

Like we do the daily, the press does today.

I mean, everything is fair game today, but back then can we do about live these dark secrets of these people.

I mean any of John Kennedy's affairs they knew about LBJ, right?

They didn't go there back then.

I mean, it was indifferent sort of philosophy about how you approach and report these politicians.

- I am... one of the things that really struck me was the portion of the film that focuses on the Nobel peace prize that Dr. King received and the seamly, the reaction from J Edgar Hoover was to pick a public feud with them and call him a liar.

What's so irked Hoover about King receiving the Nobel peace prize?

- Well, here's a man he's his agents have been wiretapping and bugging, and then learning that he's not monogamous that he has affairs and he probably drinks.

I think he even smoked Dr. King, this is supposed to be a good Christian man, and then this man is getting a Nobel peace prize for John that's like a major slap in the face, it's like, "How can you get this man the nobel peace prize"?

because he's basically deceitful, he's an adulterer, this is how horrible.

- It's almost a sense of, I know things you don't know - Exactly.

- That's remarkable.

After the Nobel prize the FBI Hoover go directly after King's wife which is where things become really vicious and horrible.

Why, why go after his wife?

- Well, it was an accident that she opened the package the package was sent to the office, the FBI they sent it, they had an agent mail it from Florida.

So it wouldn't be seen, but you know, it arrives at the Southern Christian leadership conference in Atlanta.

And because there's a tape inside, they gave it to Coretta because she kept an archive of his speeches and speeches would often arrive on real, real tape.

And then she opens it.

And then, she, she realizes that it's this super supposedly, an anthology of audio clips of her husband having affairs, with this letter inside, it was written by the head of domestic intelligence, William Sullivan claiming to be a disaffected black leader who felt betrayed by Ken and was threatening to reveal all of king's secrets in I don't know, it's like 31 days, I believe which probably coincided with Christmas of 1964.

And it was there only one thing left to do you know what it is.

- You know what it is.

- Yeah, and she interpreted that and others interpreted that as being a suggestion that he needed to commit suicide.

- That was the interpretation.

- Yeah.

- I'm not sure you can read it any other way.

I mean, you know, but publicly step aside is from retire from public life as a leader that, I mean, maybe but it's pretty hard to see it as anything other than suicide.

- And one of the questions that lingered in my head was I think there's a question about it seems like the questions pretty well resolved about whether or not he was monogamous, but with the audio tapes was, all of the evidence that they tried to leak, was it all legitimate or what their disinformation to borrow a seemingly contemporary word that was mixed in with it?

- I would say this Jim, I'm an editor for many years and I would believe very strongly that they doctored those tapes that they edited those tapes for their own purpose.

So trust me, I've edited lots of stuff that I know how the doctors stuff too.

So they definitely edited those tapes.

- (laughing) - Did you come across any suggestion or evidence that there might've been a would be whistleblower inside the FBI?

I mean today whistle blowers are fairly well-known or common or at least sometimes do the right thing any evidence that this was the case back then somebody in Hoover's inner circle or somebody on the periphery who might've known about this and might've wanted to blow the whistle.

- No, I mean we don't even know evidence it would be hard to admit even the possibility of that just because Hoover was so feared and because he hired and encouraged agents in his own image, again, your earlier question about LBJ, LBJ was scared too the FBI had a mandatory retirement age when Hoover reached that LBJ went around it by creating him appointing him director for life.

And they asked him why.

And he said, I'd rather have him inside the tent than outside the tent.

(both laughing) To be held in such fear by everyone.

I don't think makes it possible that somebody blew the, would blow the whistle.

- So you talked about who was image and, obviously many people feared him, but too many Americans I assume he just white Americans and mostly white Americans.

He was almost heroic.

You know, movies were made about him.

He was clean cut.

He was white obviously, he was male - But wait, let me see.

This is where you're, I think you're wrong.

I was a young black man in 64, and I thought he was heroic.

I mean, I watched all those old movies about the FBI, you know, big Jim McClain with John Wayne the FBI stole the Jimmy Stewart.

I bought into that TV show on ABC Zimbalist Jr. the FBI.

I thought the FBI was the cat's pajamas, man.

I thought they were fantastic.

You know, Sam, I think you and I are of the same generation.

And you talked about the images that you had in your house growing up and as the son of an Irish Catholic woman in a hanky father, my mother was a daughter of immigrants.

We had Jesus in our house and we had Kennedy in our house, JFK, so these are icons.

And I do have memories going back to the sixties the early sixties of Hoover and, being a young young person didn't really obviously didn't know any of this was going on, but you're right.

He was like John Wayne, running the FBI for that image was really powerful is what I'm driving out here.

- Yeah, and and also, the move to move it out just a little more broadly.

It's not entirely in an acronysm.

The mythology about the FBI.

I mean, there's a show called the FBI on Sunday night Network television now.

So it's not something that our culture has entirely gotten beyond.

- Exactly, exactly.

- No, no, you're absolutely right.

You're absolutely right.

And we've seen that play out in real time during the last four years and-- - Well, in the last year in particular we saw a massive civil rights protests in the cities of America from coast to coast.

Quite literally.

We've also seen real extremist movements materialize and even storm the United States capital.

I wonder if your understanding of the history of the 1960s and the role of the FBI and not just surveillance but actually interacting with protest movements in that era gives you any particular insight about what the appropriate role of federal law enforcement should be, given today's challenges?

- Well, here's my reaction, Jim, listen I think it's very difficult for, for us to say that the FBI is gonna always do the right thing.

I mean, what is their job?

Their job is to mount to any organization be it on the left or the right that they feel may what undermine the notion bad notion and philosophy of American democracy, so it could be white extremists or it could be people from black activists organizations, the challenge to me for the FBI is to be able to look at these organizations and to be able to see that and understand that, you need activism for duty change in America and we shouldn't be frightened of it.

I mean, sometimes you should be but sometimes you gotta be able to monitor it.

The thing, the question I asked about the FBI today particularly when it comes to January six with all of the tools at their fingertips, and all the things that they can do now in terms of surveilling and monitoring extremist organizations how come they seem to be late to the party for January six?

I mean, to me, that's a big question.

You know, I mean the FBI and other law enforcement organizations were not late to the party and the black lives matter people were protesting in DC in August but all of a sudden they seem to be late to the party for January sixth.

I'm a little confused.

- Same, I think a lot of people, I even have a theory as to why that might be, you're not inside the FBI.

What's your hypothesis?

- Here's my hypothesis, is that America, the practice of America is that if, if people don't look like them, you know, they're nervous about them, if people look like them, they say, well, it can't be but so bad.

You know?

I mean, it's amazing.

I mean, you've seen those pictures of the, national guard out in force in front of the capital building.

- Sure, of course.

Nobody, not even those black lives matter protest is going to got into it.

But all of a sudden, you know you see no force national guard force on further capital and the people of January sixth were just able to bombard the place.

And because there's this mindset in America that when they look like you, you said they're not so bad.

I mean don't you even Jim watch these old westerns when they were going to lynch, lynched a black man or a bad guy.

And the police officer would say, "Guys, don't do it."

It's not gonna be right.

And they would just sometimes step out of the way and let them do it.

That's America, right?

- No, you're right.

Look, it's been America for hundreds of years.

I mean, look at what, look at what white Europeans thought of the people they found native Americans, whose land was for centuries before they didn't look like them.

And we know about the genocide and the continuing yeah.

The continuing mistreatment of indigenous American people.

It's disgraceful, but it's the Americans story though.

- But it's also the story of this notion.

It takes place in the world, this notion of us against them.

If you don't look like me, you don't talk like me.

There's a problem.

And I just worked on a series called "Why we hate."

And that's one of the things I learned in this series.

There's always this us against them thing.

It builds and builds and builds that leads to war.

We see it in Israel.

We see it, we see it in Bosnia.

We see it every place, you know - Is that why we hate being broadcast or show?

- Yeah, it was on discovery.

- I'll have to check it out.

It sounds good.

It sounds great.

Ben, we've got to talk about 2027.

So the... well I'll let you describe what happens in 2027.

- Sure, yeah.

It's a long story.

But when the, when Congress investigated surveillance in the seventies, there was a log through broad and the federal judge in 1977 ordered the tapes that the FBI made surveilling King to be placed under seal for 50 years.

So when that seal is lifted, I propose the president or the director of the national archives could keep them in.

I'm not sure for what defensible reason.

So we're all prepared for this enormous release of tapes of King in 2027.

And I think that the only proper attitude to have is just anything, anything is possible.

You know, it's possible that we already know everything and this is just additional texture and shading.

It's possible.

There's that there's some stuff on there that is is very incriminating and does change our view of Dr. King perhaps, but it's also possible that nothing happens that the tapes don't particularly, they're just hard to understand they're full of static and they're full of a lot of a lot of people in a room.

For me, it's like, I don't know stuff got declassified while we were making this film.

And so I sort of learned that just, a moderate skepticism is the only stance that you can have.

- I see, I'm curious your thoughts about, the film starts with, or early in the film you interview a historian who you put the question to are you, are you essentially doing the FBI's job 50 something years later by talking about this?

Should these tapes be released, are we doing a disservice to MLK and his legacy by even talking about this?

- Well, here's my quick answer to that question Jim, if the tapes haven't been doctored or edited so only there's stuff about his relationships with women on those tapes, then I'm curious to listen to them because I think if they are not edited, then maybe some revelations about King's discussions with people like Ralph Abernathy were in the during the Cod, anyone who was with him when the city's talking about the strategies.

Now, if the FBI really edited these tapes so you only get the stuff about Kings scandalized, supposedly scandalized behavior but either want to handle it.

So that's my quick I don't have an issue with them being released if they haven't been edited.

- That's fair.

- I'm gonna have to jump off.

- We're just about out of time, real quick where can people see MLK, FBI if they haven't seen it yet?

- At your neighborhood theater - At your neighborhood theater, it's streaming too, right?

So Ben Hardin thank you so much for being with us.

That's all the time we have this week.

But if you want to know more about storing the public square, you can visit us on Facebook or Twitter or visit pellcenter.org to catch up on previous episodes for G Wayne Miller.

I'm Jim Ludes asking you to join us again next time.

For more story in the public square.

(upbeat music)