a (Rev. 7-16-63) we € “h &. # ° ‘er 4. iBILL SHIPP THE BREATHLESS now-it-can bef told reporting on the Senate Se-' lect. Intelligence Committee staff re port on the FBI and Dr. Martin Lut ther King Jr. is a disservice to the, vocation we call journalism. Alleged Communist influence on Dr. King, attempts to throw cold water on a dinner honoring him for receiving the Nobel Peace Prize and passing Bill Shipp is associate editor of The Atlanta Constitution. Editor Hal Gul- liver is on vacation. around transcripts of alleged conver- machine could have found it all in the in the pages of their newspapers when it happened. The select committee, chaired by . Sen. Frank Church, who also is a candidate for president, points an accusing finger for the umteenth time ‘at the FBI and again says, “Wow, look what they did.” . There is not much doubt that much of what the FBI did in the 1960s dur- ing the civil rigt‘s conflict was pretty despicable. The hierarchy of the movement was not the only one wh¢ elt it. The kids marching under the anner of the Student ‘Nonviolent Coordinating Committee also got aj ‘oe 54961 Doold: 32969495 . Sations involving King—anyone with . enough brains to operate a microfilm | - L. CLOX copie +iginol Page 70 { * @ ~ (Mount Clipping in Space Below) The Rubber-Hosing o q taste of being branded by unidentitiga . { sources as commies or worse. { No doubt, old Klansmen everywhete i are chuckling gleefully as they read how Church and his committee’ are rubber-hosing the FBI. The Klan took as much harassment from the feds as anyone, Strange telephone calls were made to employers of Kluxers, Their . Klaverns were infiltrated by under- cover men and feds even hid in the bushes outside a certain private club east of here to record some of the sex- ual habits of the KKK, When Church and his committee start dishing out accusations against the FBI for trying to besmirch the name of Dr. Martin Lather King Jr., let’s make certain everybody gets his fair share. Every white law enforce- ment organization in the South cer- tainly did its utmost to provide all the dirt available on the civil rights leader. Our man in Washington, David Kraslow, says he turned down part of a transcript of a conversation offered him by the FBI relating to the King matter. So did many of us involved with trying to keep tabs on the princi- pals of the turbulent years of the civil rights struggle. Most of us turned mown the alleged tapes of King’s cotr “versation because there was no way l . ne DLOS mada: Sen Suregan,. fy £ | Q f the FBI (Indicate page, name of newspaper, city and state.) Page 23 -A- THR ATLANTA JOURTLL — & COISTITUTIO? Atlanta, Georgia Date: 5-Q-76 Edition: Sunday Author! Bil] Shipp Editor: Spalding/Gulliv Tine SRUISTUDY 75 Character: or “| Classification: 6222 Submitting Office: ATL IT my
check out their authenticity —not be- ‘{ cause we were such moral and ethical + souls. A member of these newspapers’ / . Staff, who was later to win a Pulitzer Prize, wrote a series on the High- . lander Folks School, the “race-mixer.” Dr. King went there along with some _ oldtime Communists. I wrote a couple of things about . _King and some of his advisers, some. of whom had Communist party con- * nections. It was natural for the radi- cal lefts of the civil rights era to con- . woe versive about that. Nobody in thes parts had tried that kind of # protest for a long time. . i “When King was awarded the Nobe . Peace Prize, there indeed were mis- - gregate around the leaders who were | striving for equality for blacks, just as ". it was natural for the radical rightists to get into the Klan or the White Citi- , zens Council. Most of ‘the leads about “subversive” on the right or left of the’. movement came directly or indirectly _ from lawmen. | It is not surprising that King’ s name . was placed on a special “subversive” roundup list by the FBI in the early 1960s. When King and his’ organizers (including Andrew Young, now Fifth District representative) began pro- tests in Albany, the FBI and the local and state law enforcement officers were shocked at their tactics. March- - ing and singing and gladly going to jail -- there had to be something sub- HW 54961 Doolc: 32909499 —Page Ti givings about honoring him at a ban- quet in his hometown. But when Coca- | - Cola’s Robert Woodruff, who had ~ more Washington connections and probably knew more about allegations concerning King-than anyone, decreed the banquet would be -heid, you should have seen enthusiasm in the business community about the banquet. As far as the report that Ralph - McGill tried to discourage the dinner for King, go back someday when you ‘ have time and read what the late Con- stitution editor and publisher had to say about the civil rights leader. Any one would be happy to have such “dis- _couraging” words written about him. In the end, it was generally agreed that Dr. King had served well his na-. tion, his people and the world, The Church report covering a multitude of FBI-abuses that have been hashed and rehashed and rehashed again does no honor to the memory of Dr. King. Nei- ther does it serve the national interests: Let us correct the abuses of* the FBI .but not by publishing and; ” republishing old newspaper ciPpINES. b. ‘ 2
PUT we 7 TUsU 0, aed Wellteone Seite General ¢ (WASHINGTON ~ “Everyhocs avd it” is no excuse for wrongdoinn . ut ; the Church committee reports da .3- ‘strate conclu. rss ” Sively that the seeds of Water- gate were planted and nour- ished in two Democratic administrations. Using the Sen- ale committee’s : findings, let us observe a trio of } Attorneys Fae General at their individual of truth, ~ _1. Nicholas Katzehbach and the bu, ging of hotel rooms of Martin Luther King. The unlawful harassment of Dr King was the worst abuse of federal power against an individual in pv. history; Atty. Gen. Katzenbach knev: about it, was warned about it, had tue power to stop it — but looked th: other way. . It was Ben Bradlee, then head c° Newsweek’s Washington Bureau, wi.» ) — to his credit — alerted Katzenbacls to the way FBI officials were ped- dling salacious King tapes to newsmen in 1964. In his moment of truth, the Atty. Gen. response was “clearly inadequate,” concludes the committee. Mer ard we mom ‘>. Hal Gulliver's column will resume shortly. In fact, he permitted the official wire- tapping of Dr. King to go on for four months after receiving the warning of a smear campaign using unofficial « a s.” When Katzenbach’s complicity in the bugging of Dr. King was first sug- gested in this space a year ago, he ex- ploded with a letter using all the libel code words. But Church committee counsel con! | fronted him with documentary, { evidence that he had been informed of nt x v ‘ inet. " the placement of microphones ‘in Dr., King’s suites. Three FB] memos say-! 4 ing so bore Katzenbach’s handwritten Ynitials, and there was a handwritten |, note from him — dated and filed in* sequence with a bugging notification — telling Director Hoover “Obviously these are particularly delicate surveil- ‘lances and we should be very cau- tious... .” . Katzenbach’s reaction to this evi- dence was to insist he couldn’t remember what his note was refer- . ring to — maybe it was some other surveillance that day. Nor could he remember initialing any of the bug- ging notifications, but — under oath — he added artfully: “If they are my initials and if I put them on, then I am clearly mistaken... “ The Church committee report on - Dr. King (written with admirable evenhandedness by Old Kennedy Hand Michael Epstein) permits the clear conclusion that (a) the wiretapping of « Dr. King was originally Robert Kemnedy’s idea, not J. Edgar ‘Hoov' er’s, and: (b) the systematic program) , Of snoop and smear could probably, " not have taken place without th sometime tacit, sometimes explicit ; toleration of Nicholas Katzenbach. 2. Ramsey Clark and the Doar Plan to Spy on dissidents. Under heat from the Johnson White House to crack down on black power groups and New Left peaceniks, Atty. Gen. Clark told his henchman, John Doar, to come up with a plan to bring the full power of government to bare on gathering intelligence about dissenters. , The Doar Plan — forming the “interdivision information unit,” de- scribed last year in this column — was submitted, urging that agencies as disparate as the Narcotics Bureau, the poverty program, the IRS and the Post Office Department be tapped to’ . “funnel information” into a computer ihaé a later Clark study said would create a “master index on individuals, or organizations.” : Clark, in that moment of truth in 1967, approved the Doar Plan, spawn- ing the infamous IDIU, which — in, Sthe Church committee’s words —was the focal point of a massive domestic. intélligence apparatus ... resulting Hin excessive collection of information about law-abiding citizens.” 5 . Pp PABBA STE S made “rigicwl sent Duca. HW 54961 Doetd:32989495—Page—72 amine | Watergate and the Attorneys © (Indicate page, name of newspaper, city and state.) Page 4A | ATLANTA COUSTITUTIC - Atlanta, Georgia _] Date: 5~1 | -76 “! Edition: Morning Author: William Safire Editor: Fal Guilli ver Title: SERSTUDY 75 Character: or Classification: . 68a Bn! Submitting Office: i : eat oh SP MAY 1 1 1976 FBL- ATLANTA
MW 34961 Boold: 32989499 Page 73 3. John Mitchell and the Huston Plan. Thanks to the fine work of ims peachment counsel John Doar, we have been treated to many lengthy flenunciations of this proposal of a) young man in the Nixon “White House” to combat dissidents with illegal “black bag jobs,” mail openings and evesdroppings. It turns out that in making his scandalous: suggestions, . Tom Huston was not aware that most of them were already standard oper- ating procedure for intelligence agen- cies under Presidents. Kennedy and Johnson, . In his moment of truth, in the ‘face of White House pressure urging him to approve the Huston Plan, ‘what did Atty. Gen. Mitchell do? Writes the Church committee: “CIA Director Helms shortly thereafter indicated his -support for the plan to the-Atty. Gen., telling him ‘we had put our backs inte this exercise.’ Nonetheless,- Mitchell advised the President to withdraw his approval. Huston was told to rescind - his memorandum... ” These- three moments are not cited to suggest Attorneys General Katzen- bach and Clark were devils and Mitchell was a saint. But they might ‘be remembered in reviewing what each of the trio is doing today: Katzenbach, making no apology for his role in the King case is taking down $300,000 per year in pay and benefits as IBM’s general ‘counsel. Clark, posing as a civil libertarian, is a candidate for the Democratic nomi- nation for senator from the state of New York. Mitchell, acquitted at one Apolitical ‘show trial and convicted at another, has .seen his career ruined land now faces jai. oo. sya. Equal just! se under law? : t ; i {