j. edgar hoover called the rev. dr. martin luther king, "the most notorious liar in the country." >> dr. king, what is your reaction to the charges made by j edgar hoover? >> well, i was quite shocked and surprised to learn of this statement for mr. hoover questioning my integrity. frankly, i don't understand what motivated the statement. >> as martin luther king prepared to go to oslo to received the nobel peace prize 50 years ago, the fbi ramped up its efforts to discredit the civil rights leader. we will speak to the yale professor who uncovered an unredacted copy of the fbi's so-called suicide letter when -- to king. the letter threatened to expose king's alleged extramarital affairs if he did not commit suicide. and then, no debate and the new war. one in 89. that is number of antiwar voices indicted on the high profile sunday talk shows to talk about u.s. attacks on iraq in syria. all that and more, coming up. welcome to dem, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. missouri governor jay nixon has declared a stat

people j edgar hoover was after, or was it the fbi itself? they tried to subvert the society that they lived in. >> i think the fbi documents make clear that j edgar hoover's fbi was subverting the constitution and bedrock american principles, and that ronald reagan joined in that image., contrary to his he did point to figure at his did point his finger at people. he did report to the fbi. that raises the questions, who were the real subversives? >> i think with that said, thank you. [applause] if you have any questions, we have some microphones. people will be walking around with microphones. if you could -- i see some hands up right behind you there is one. if you could identify yourself, police. >> jeff brooks. there were 150 people here. you said that tha bedrock american principles, >>, checks checks and balances. have 6000 -- don't they believe in checks and balances. ? >> i don't know if i have an answer. >> suing the government is a lot of trouble. it's very time-consuming. it can be very expensive. i am very fortunate to have had the

j. edgar hoover director for life. and as he is stepping down peace says, tell bradley i said forget you, except he did not use the words forget. [laughter] so it was always a little tough. >> what is the future of republican politics? >> i was a practicing journalist working for the houston chronicle. so i am going to jump in to this answer to say that, of course, the 24 hour news cycle, instantaneous communication affect our politics to a degree unknown in past times if only because the expectation of that news cycle is that public officials are immediately, instantaneously weiss with regard to what is happening at all and what to do about it. no human being is capable of doing that. in past times when communication was much slower public officials did have the luxury of thinking were discussing these matters before they spoke and acted. that is a luxury not allowed today, and it is an egg that cannot be unscrambled. and that, i can say with some certainty. i cannot speak with certainty about what jeb bush will do. t

j. edgar hoover. >> i'm writing a biography of j. i spent a lot of time going through old fbi files. i was at the national archives this summer with my research assistant and we were going through what is known as hoover's official and confidential files, sort of his secret files that he kept in his office, so his really special files. they had just been given over to the national archives. they have come out in various forms over the years. we didn't know what we would find and then we happened upon this letter. >> so you happened upon this letter. there had been different iterations of this letter and we can see clear as day, the misspellings and the talk of dr. king's personal life. what is the thrust of it? >> the thrust of it is, there had been versions of it let out but the gist of if is that it's an extremely threatening letter that mostly goes into a lot of pretty graphic accusatory language about his extramarital sexual activities and threatens him with exposure. and then the letter says, king, you've got to take action and

j. edgar hoover was, by war, the worst thing that you could possibly do and almost anyone who criticizedbi sort of ended up on hoover's enemy list in one way or the other although not everyone got a letter like this one. >> reporter: it's been widely known that hoover was on a mission to discredit king but gc gage believes this was written by one of hoover's assistant directors, a man by the name of william sullivan. >> i looked at the top of the letter and it's addressed to king and then the first line is, "in view of your low-grade abnormal personal behavior, i will not dignify your name with a mister, a reverend or a doctor." it's just incredible to think that the fbi was at the keyboard sending this off and asking him to effectively kill himself. alina, thank you for that. really remarkable reporting. >>> authorities in pennsylvania are adding something to the list of charges against the suspected cop killer eric frein and that something is terrorism. find out what he did and why it qualifies for this extraordinarily serious charge. so, your site gave me this "credit report card" thi

roosevelt i was dieptd it burns didn't go into the extent that roosevelt bolstered and established j edgar hoover the funding for the 41 and the spying that was developed under that administration administration was deepened against labor that was a war of a billion dollars of strikebreaking in the 30s the government was involved with thank you. >> thank you. is there any additional public comment - general public comment is closed. . >> commissioners that places you under our regular calendar food and beverage an informational presentation. >> good afternoon commissioner president wu and commissioners my name is diane and i'm a senior planner with the planning department thank you for the opportunity on the makers and morphs study the accountable studies in the report are a result of a year along study of the needs and challenges by food and beverages in san francisco particularly food and beverage manufacturers and distribution businesses and the idea behind the work interest is value in understanding how concentrations of businesses can generate nation and extremely growth in a way that might

it is an odd phrasing for j edgar hoover. but she was known as the mother of the fbi. so, that was often how he referred to her. this is a fascinating piece of lobbying. and playing up that affiliation and that close tie they had. they the time we get to late 1930's, early 1940's, we begin to see a different -- from that pioneer group of women coming to congress. world war ii reshapes the role of women in society. women hold a lot of jobs that men previously held as men go off to fight in the service. and women who come into congress during that era begin to advocate more of a role for women outside the home. mary norton was constantly urging women to be involved in politics, to be involved outside the home. even when the war ended, she feared that my contract again and women would be forced back into a domesticated role. one of the prominent people who serves in the 1940's is helen gahagan douglas. we have a picture of her here. and douglas was well-known. she represented a district that encompassed a part of los angeles, california. but she was known nationally for h

j. edgar hooverer. >> i was quite surprised by mr. hoover questioning my integrity. quite frankly, i don't know what motivated this. >> well, we now know a lot more. one year earlier, dr. king has delivered his i have a dream speech and the f.b.i. has named the most dangerous negro of communist influence does exist in the negro movement and can influence large masses of people. it seems hoover and the f.b.i. were convinced that martin luther king were trying to bring about a communist overthrow of the united states. and their attempts to discredit king went far beyond just calling him a liar. the f.b.i. placed bugs in king's hotel room, tapped his phones, bugged his apartment in at lan that. while hoover found out very little about subterfuge, he did begin to learn about king's extramarital affairs. and that brings us to one of the most shames of the american government. today, the "new york times" published a full, unredakted letter sent to king in 1964. it's an utterly shocking document. a letter accuses king of being "a filthy, ash normal animal who's engauged in

actions and affairs, there are hundreds of thousands of people that now have the ability that j edgar hooverave in terms of blackmailing the president and other people. and yet, you know, nobody seems to be particularly upset about this. the fact that -- the fact that our government has become invincible to us. >> yeah. >> you cannot have anything even remotely called a democracy with an invisible government. and finally american is not a boundary with gee og graphry in it. america is a set of ideals and if you want to protect national security, the first order of business is to protect those ideals. >> that's a beautiful way of getting to the heart of the issue. by the fact that the intelligence community is on board with this, i think, makes a lot of folk whofolks who have relationship in the wake of snowden this is a direct response to that, the intelligence community put up a wall and denied surveillance. >> lied and lied and lied. >> right. harry reed making a case for this bill having this to say today. i think for though of us who have followed this, that is not a mark in his favor. d

jay accor over -- j edgar hoover listed him as the most dangerous man in america. king, the most dangerous man in america. i have asked my times how you can be the most dangerous man in america when the only weapon you are using is love? i talked about the power of love and the potency of love that we may need to reconsider in the world we live in. >> the riverside church is where? >> manhattan, west side. >> what was the atmosphere? >> dr. king had been speaking on the record about his opposition to the vietnam war. he was a big name and he was an even bigger name at the time, benjamin scott a he had been out at the war and there were others. it was the young people. stokely carmichael holds pushing dr. king to be more vocal in his opposition. nobody wanted him to talk about it except for james, who was pushing him to talk about the vietnam war. everybody wanted him to stay out of step king took some time, and to this moment of high drama where he was going to give a public policy speech coming out against the war. he chose the location in manhattan. he was speaki

j. edgar hoover, these were people who were willing to be vengeful about lawyers like you and cases likehis. did any of that enter your mind? were you concerned about any of that? >> oh, y e. we were concerned because our phones were being tapped. john was being followed. two guys standing across the street continuously fixing a bike would be in a car following him if he left his apartment at anytime. and it was a terrible pressure in the handling of the case. and i have to say that john's attitude was helpful even to me. he had a philosophy that the government does these things and we will still succeed. >> what was it like for you, as i said, having represented this one client in a case you knew could have implications for many, many more. to be sitting here tonight with president obama in office considering taking executive action, using as the primary building block of his justification for this the building block that you laid in the lennon case, that you could be responsible now for the enter of -- or the legal unification of millions of families in this country. >> i'll give john

j. edgar hoover and people in our government, to try to help bring us into the war.war i, they weren't that organized in the sense. they had a man who was running things under the cover of a film executive, and he was trying to get propaganda out. they had a former naval captain, guy gaunt, who was a member of mi-6, and he was based here in wall street, and he was in communication with arthur wood and tunney, and he was providing information. at that point, the federal government was so eager to get information that they needed the british help. america might not have discovered for another two years really what was going on, that this was a german plot against america, if the british hadn't passed on the information they had gotten from breaking the german codes. but sure, britain was determined to get the united states into the war, and they succeeded, and they were effective in doing it, in both wars. >> yes, i don't understand the relationship between bombing the capitol building and then trying to assassinate jp morgan jr. in what sounds like a very amateur assa

joseph senator joseph mccarthy, senator alex wiley, and fbi director himself j edgar hoover embarked on an anti-communist crusade that encompassed gays and lesbians. it was in 1954 that the postmaster of los angeles declared a a ban on the mental ability of one magazine, the first serious gay magazine of ideas, not pornography and not obscenity. the postmaster's band came on the heels of pres. dwight president dwight eisenhower's executive order 10450 april 1954. it declared homosexuals, and it did not use the word homosexuals it used the word sexual perverts, but it declared sexual perversion and national security risk based solely on sexual orientation and effectively banned gay and lesbian people from employment with the federal government. what we what we see from the documents that i am about to show you is a ferocity with which hoover and his cohorts brought the full weight of their authority and that of the bureau, the fbi, to bear on anyone who dared out him. these documents i am about to show you demonstrate that hoover was willing to bring all of his government authority an