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Part II: the King-Levison File A Guide to the Microfilm Edition of THE MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., FBI FILE Part II: The King-Levison File UNIVERSITY PUBLICATIONS OF AMERICA A Guide to the Microfilm Edition of BLACK STUDIES RESEARCH SOURCES: Microfilms from Major Archival and Manuscript Collections August Meier and John H. Bracey, Jr. General Editors THE MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., FBI FILE Part II: The King-Levison File Edited by David J. Garrow Guide compiled by Martin P. Schipper A microfilm project of UNIVERSITY PUBLICATIONS OF AMERICA, INC. 44 North Market Street • Frederick, MD 21701 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Martin Luther King, Jr., FBI file [microform]. (Black studies research sources : microfilms from major archival and manuscript collections) Guide for pt. 2 compiled by Martin P. Schipper. Pt. 2 includes index. Contents: pt. 1. [Without special title] — pt. 2. The King-Levison File. 1. King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968. 2. United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation — Archives. 3. Levison, Stanley D., 1912-1979. 4. Hoover, J. Edgar (John Edgar), 1895-1972. 5. Civil rights movements — United States — History — Sources. I. Garrow, David J., 1953- . II. Schipper, Martin Paul. [E185.97] 323.4'092'4 86-893451 ISBN 0-89093-937-3 (microfilm: pt. 2) Copyright © 1987 by University Publications of America, Inc. All rights reserved. ISBN 0-89093-937-3. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction v Acronym List viii Reel Index ReeM Administrative Files (Sub-files 1-4) 1 Electronic Surveillance of Stanley Levison's Business Office, March 19-August 15,1962 (Sub-file 5) 1 Administrative File, March-June 1962 (Sub-file 6) 4 Surveillance of Telephones in Stanley Levison's Business Office, March 20-August 31,1962 (Sub-file 7, Vol. 1-Vol. 2) 5 Reel 2 Surveillance of Telephones in Stanley Levison's Business Office cont., September 1,1962- September 30,1963 (Sub-file 7, Vol. 2 cont.-Vol. 5) 10 Reels Surveillance of Telephones in Stanley Levison's Business Office cont., October 1,1963- July 25, 1964 (Sub-file 7, Vol. 5 cont.-Vol. 6) 24 Administrative File, March 22,1962-Ouly 25,1964 (Sub-file 8) 32 Surveillance of Telephones in Stanley Levison's Residence, November 29,1962- April 30,1963 (Sub-file 9, Vol. 1-Vol. 2) 32 Reel 4 Surveillance of Telephones in Stanley Levison's Residence cont., May 1,1963-July 25,1964 (Sub-file 9, Vol. 2 cont.-Vol. 4) 37 ReelS Surveillance of Telephones in Stanley Levison's Residence cont., June 15,1965-June 30, 1966 (Sub-file 9, Vol. 4 cont.-Vol. 6) 53 Reel 6 Surveillance of Telephones in Stanley Levison's Residence cont., July 1,1966-March 31, 1967, a.m. (Sub-file 9, Vol. 6 cont.-Vol. 8) 66 Reel? Surveillance of Telephones in Stanley Levison's Residence cont., March 31, p.m.- December31,1967 (Sub-file 9, Vol. 8 cont.-Vol. 9) 81 ReelS Surveillance of Telephones in Stanley Levison's Residence cont., January 1-October 31, 1968 (Sub-file 9, Vol. 9 cont.-Vol. 11) 97 Reel9 Surveillance of Telephones in Stanley Levison's Residence cont., November 1, 1968-September 24,1969 (Sub-file 9, Vol. 11-Vol. 12) 116 Administrative File, December 1,1962-September 24,1969 (Sub-file 10) 133 Surveillance of Telephones in Stanley Levison's Residence (Andy Levison), September 23.1963-February 13,1964 (Sub-file 11) 133 Administrative File, Undated (Sub-file 12) 134 Subject Index 135 IV INTRODUCTION Part II of The Martin Luther King, Jr., FBI File, entitled The King-Levison File, consists of verbatim transcripts and detailed summaries of telephone conversations between King and one of his most trusted confidants, Stanley D. Levison, a New York lawyer and businessman with whom the civil rights leader spoke on an almost daily basis for more than six years. Since Levison was one of the few individuals to whom King could truly speak his mind—as well as voice occasional doubts and despair over the progress of the civil rights movement—these files shed light not only on King's many civil rights activities and his involvement in related causes, but on his personal feelings toward and reactions to the events that marked the last six years of his life. The King-Levison File differs from the first part of The Martin Luther King, Jr., FBI File in an important respect. The first part of The Martin Luther King, Jr., FBI File consists of hundreds of FBI memos, reports, and summaries of King's activities as well as his conversations with associates. Because the fruits of wiretaps that the FBI placed on King's own home, office, and hotel rooms are under a court order that will keep their contents sealed until at least the year 2027, no verbatim transcripts of wiretaps on King's home, office, or hotel rooms can be made public. However, due to the fact that The King-Levison File originates from wiretaps that the FBI placed on Stanley Levison's phones, verbatim transcripts of conversations between King and Levison, as well as conference calls involving other civil rights leaders, are now available to scholars for the first time. Ironically, it was due to King's friendship with Levison that the FBI initially directed its surveillance campaign against King. Beginning in 1962, highly valued informants within the top ranks of the American Communist Party told the FBI that one of King's closest confidants, New York lawyer Stanley Levison, was a long-time Communist functionary. Bureau agents closely monitored King's activities and listened to thousands of his phone conversations. Such round-the-clock surveillance kept FBI executives aware of King's every move and enabled them to pass along memos detailing King's upcoming political plans to interested superiors, including Attorney General Robert Kennedy and presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. FBI worries about King's supposedly dangerous associates came to be shared by top-ranking Justice Department officials, and in the fall of 1963 Robert Kennedy authorized the Bureau to expand its surveillance of King even further. Wiretaps were placed on King's own home and office phones, and hostile FBI officials began plotting ways in which they might harm King's public reputation and destroy his political influence. One upshot of this virulent antipathy was an extensive—and expensive—FBI effort to listen to and record King's most private moments by means of surreptitious "bugs" or microphones secretly planted in King's hotel rooms by specially skilled teams of Bureau agents. The King-Levison File includes, in the civil rights leader's own words, a great deal of information on such issues as King's consideration of a symbolic 1968 campaign for president; political infighting within the top echelon of the civil rights leadership; concerns over the financing of the civil rights movement; and King's reactions to the violent nature of American society. Just as importantly, The King-Levison File reveals the personal side of Dr. King. In a 1965 conference call with Andrew Young and Levison, King voiced doubts concerning his ability to publicly oppose the Vietnam War while maintaining the civil rights struggle: "I don't really have the strength to fight this issue and keep my civil rights fight going. The deeper you get involved the deeper you have to go, and I am already over- loaded and almost emotionally fatigued." Similarly, these files include a conversation between King and Levison that occurred one week before King's death, in which the civil rights leader despaired over his standing in the movement: "All I'm saying is that the Roy Wilkinses, the Bayard Rustins, and that stripe—and there are many of them—and the Negroes that are influenced by what they read in the newspapers, and Adam Clayton Powell, for another reason, you know, their point is: 'I'm right; Martin Luther King is dead; he's finished; his nonviolence is nothing. No one is listening to it.'" Using and Understanding The King-Levison File The King-Levison File comes not from a file kept under King's name or, indeed, kept at FBI headquarters in Washington at all, but from raw, unedited "logs" or transcripts. These were created by FBI agents and clerical employees in the Bureau's New York field office as they listened in on the electronic surveillances—an office "bug" or microphone and several telephone wiretaps—of King's close friend and confidant, New York attorney Stanley D. Levison. These logs were then filed as numerical "sub-files" to the New York office's own file on Levison, the latter carrying the number 100-111180. (The 100 is a basic coding that the FBI long used for "domestic security" cases; 111180 is a sequential file number indicating that Levison's case, opened initially in 1952, was the 111,180th inquiry begun by the New York office.) The FBI created, at various times, twelve different and separate numerical sub-files for New York 100-111180. Sub-files one through four concern two pre-1960 electronic surveillances of Levison by the FBI and remain withheld in their entirety—the FOIA exemption is 5 U.S.C. 552 (b) (1), commonly referred to as "B one." This was done on the grounds that the fact that the FBI did electronically surveil Levison prior to 1960 is still secret, classifiable information—even though these surveillances have now been known publicly for several years. The eight other numerical sub-files are most easily thought of as four distinct duos—an initial sub-file (numbers 5, 7,9, and 11), which contains the actual logs from four different bugs or taps, and a sequential sub-file (numbers 6, 8,10, and 12), which contains administrative documents relating to each of those four different taps.
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