THE COMMERCI

154th Year, No. 80, 8 Sections Memphis, Tennessee, Sunday Morning, Army feared King, secretly Spying on blacks started 75 years ago

By Stephen G. Tompkins by agents of the German Kaiser, began supplying sniper rifles Copyright 1993 then by Communists, later by and other weapons of war to ci- The Commercial Appeal the Japanese and eventually by vilian police departments. Army those opposed to the Vietnam Intelligence began planning for War. what some officers believed The intelligence branch of the At first, the Army used a re- United States Army spied on the would soon be armed rebellion. porting network of private citi- By March 1968, King was pre- family of Dr. Martin Luther zens that included church mem- King Jr. for three generations. paring to lead a march in Mem- bers, black businessmen such as phis in support of striking sani- Top secret, often illegal, intru- Memphis's Robert R. Church Jr., sions into the lives of black tation workers and another and black educators like the march a few weeks later that Americans began more than 75 Hampton Institute's Roscoe C. years ago and often focused on would swamp Washington with Simmons. It later employed cad- people demanding less attention black churches in the South and res of infiltrators, wiretaps and their ministers. to Vietnam and more resources aerial photography by U2 spy for America's poor. The spying was born of a con- planes. viction by top Army intelligence By then the Army's intelli- As the civil rights movement gence system was keenly fo- officers that black Americans merged with anti-war protests in were ripe for subversion — first cused on King and desperately the late 1960s, some Army units searching for a way to stop him.

AL APPEAL March 21, 1993 FINAL $1.75 watched him In the 25 years since, investiga- memoirs, diaries and meeting 25 YEARS LATER: tors have focused on the role the notes scattered around the FBI and other police agencies country in military archives, Domestic Spying played in King's life. Few have the Library of Congress, presi- paid attention to the Army's dential libraries and private col- U.S. Army spies shadowed Dr. activities. lections. Some of the documents Martin Luther King Jr. the day he Some of the Army's spying are still classified. Other pieces died in Memphis. They watched against anti-war and civil rights came from interviews with near- him closely through most of the groups became public knowl- ly 200 participants, including edge in 1971 congressional hear- the recollections of several doz- 1960s, but stepped up their ings. But key intelligence offi- en Army agents still living in observation of him in early 1968 cers avoided testifying, leaving this country and in Mexico. because of fears that his planned the full story untold. This newspaper's investiga- ''Poor People's Campaign" on The Commercial Appeal's 16- tion uncovered no hard evi- Washington would lead to month investigation of the dence that Army Intelligence widespread violence. Army's secret spy war with played any role in King's assassi- black citizens provides a first- nation, although Army agents time look inside the Army's larg- were in Memphis the day he was est-ever espionage operation killed. On April 4, 1968, King was within the United States. But the review of thousands of killed by a sniper's bullet at the Much of the story was pieced Lorraine Motel in Memphis. together from a trail of memos, Please see KING, Page A7

MEMPHIS, SUNDAY, MARCH 21, 1993

From Page A 1957 when he spoke at the 25th but gained credence because of anniversary of the Integrated real and perceived links King Highlander Folk School in Mont- between black civil rights activ- eagle, Tenn, Army Intelligence ists and Communists and other government documents and in- had watched the school for subversives. terviews with people involved years. From the Civil War through in the spying revealed that by A Sept. 6,1940, report from Maj. Vietnam. Army officers were al- early 1968 Army Intelligence re- G. R. Carpenter, assistant chief most exclusively white and garded King as a major threat to of staff for intelligence for the lived on military posts where national security. Sixth Corps Area hi Chicago, contact with ordinary black said the school's executive di- Americans was virtually nonex- A threat rector, Myles Horton, and Rev. istent. As late as 1967, only 3A9 Army Intelligence opened its Claude Williams of Memphis, a percent of the Army's 143.517 of- file on King in 1947 with a photo- New York native known for his ficers were black. Few Army graph showing him and other "Communistic activities," were commanders understood that Morehouse College students working together to teach "a lynchings, denial of basic hu- leaving a meeting of Mrs. Dor- course of instruction to develop man rights and economic othy Lilley's Intercollegiate Negro organizers in the south- repression were at the root of Council. She was a suspected ern cotton states." black unrest Communist, according to the King's visit was given extra Successive generations of file on King kept by the 111th weight because of an FBI report Army leaders saw black Ameri- Military Intelligence Group at received the previous July of his cans in the same light as Maj. Fort McPherson in Atlanta. Baltimore meeting with Stanley R. M. Howell, assistant chief of Reports on King's activities D. Levisori, a New York million- staff for intelligence at Fort were added periodically aire who had been under bureau McPherson in Atlanta. through the 1950s, but com- surveillance as a Communist "Communism has chosen the ments in his intelligence file in- fund-raiser since June 9, 1952. Southern Negro as the American dicate Army officers at first con- Levison and King formed a long group most likely to respond to sidered him more of a phenome- friendship and business rela- its revolutionary appeal," non than a threat. tionship. Howell told the War Department Army spies pegged King as a The suspicion with which top in a Dec. 5, 1932, intelligence re- Communist tool in the fall of Army officers viewed blacks had port its genesis in simple ignorance "Anti-communism" became a "ME COMMERCIAL APPEAL **** Al they left the 16th Street Baptist Church. Riots broke out and Ku Klux Klansmen patroled the "Communism has chosen the night streets with shotguns. On May 12, the White House or- Southern Negro as the American group dered Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair- man Gen. Earle Wheeler to send most likely to respond to its 3,000 men from Fort Henning, Ga., to Birmingham_ Maj. Gen. revolutionary appeal." Charles Billingslea, commander of the Army's 2nd Division, had — Maj. R. M. Howell asked for help in Birmingham because "I may have a full-scale "secular religion" for most 113th Intelligence Detachment revolt on my bands down here.'" Army officers after World War I, overheard King at a January Portions of the monthlong Bir- according to Dr. Christopher 1963 dinner at the Edgewater mingham disturbances were re- Pyle, a former Army intelli- Beach Hotel in Chicago telling corded by U2 spy planes taking • gence school instructor who "two black men and a pretty off from the supersecret 'Site blew the whistle in 1970 on the white woman that Project C was 98" outside NpT1 lq Air Force Base Army's domestic spying on anti- ready to go," according to the in Nevada. Over the next seven war groups. surveillance report the agent years, at least 26 other such do- "Anyone who appeared soft on filed- mestic spy flights by U2s and at communism" soon found his ca- A followup report dated Jan. least two involving the more ad- reer in limbo, Pyle. now a profes- 24 describes Project C as "plans vanced SR71 were requested by sor at Mt. Holyoke College in for massive disruption of public Army commanders and flown by South Hadley, Mass., told The antd• private enterprise in Bir- the Air Force, according to clas- Commercial Appeal mingham." sified documents reviewed by As King gained prominence as Three months later, King en- The Commercial Appeal. a civil rights leader, intelligence tered Birmingham. Television These expensive spy flights il- officers also came to believe he screens filled with pictures of lustrate Army commanders' was a man who sparked violence marching black elementary growing fear of domestic up- wherever he went, his nonvio- school children being herded heaval as King's influence grew. lent philosophy notwithstand- into police wagons while their When King turned against the ing. parent+ were bombarded with For example, an agent of the high-powered water guns as Please see SPY, Page AS

southern Mexico. war in mid-1965, it merely made OLAS's aim was to "commence pation with Vietnam. him that much more dangerous guerrilla wars throughout the On April 4, 1967, he told 3,000 to some Army officers. hemisphere to destabilize Unit- people at New York's Riverside "To career officers, these ed States-backed governments Church: (King's and other black mili- . and (OLAS) has pledged its "A few years ago, it seemed as tant) attacks were tantamount support to the Negro liberation if there was a real promise of to giving aid and comfort to the movement" hope for the poor, both black enemy in time of war," Pyle said Stokely Carmichael, co-chair- and white, through the poverty in an interview. "Since the en- man of the Student Nonviolent program. emy was a Communist interna- Coordinating Committee and a "And then came the buildup in tional suspicions of an nterna- leader of the black power move- Vietnam, and I watched this pro- tional conspiracy were con- ment, was among a number of gram broken and eviscerated as firmed." black Americans associated if it were some idle political Maj. Gen. William P. Yarbor- with the OLAS. plaything of a society gone mad ough, the Army's top spy, be- And Carmichael increasingly on war, and I knew that America came convinced that either the was seen in King's company. would never invest the neces- Chinese or Soviets, through Army Security Agency micro- sary funds or energies in reha- Cuba, bankrolled King and oth- phones recorded Carmichael bilitation of its poor, so long as er black radicals. trying to warn King that he was adventures like Vietnam contin- Yarborough's evidence came making powerful enemies dur- ued to draw men and skills and from Lt. Gen. Marcelino Garcia ing this exchange in King's Eb- money like some demonic de- Barragan, the Mexican minister enezer Baptist Church office in structive suction tube ... of national defense. Atlanta in early 1967: "Somehow this madness must Through a trusted aide, Garcia Carmichael: You making a lot cease. We must stop now." gave Army Intelligence a report of new enemies. Not sure (unin- The speech shook the world. on June 29, 1967, that said Mexi- telligible) Birmingham as dan- Life magazine called it "a dema- can Army Intelligence had dis- gerous as people you're pissing gogic slander that sounded like covered militant black Ameri- off. The man don't care you call a script for Radio Hanoi." cans receiving combat training ghettos concentration camps, Dispatches from the 525th and secret funding from the Ha- but when you tell him his war Military Intelligence Group vana-based Organization of Lat- machine is nothing but hired (MIG) in Vietnam reported that in American Solidarity (OLAS), killers, you got trouble. "Negro troops are unsettled" by financed by Communist China's King: I told you in Los Angeles articles on King's speech in Paci- military intelligence agency. I can do nothing else. fic Stars & Stripes and their The report said, "American In speech after speech the year hometown newspapers. Negroes (were) sighted (with) before he died, King tied the Maj. Gen. Joseph A. McChris- automatic weapons/unarmed growing disillusionment of in- tian, Army chief of intelligence combat training/drilling evi- ner-city and rural Southern in Vietnam, sent Yarborough a dent" at an urban guerrilla blacks to the country's preoccu- top secret April 14 diSpatch that training camp near Chiapas in "treasonous propaganoa trout commanders on Dec. 4, 1967, "a group calling itself Blacks when he announced his intent the weak point in the line, Against Negative Dying (BAND) to lead a poor people's march on which is tactically a good idea, is being mailed to Negro troops Washington the next spring to but you couldn't do it without telling them they are killing the focus public attention on "total, arousing animosity of all kinds. wrong enemy." direct and immediate abolition "You couldn't expect people to The dispatch also included re- of poverty." be rational and look at this in a ports of two instances of enlisted King's call for a "Poor People's cool way," he said. "We were try- soldiers shooting their officers. Campaign" came on the heels of ing to fight a war at the same McChristian also said three the nation's worst summer of time where the home base was 'black soldiers near Ankhe had violence in three years and an being eroded." offered a $200 pool for the execu- October anti-war protest in Army officers "take an oath to tion of a white captain with the which 200,000 demonstrators protect the country against all First Cavalry Division. had besieged the Pentagon as enemies, foreign and domestic," alarmed Army brass watched Yarborough said. "You see peo- Desperate men from the roof. ple breaking windows and To many, King's shift in direc- Civilian authority's responses throwing Molotov cocktails, tion served as a lens mfocus the to these upheavals snipers shooting policemen, peo- nation's compassion and sense had shaken the faith ple who are outwardly trying to of Army leaders in the shut the government down and of justice on resolving its inner announce that is what they are conflicts. government's stabil- But Yarborough and other in- ity. Top officers be- going to do, you have a feeling telligence officers heard only lieved the years of vio- that this is perhaps a domestic lence and protest had enemy." the voice of an enemy who was Blakefield told Army histor- gaining ground. weakened the nation's social and political ians in 1975: "There was a fear By summer 1967, the ground among high-ranking Army offi- was shaking. foundations. "Tank crews blast away at en- The escalating war cers that the long-term judg- in Vietnam, mean- ment of historians might be that trenched snipers with 50-caliber the Army, in the late 1960s, machineguns" was not a head- while, had stretched the Army's ability to failed to protect the people of line from Vietnam but from De- this country, as they had in oth- troit, where 43 people died and keep peace at home, safeguard Europe er times of crisis." $45 million in property was de- To stop that "enemy," Yarbor- stroyed. Rioters burned and from the Soviets and fight in Southeast ough and Blakefield used the re- plundered 100 other American sources of the largest domestic cities during that long, hot sum- Asia, secret docu- ments show. spy network ever assembled in a mer. free country. Detroit was particularly sig- Now King, in a De- nificant to Army leaders, not cember press confer- just for the bloodshed and dam- ence, promised "the The messiah worst chaos, hatred Though many black leaders and violence any na- spoke out against the Vietnam tion has ever encoun- War, Army Intelligence focused age but the results of a secret tered" if America did on King, whom Yarborough de- survey. not heed his demands scribed as "the messiah for his After the riot, 496 black males for change. people, his own personal quali- arrested for firing rifles and Memos obtained by ties notwithstanding." shotguns at Army troops were The Commercial Ap- King wasn't the first black herded into a warehouse north peal reveal Army leader, nor the first in his fami- of Detroit. They were inter- leaders were increas- ly, to be targeted for surveil- viewed by agents of the Army's ingly frustrated with top civil- lance by the Army's spy agen- ian Pentagon officials who ig- cies. Psychological Operations nored warnings that black un- Group, dressed as civilians, in rest was Communist-inspired, In September 1917, the War De- conjunction with the Behavior damaging morale in Vietnam partment's Military Intelligence Research Institute of Detroit. and leading to armed revolt at Division (MID) opened a file on The arrested men were asked King's maternal grandfather, dozens of questions, but the re- home. Rev. A. D. Williams. sponses 363 of them gave to the By December 1967, some offi- As pastor of Ebenezer Baptist question "Who is your favorite cers felt desperate. Among them Church, Williams played a key Negro leader?" stunned Army were Yarborough, who had been role in Atlanta's black communi- named assistant chief of staff for ty. He was the Atlanta NAACP's Intelligence. intelligence in 1966, and Maj. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was Gen. William Blakefield, chief of the clear favorite — 178 of the U.S. Army Intelligence Com- men named 'him. Men consid- first president in 1910 and an of- ered more radical, such as Car- mand, who reported to Yarbor- ough. ficer in the National Baptist Con- michael and Malcolm X, came in "The Army was over a barrel," vention, the largest black reli- a distant second and fourth. Yarborough said in an interview gious organization of the time. Army Intelligence leaders re- at his home in Southern Pines, During World War I, Military peatedly used this survey to sig- Intelligence targeted black min- nify the danger King represent- N.C. "Blacks were using the uncer- isters and others as trouble- ed to national security. makers or friends, depending on King really scared top Army tainty of the Vietnam period and taking advantage of it," Yarbor- whether they worked as MID in- ough said. "They were attacking formants. Memphis business- march on Washington man Robert R. Church Jr. sup- as well. as "a devastating civil plied MID Maj. Walter H. Loving Col. Walter A. Buck, assistant disturbance whose with names of prominent blacks chief of staff for intelligence, sole purpose is to shut in each major Southern city, in- Third Army, at Fort McPherson down the United telligence files show. in Atlanta said in a March 1947 States government." One of the first items in Wil- report to the War Department The analysis de- liams's intelligence file was a that the NNC "serves as the staff scribed King as "a Ne- top-secret telegram sent to the unit of the Communist Party gro who repeatedly Army's Southern Department among Negroes." has preached the mes- headquarters in Atlanta. The The NNC's "program includes sage of Hanoi and Pe- telegram said in part: the ultimate founding of a Negro "It behooves us to find out all state in the South after the revo- Some of the Army's best offi- we possibly can about this col- lutionary overthrow of white cers attended that meeting to ored preacher." landlords and capitalists," Buck discuss "target city priorities" in Later, a memo in Williams's said. light of "King's plans to ignite file labeled him a "radical Negro Of the three large black organ- violence and mayhem" through- agitator" for leading a campaign izations active at the start of out the United States in April, ac- to create a black high school. World War II — the NAACP, the cording to a report on the con- His NAACP involvement also National Urban League and the ference. earned him the attention of NNC — the National Negro Con- But the meeting broke up in Army intelligence officers, who gress was considered the most frustration, one participant said. believed the civil rights group activist and radical. Communist "Looking back, I remember was "an agitative pro-Soviet or- Party supporters gradually took nobody had any answers," he ganization for propagandizing it over, according to most histor- said. "We had all these West the Negroes," according to a 1926 ies, and a split with anti-war Sta- Point geniuses who could lead report by Lt. Col. Walter 0. Bos- linists at the start of WWII led to divisions. But when it came to well, Army Intelligence execu- the group's decline. stopping Dr. King, they didn't tive officer at the War Depart- Mere association with King's have a clue." ment. ' Nevertheless, Army Intelli-.. King's father, M. L. King Sr., eventually succeeded Williams Ebenezer Baptist could put a per- as pastor at Ebenezer — and in- son in Army Intelligence dos- herited his own Army watchers, siers. For example, Army Intelli- Army Intelligence records show. gence files contain surveillance King Sr.'s participation in the reports on Lillian D. Watkins, National Negro Congress tarred the church's financial secretary, •and Felton Sims, the custodian. The only apparent justification was their employment by M. L. "A few years ago, it seemed as King Sr. Army agents also watched an if there was a real promise of office two blocks from Ebenezer, which an April 1947 report from hope for the poor, both black Third Army headquarters de- scribed as "the Auburn Avenue and white, through the Branch (Negro) headquarters of the Communist Party of Geor- poverty program. gia." Surveillance re- "And then came the ports show local Com- munist head Dr. Ell- buildup in Vietnam, . . . and I wood Grant Boddie, a black dentist, visited knew that America would Ebenezer regularly. never invest the necessary Not a clue Despite the years of funds or energies in watching the King family, top Army offi- rehabilitation of its poor . . . cers were rattled by "Somehow this madness the prospect of Martin Luther King Jr. lead- must cease. We must stop ing a horde into the nation's capital again. now. An intelligence analysis distributed — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during a Dec. 12, 1967, conference at the Pen- tagon described him with the Communist brush king." King's nlans for the destine operations wan Inc gence intensified its surveil- the Special Operations Group lance of King and covertly dis- (SOG) or the top secret Detach- patched Green Beret teams to ment B-57 — were "dumped" make street maps, identify land- into the 20th "for safe-keeping," ing zones for riot troops and according to a former major scout sniper sites in 39 potential with Army counterintelligence. racially explosive cities, includ- "They couldn't let a lot of these crazy guys back into the Please see states because they couldn't for- SECRET, Page A9 get their training," he said. "Bir- mingham (20th SFG headquar- ing Memphis. ters) became Saigon. The rural The 20th Special Forces Group, South was in-country and at headquartered in Alabama, times things got out of hand." seemed perfect for these scout- Many members of the 20th SFG ing missions in the South. The during the '60s still live in the 20th SFG was a National Guard South, some under new identi- unit, part-time warriors who ties. Some of them spoke to The lived and worked in many of the Commercial Appeal only if their communities where black un- names were not used or loca- tions revealed. rest was centered. A former 20th Special Forces Green Berets from the 20th of- sergeant from Detachment B-6, ten spied on King and other Company B, who was stationed black Americans during the in Columbus, Miss., said the 1960s, military records and in- unit's undercover missions terviews show. Some Vietnam Special Forces "didn't peek into windows, if veterans — particularly those that's what you mean." who had worked "But a lot of us knew guys who in murky clan- knew things. You know, Klan

File photo

Floyd McKissick (left) of the Congress of Racial Equality, King and Stokely Carmichael take up James Meredith's march on U.S. 51 near Hernando, Miss., on June 7,1966, the day after Meredith was wounded by gunfire. Meredith was the first black admitted to Ole Miss. guys who hated niggers, so wen ask them about where nigger U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command troublemakers might meet, and we'd go there and then file a re- port. It wasn't any big deal." But it became a big deal. In return for paramilitary training at a farm in Cullman, Ala., Klansmen soon became the 20th's intelligence network, whose information was passed to the Pentagon. Bill Wilkinson, chief of the Klan's Invisible Empire branch in 1983, told United Press Inter- national (UPI) that the group no longer had a training camp at Cullman. "And they're not paramilitary. We called them 'Klan Special Forces.' " he said. Tinderbox While Army commanders chewed on the King problem, another one came to a head: The sinkhole of Vietnam had sapped the military's pool of available, experienced manpower. A grim group of Army gener- als received that secret news on Feb. 8, 1968, in a bugproof con- ference room at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., head- quarters of the U.S. Strike Com- mand, responsible for the de- fense of the continental United States. Two secrets in particular chilled the combat veterans: Gen. William C. Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam and a close West Point classmate of Yarborough's, bad- ly needed reinforcements de- Army Intelligence agents conduct radio surveillance in 1968. spite a publicly optimistic report Surveillance was conducted in Memphis the day King was killed. he had given President Johnson just a few weeks before. the Seventh Army (in Europe)." as illustrated by a recording Yet there weren't enough Upon his return from the Mac- made Feb. 7, 1968, by Army Secu- troops left in the United States to Dill meeting, Yarborough told a rity Agency buggers. control a nationwide outbreak top aide: "I can't believe what Army undercover agents had of protests, let alone the armed sorry shape we're in." followed Carmichael and King revolt many officers expected. to the Pitts Motor Hotel in north- "We knew the whole country west Washington, where the two was a tinderbox," said Ralph M. Shadowing King activists met in Brown's room. Stein, a Pace University law pro- But Yarborough and other in- Carmichael had recently re- fessor who in 1968 was the top telligence officers had little turned from Hanoi. Army Intelligence analyst in the time to bemoan their situation. Brown and Carmichael ar- Counterintelligence Analysis King was busy building mo- gued against turning the other Bureau at the Pentagon. mentum for his poor people's cheek in the upcoming Washing- "Once we recognized the mag- march and trying to maintain a ton march. nitude of actual civil distur- bridge between moderate civil Brown: We stop the fuckers bances, based on our worst possi- rights forces like the NAACP here. Right here. ble scenarios, we didn't have and his own Southern Christian Carmichael: No more Uncle enough combat-type troops to Leadership Conference and the Tom, dammit. This let-them-shit- react to widespread riots," Stein increasingly militant Student on-you shit . . . ain't working. said. Nonviolent Coordinating Com- You know it and so does every- "At one point, we even consid- mittee of Stokely Carmichael body. ered pulling troops out of Viet- and H. Rap Brown. King: Is killing and burning nam or withdrawing units from King did not have an easy task, (unintelligible) in your own

lent, and Bernard Lee (right) had to clear the way for King and Rev. Ralph Abernathy. King was assassinated a week later. later. week a assassinated was King Abernathy. Ralph Rev. and King for way the clear to had (right) Lee Bernard and lent,

On March 28, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marched in support of striking Memphis sanitation workers. The march turned vio- turned march The workers. sanitation Memphis striking of support in marched Jr. King Luther Martin Dr. 1968, 28, March On Courtesy Mississippi Volley Collection Collection Volley Mississippi Courtesy aity." war radicals. people's streets your answer? Armed camp Teams of police and Army In- Carmichael: It's time. We can't While Army Intelligence telligence officers followed and wait anymore, and the people scrambled to develop hard infor- photographed King during a (unintelligible) us are tired of mation that could be used to prayer march in Arlington waiting. counter King's Washington Cemetery on Feb. 6, 1968, and his King: Nobody is as tired (of plans, others made their own sermon the following day at Ver- waiting) as me. preparations for what many mont Avenue Baptist Church. Carmichael: Then let's shut feared would be another sum- The officers later used the pic- the honkies down. They bring mer of violence. tures for dart practice. the Army, we fight the fuckers Detroit Mayor Jerome P. Ca- While these Army Intelligence with ours. We got guns. March- vanagh, who saw his city be- units secretly worked with civil- ing for peace — shit, you seen it. come a war zone in July 1967, ian police departments, other What's it got us? asked the city's Common Coun- Army officers supplied automat- An hour after that exchange, cil to authorize a $9 million bond ic weapons and even rocket Army agents listened to King issue to buy machineguns, M-1 launchers to the black market, tell 600 people at Vermont Ave- carbines, gas masks, flak vests, where they often ended up in nue Baptist Church: 50,000 rounds of ammunition, in- the hands of militants, white "We seek to say to the nation frared sniper scopes, tear gas and black. in our campaign that if you don't guns and grenades, 50 new scout Stolen or missing Army weap- straighten up, then you're writ- cars, eight armored vehicles, a ons had been sold to extremists ing your own obituary." helicopter and spotter plane. and rioters as far back as 1940, Intelligence officers and other Mayors and police officials in according to Army records. high-ranking government offi- other cities such as Los Angeles, In May 1963, a carload of white cials found it hard to mesh such Philadelphia, Miami, Chicago men using Army-issue 45-caliber rhetoric with King's avowed and Newark also began buying pistols with Army bullets shot nonviolence. high-powered rifles, machine- up and firebombed the farm of In a Feb. 14 memo to President guns, armored vehicles and tear Hartman Turnbow, who had Johnson, White House aide gas grenades. dared to be the first black in Larry Temple called King's phil- In Memphis, new Fire and Po- Holmes County, Miss., to register osophy "criminal disobedience" lice Commissioner Frank C. Hol- to vote in the 20th Century. and urged the president to "pub- loman began outfitting five new The pistols had been "mis- licly unmask this type of con- anti-sniper squads with 30.06 ri- placed" from an Alabama ar- duct for what it really is." fles with scopes, the civilian ver- mory and sold to Ku Klux Klans- On Feb. 15 at Fort Holabird, sion of the rifle used by Army men from Greenwood, Miss., by Md., Blakefield met with three sniper teams. an Army National Guard ser- of Yarborough's top aides — Her- While big city officials were geant, an Army officer familial, bert Taylor, special assistant to with the case said. The weapon the Army's top spy; Dayton Cas- were never officially recorded sidy of the Counterintelligence making these public moves, as lost, the officer said. Analysis Branch; and Frederick some Army units secretly took The Defense Supply Agency H. Gaston Jr., Army Intelligence matters in their own hands. between 1958-63 supplied riot Systems Analysis Group. In February 1968, the 113th shotguns, M-1 rifles with bayo- A still classified memo of the Military Intelligence Group nets and Army radios to police meeting said 8lakefield wanted (MIG) at Fort Sheridan, Ill., out- and highway patrol units in Lou- a "systematic analysis of King's side Chicago, began supplying isiana, Mississippi, Alabama and plans, manpower and weapons the "Legion of Justice" terrorist Georgia. But the practice was we might see in the streets" of group with tear gas, Mace, elec- discontinued in 1964 because Washington in April. tronic surveillance equipment "these weapons are finding On Feb. 19, King went to Miami and money to harass anti-war their way into the hands of un- to drum up support for the "Poor groups. desirables or extremists," an Oc- People's Campaign." Armed Led by Chicago lawyer S. tober 1963 Army Provost Mar- with a new $230,000 Ford Foun- Thomas Sutton, who recruited shal report said. dation grant, he told a group of Chicago police intelligence offi- Many weapons turned up black ministers that American cers, the Legion used wiretaps "lost" during training exercises capitalism must be reorganized. supplied by 113th agents to in the United States and Mexico, Rev. Samuel Billy Kyles of break into and bug the offices of according to a classified Justice Memphis, who was in the audi- anti-war groups. Department file reviewed by ence, later that afternoon told In Baltimore, the Inspectional The Commercial Appeal. King about 1,300 Memphis sani- Services Division of the city po- During a 1967 training exer- tation workers who were strik- lice received secret funding cise at Camp Shelby, Miss., in- ing against the city for refusing from the 109th MIG to spy on volving Alabama, Mississippi to recognize their union. Kyles, area black radicals. and Louisiana National Guard joining Rev. James Lawson, In Washington, the Metro Po- troops, soldiers of the 20th Spe- asked King to come to Memphis lice received $120,000 in 1967 and cial Forces Group lost "70 M-16 to support the strikers. $150,000 in 1968 from Army Intel- rifles and assorted AS pistols and A Feb. 22 report in King's ligence. Undercover police in- ammunition," a report in the file Army Intelligence file states: telligence officers met regularly says. An undetermined number "Indications from reliable with 116th MIG agents. They of M-72 light anti-tank weapon .source are MLK will be in Mem- maintained an index card file of rockets also were "lost during phis to support union striking 21,000 suspected black and anti- soon turned violent, leaving a me exercises, the report aocea. 17-year-old dead, 60 injured and The Justice Department file 120 in police custody. was put together in preparation Later, in his eighth-floor room for the trial of Maj. Gen. Carl C. at the Rivermont Hotel, King Turner, provost marshal of the warned Memphis's black leaders Army. Turner, the Army's top that he would not participate in law enforcement officer, plead- another march unless it was bet- ter organized. An FBI report on the Memphis ed guilty in 1971 to selling fire- violence condemned King. arms illegally to the Kansas City "This clearly demonstrates and Chicago police departments. that acts of so-called nonvio- Turner also tried in February lence advocated by King cannot 1968 to secretly sell machine- be controlled. The same thing guns and sniper rifles to Mem- could happen in his planned phis's assistant police chief Hen- massive civil disobedience for ry E. Lux at a Sacramento confer- Washington in April." ence on civil disturbances spon- In Washington the day after sored by the International the march, Sen. Robert Byrd (D- Association of Chiefs of Police. Va.) said, "The nation was given Lux turned down the offer. a preview of what may be in The Army had always battled store for this city by the out- theft of its weapons, but now rageous and despicable riot that powerful tools of death were Martin Luther King helped turning up in the hands of grow- troublemakers. bring about in Memphis . . ." ing numbers of people fighting Details of those plans were King flew to Atlanta that day, the government. kept secret from civilian law en- but promised to return to Mem- forcement agencies for fear of phis the following week to lead Destiny nears leaks. Still, at least the Army felt another march. In public appearances around better prepared for King. On March 31, the president of the country, King continued to But before Washington came the United States became a casu- hammer away at the "terrible, Memphis. alty of Vietnam — Johnson an- tragic, unjust war taking place At 11:06 am. on March 28, King nounced he would ant seek re- in Vietnam" and to drum up in- linked arms with Rev. Ralph election. terest in his "Poor People's Cam- Abernathy, his trusted col- On April 3, King returned to paign." league in the SCLC, and Bishop Ivi_empi his,_Arm ___y_ a :ifL_om the King's rallying cry came B. Julian Smith of the Christian 111th Milner against the backdrop of West- Methodist Episcopal Church and Grou* shadowed his movements moreland's request for still led a march in support of Mem- an monitored radio traffic more troops in Vietnam and the phis's striking sanitation from a sedan crammed with 1968 presidential primaries. workers. electronic equipment— -- Anti-war candidate Eugene Mc- The peaceful demonstration Eri—h-T—Gri Beret soldiers Carthy won a startling 42 per- from_au up ion Detiehinent cent of the vote in New Hamp- Al ha 184 Team" were irgiiii- shire's primary. Sen. Robert oift WfTiti:- Kennedy took the cue to get into IcliORD-MiS.S. OL__. 1-,S_Il_clL:_AAeams._ the race, promising to end the , uall con ained 12 members. war and heal the nation. On pril 4, at 6:01 p.m., a bullet And the war was going badly. from a 30.06 rifle equipped with The Tet Offensive had shattered a scope struck King down on the Westmoreland's forecast of im- balcony of the Lorraine Motel. pending victory. More than The man whose fingerprints 40,000 soldiers had deserted in were found on that type gun - 1967, and drug use among Army James Earl Ray — pleaded guilty troops in Vietnam had gotten so to King's murder and is serving bad that the 135th Military Intel- a 99-year prison sentence. Ray ligence Group in Saigon con- bought the rifle from a sporting cluded in February 1968 that goods store in Birmingham, FBI "we are approaching the stage investigators said. where in some maneuver batta- On Oct. 3, Atty. Gen. Ramsey lions whole squads are infested Clark sent a report to the White (with drugs)." House. The predicted summer of Meanwhile, the Army had fin- violence that was to have begun ished its intelligence outlines on with King's April 22 demonstra- 124 cities with the potential for tions in Washington never hap- violence that summer. The out- pened, the report said. lines included maps with all Rioting had broken out in sev- "sensitive areas" marked, land- .ral cities as news of King's as- ing zones, secret storage sites for sassination spread, but "there riot gear and weapons, and files was a clear and significant de- on all civic leaders and known 21.ine in the number and sever- Lty of riots and disorders this rummer," Clark said. HOW THEY SPIED

U.S. Army domestic spying pository (USAIRR) contained 6.2 operations, 1968: million personal and 208,972 sub- ■ 304 intelligence offices ject files in orange folders. across the continental United ■ Beginning in early 1967, a States, divided into six regional military intelligence groups $2 million computerized filing (MIGs), plus the 116th MIG that and retrieval system (the operated exclusively in metro- Randtriever I) was installed. It politan Washington. was necessary because the pre- ■ Fiscal 1968 budget for all vious year, the repository pro- MIGs — $14.4 million, up 26 per- cessed 338,613 new cases and cent from the previous year, handled another 676,628 re- plus $300,000 for surveillance quests for dossiers by various equipment. federal agencies. ■ All offices connected by a II Army Intelligence pub- state-of-the-art ASR 35 communi- lished green-and-white glossy cations system, described as "an paperback "mug bugs" on black automatic sending/receiving radicals containing photo- teletype with a voice/data capa- graphs, family history, political bility." philosophy, personal finances ■ Another super-secret MIG, and surveillance data to permit the 902nd, controlled directly by intelligence personnel and Maj. Gen. William P. Yarbor- Army commanders in riot areas ough, assistant chief of staff for to identify the "dissident ele- intelligence. ments" within a community. ■ The 902nd commanded by ■ Intelligence units also as- Vietnam veteran Col. John W. signed to the U.S. Strike Com- Downie from offices in Falls mand at MacDill Air Force Base Church, Va. in Florida and the Continental ■ Classified intelligence files Army Command (CONARC), un- reviewed by The Commercial der the direction of intelligence Appeal reveal the 902nd spied on chief Brig. Gen. H. L. Ash. politicians, activists and celebri- a These commands main- ties. tained their own files on black ■ The eight MIGs employed subversives, as did individual 798 Army officers, 1.573 enlisted intelligence units attached to men and 1,532 civilians, includ- the 5th Mechanized Infantry Di- ing 67 black undercover agents. vision at Fort Carson, Colo., and Of the total, 1,576 were directly the 18th Airborne Corps head- involved in intelligence-gather- quartered at Fort Bragg, N.C. ing activities. About 260 of these ■ The Army Security Agency spies were civilians. (ASA) employed expert wiretap- ■ Army Intelligence main- pers, buggers and safe-crackers. tained "subversive/national se- In unmarked Volkswagen mini- curity" dossiers on 80,731 Ameri- buses equipped with radio direc- cans and 211,243 organizations. tion finders, ASA agents cruised ■ It had access to the Defense streets searching for clandes- Central Index of Investigation's tine radio transmissions that (DCII) 19 million personnel dos- might reveal the start of civil siers; more than 2.2 million files disturbances. at the FBI, Secret Service, Civil ■ Air Force reconnaissance Service Commission, Passport aircraft like the RF 101 sent aeri- Office and CIA; criminal files at al photos to the Army's Imagery most large police departments; Interpretation Center at Fort Ho- credit bureau, school registra- labird, while Army helicopters tion and airline reservation rec- followed the paths of marchers ords; and the "Special Service or suspected armed radicals. Staff" files, a covert group of In- ■ All pertinent information ternal Revenue Service agents collected on subversives and that maintained tax dossiers on radicals was channeled to Yar- 8,585 individuals and 2,873 or- borough's staff, specifically the ganizations. Counterintelligence Analysis ■ At Fort Holabird, Md., head- Bureau (CIAB), secretly head- quarters of the Army Intelli- quartered in a red brick ware- gence Command, the giant U.S. house at 1430 S. Bads St. in Ar- Army Investigative Records Re- lington, Va. U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command

All Army Intelligence operations in the continental United States were coordinated out of the U.S. Army Intelligence Command operations room at Fort Holabird, Md., pictured here in 1968. Top spy feared current below surface unrest "This is a war of ideology and By Stephen G. Tompkins persuasion," he told Gen. Wil- The Commercial Appeal liam C. Westmoreland in a Feb- ruary 1968 letter about the pro- tests that had begun sweeping Army spying on civilians ex- the country. panded in the '60s because the Westmoreland, who com- FBI and local police forces mandea U.S. forces in Vietnam proved unreliable, according to from 1965-68, was a West Point the man who was the Army's top classmate, 1936, as was Gen. spy in 1966-68. Creighton Abrams, who com- But Lt. Gen. William Pelham manded U.S. forces in Vietnam Yarborough, who became Army after Westmoreland. assistant chief of staff for intelli- Yarborough told Westmore- gence in December 1966, also land, "... the minions of Mao was motivated by a deeper con- Tse-tung and Ho Chi Minh are cern that anarchy and treason leading us around by our noses lay behind the anti-war and civil . even to the degree of having rights movements. us try to convince ourselves that In a two-hour interview at his we can't win and that Ho's cause North Carolina home, Yarbor- is more just and valid than our ough defended Army Intelli- own." gence's role in spying on Dr. Yarborough's career clearly Martin Luther King Jr. and oth- prepared him for this war. er Americans and said he never The son of Col. Leroy W. Yar- authorized anything illegal. borough, an Army Intelligence "If it was completely illegal or officer who served in the Far un-American, we would have East from 1918-22, William Yar- turned in our suits," he said. borough served as an Airborne It had been illegal since 1958 regimental commander during for the Army to spy on American World War II; deputy director of citizens at home, but Yarbor- the Army assistance operations ough said the FBI, which was re- in Cambodia, 1956-57; and com- sponsible for counterintelli- mander of the 66th Military In- gence inside the United States, telligence Group in Stuttgart, needed help as civil unrest Germany, 1958-59, where he spread. worked with legendary spymas- "The FBI was inundated and ters Roger Hilsman and Ed Lans- unable to function," he said. dale. "Their resources were overload- From 1961-65, he commanded ed and they were especially lack- the John F. Kennedy Center for ing in black counterintelligence Special Warfare at Fort Bragg, people." N.C. — the Green Berets school. But military records and inter- While there, he argued that his views with former staff mem- elite Special Forces comman- bers show Yarborough was con- does and Army Intelligence vinced that Army Intelligence could "mutually support" one was engaged in a war with Com- another in "counterinsurgency munists for the minds of Ameri- cans. Please see ARMY, Page A10 RCIAL APPEAL MEMPHIS, SUNDAY,, MARCH 21, 1993

Yarborough Special Collection/Boston College

Mai. Gen. William P. Yarborough (right) greets Gen. Harold Johnson outside the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, N.C. Johnson later would be Army chief of staff and Yarborough his assistant chief of staff for intelligence. horde below us, waving tneir battering rams, so to speak ... operations both foreign and do- the Secretary of Defense turned mestic," according to letters he to the Chief of Staff of the Army wrote to Maj. Gen_ Garrison B. and said. 'Johnny, what are we Coverdale, commander of the going to do about this?' U.S. Army Intelligence Center at "Johnny said, 'I'm damned if I Fort Holabird, Md. know.— During Yarborough's tenure Yarborough knew: He doubled as assistant chief of staff for in- his intelligence-gathering ef- telligence, Army Intelligence forts against King and his sup- made frequent use of Green Be- porters. ret troops in domestic spying. "We had some reason to feel An officer who served under outside influences were aiding Yarborough at Fort Bragg de- and abetting those who had a le- scribed him as "an expert at gitimate right (to protest) inside counterinsurgency." the U.S., and this became the rea- One of Yarborough's top aides son to try and invoke more so- at Army Intelligence described phisticated means to find out him as "a very able guy, much who was doing what," Yarbor- more able than his successor, ough told The Commercial Ap- but he had a rag• on about radi- peal. cals and subversion. He was al- Records show he liked to ways saying that we knew how quote Phillip Abbot Luce's A to deal with subversion in other Road to Revolution: Communist countries but not at home." Guerilla Warfare in the U.S.A. to Yarborough's opinion of anti- his staff. particularly the section war protesters comes across that said Communists "have ob- clearly in this excerpt from an viously decided that urban ne- interview conducted by two gro ghettos hold the key to guer- Army historians shortly after rilla activities that can create his retirement in 1975. enough anarchy to constitute a The general described "the revolution." burning of Washington, the "To dig it out," Yarborough siege of the Pentagon" during an October 1967 anti-war march on the Pentagon_ said, " a jettisoning of certain "What some people don't re- civil rights must take place. One member was the terror that all has to resort occasionally to cur- this struck into the hearts of the fews, to search and seizure, to people that thought the empire mail monitoring, to telephone was coming apart at the seams." tapping, in order to get to that Yarborough said he stood on vast (guerrilla) underground." the Pentagon roof: Yet, Yarborough told The "It looked like a castle where Commercial Appeal, "We were the Huns had gathered around: not totalitarians. We were not as far as the eye could reach, trying to do our fellow Ameri- there they were, shaking their cans in. We were trying to help bony fists. There were American the agencies of the government Nazis. There were Communists. keep law and order so that ra- There were hippies.... tional solutions could be "I can assure you it was a sight reached. to make you stop to think," be "I couldn't imagine my own said. country being in an insurgent Army Chief of Staff Harold situation, but the earmarks were Johnson and Defense Secretary there." Robert McNamara also were on the roof, Yarborough remem- bered. "As we looked at this great There is no known record In 1917, spy target of Van De- man's re- sponse, though was black America he later told Maj. Fuller Potter, second By Stephen G. Tompkins in command of MID's Counter- The Commercial Appeal intelligence Ralph Police in New Lt. Col Ralph Van Deman Van Daman York: "The black church created the Army's black spy will always be a target of our en- network in 1917. emies." He continued to influence spy- Van Demon, therefore, made ing on American citizens until the black church MID's target. his death in 1952, The Commer- MID records show a constant cial Appeal's review of intelli- concern over the loyalty of gence files shows. black churchgoers and leaders The spy system that would despite large public demonstra- question the loyalties of black tions of patriotism like the Na- - Americans for generations be- tional Baptist Convention meet- gan May 3, 1917. That day, Secre- ing that Army spies photo- tary of War Newton D. Baker or- graphed on Oct 24, 1918. dered Van Deman to crank up Van Deman's agents watched the department's sleepy Military families that entertained troops, Intelligence Division. followed soldiers' girlfriends to After declaring war on Ger- determine their loyalty, many, the United States needed watched hotels and listened to an internal security network, Sunday sermons in black and the Army would provide it churches. The Secret Service and the Jus- Van Demon also widened his tice Department's infant Bureau investigation, establishing MID of Investigation were too small branch offices in New York, or inexperienced to handle the than you all MIS. beware when Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, large counterespionage task. you train 50,000 or 60,000 of the Salt Lake City, New Orleans, San Scott, a black man burned at the Van Deman immediately set negro race." Francisco and Los Angeles, lay- stake by a mob after being ac- out to define which groups In early July, race riots in East ing the foundation for creation cused of assaulting a Dyersburg, posed a serious threat to the St. Louis, ill., had resulted in the of 304 intelligence offices: in the Tenn, woman. country's security. deaths of 39 blacks and nine 1960s. "Is there not some way by In a June 2, 1917, memo to Ba- whites and the callout of the Illi- Van Deman and Loving began which we may assure the col- ker, he said the United States nois National Guard to restore recruiting informers within the ored people of that section that faced four principal domestic order. On July 30, in Waco, Tex- black community. the government will take steps enemies: the International as, 20 black soldiers of the 24th Robert R. Moton, Booker T. to bring to justice the perpetra- Workers of the World (IWW), Infantry clashed with local au- Washington's successor at Tus- tors of this awful crime?" Lov- forerunner of the AFL-CIO bit- thorities, leaving one black sol- kegee Institute, came aboard, as ing asked. terly opposed to the war; oppo- dier dead and several whites did Dr. C. V. Roman of Nashville, But Van Daman wanted proof nents of the draft; Socialists and wounded. who sent Loving a list of poten- of subversion, not moral judg- "Negro Unrest" On Aug. 2, Van Deman, then 52, tial black informants and trou- ments. Racial unrest and violence dis- walked into a small conference blemakers in the Mid-South. He hired Joel E. Spingarn, the gusted Van Deman, according to room in the Hooe Building in Loving wrote Van Demon on white board chairman of the letters he wrote to his family Washington and shared these re- Nov. 23, 1917, that "Mr. Robert R. NAACP, and made him a major while stationed in the Philip- ports with 10 MID staff members. Church of Memphis, Tenn., who in MID in May 1918. pines in 1906. He told them to launch an im- • is one of the wealthiest men of Spingarn and black agent Lt. His letters made special note mediate, comprehensive intelli- the race, ... has put me in touch T. Montgomery Gregory ran a of a riot by black soldiers in gence effort targeting black with one prominent colored small unit of undercover agents, Brownsville, Texas, that left two America. man in each of the largest South- according to intelligence docu- white townspeople dead, plus ri- In a memo to Baker nine days ern cities." ments. ots in Atlanta in which two later, Van Deman declared that Loving also tried to tell Van The documents show Spin- whites and 10 blacks were killed "German influence" was "at the Deman that not all black dissent gam, who remained NAACP and five times that many were bottom of Negro unrest" arose from German influence. chairman during his tenure at wounded, raped or tortured. He also predicted imminent In a Dec. 2, 1917, letter, Loving MID, used his post to obtain criti- Similar violence erupted in "violence of a serious nature" sent Van Deman a clip from The cal information for MID, such as 1917, and at MID, Van Deraan among the nation's black popu- Commercial Appeal about Ligon a list of the organization's 32,000 was receiving reports of grow- lation. On Aug. 23, black soldiers members. ing black militancy. in Houston rioted, leaving 17 The NAACP gives an annual On July 24, a letter arrived black troopers and white citi- award named for Spingarn. from a group calling itself -The zens dead. Opening private mail became Black Nation": "The Germans Baker's special assistant, Em- second nature. During World has not done us any harm, and mett Scott, wrote Van Deman War I, MID opened 100,000 pieces they cannot treat us any meaner that black troops' anger over of mail a week and surreptitious- mistreatment had caused the ly subscribed to more than 60 violence. Mack publications. But Van Demon ignored the Despite these efforts, Van De- explanation, as be would later man could not convince his su- efforts to dissuade him from his periors of a German-orchestrat- conviction that black dissent ed black subversive movement stemmed from foreign-backed But Luther Wirzke helped subversion. change that in February 1918. He turned his attention to the Witzke, a German naval lieuten- black church after receiving a ant, spy and saboteur, gave Van memo Aug. 28 from Maj. Walter Demon proof that blacks were H. Loving, a black soldier on his the country's Achilles heeL staff. Witzke and German spy Kurt Rev. Charles H. Williams. field A. Jahnke had been responsible secretary of the National Coun- for three bombings in the Unit- cil of Churches, had told Loving ed States in 1916 and 1917 that no one was more influential in killed at least 16 and caused mil- the black community than its lions of dollars in damage to ministers. military installations. But in 1918, Witzke, Jahnke lP

Lug helped the nation avoid seri- ous social, industrial and politi- cal disruption during World War L

"The calmness of the Ameri- can home front during World War I owed something to the fact that a good deal of time and ef- fort was spent by many people, including the members of the Military Intelligence Division, in making sure it stayed quiet" Yet, Finnegan said, Van De- man's belief that foreign subver- sion inspired dissent "helped create an atmosphere of repres- sion and conformity which inev- itably led to the excesses of the Red Scare after the war." Those excesses extended be- yond labor Unions and Bolshe- viks to include black Americans. Although the home front stayed quiet and black soldiers and their families proved their loyalty, Army spying against blacks not only continued, but accelerated in the years between the world wars. After his retirement in Sep- tember 1929. Van Deman set up a private security firm in San Diego, from which he operated a FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (right) and longtime aide Clyde A. right-wing intelligence Tolson arrive at the Supreme Court in July 1942. network, investigating Com- munists and black radicals. and six other German agents He regularly shared informa- were preparing to launch their Witzke's court-martial at Fort tion from his 85,000 files with most ambitious project from a Sam Houston, Texas, on Aug. 16, Army intelligence officers who base in Mexico. 1918: traveled from The Presidio in "There is something terrible "I were to go and see the col- San Francisco to meet with him. going to happen on the other ored soldiers and the colored Van Deman's influence also side of the border when I get population ... and explain what extended beyond the Army. there," Witzke told Col. Paul Ber- we were going to carry out, that In 1918, he introduced Clyde nardo Altendorf, a 40-year-old we were going to carry out a rev- A. Tolson, a Baker aide, to a native of Poland who served in elution." young Justice Department cleric the Mexican Army and helped Gleaves said Witzke intended John Edgar Hoover. who in 1924 MID spy on Germans in Mexico. to bribe black soldiers not to in- became head of the Bureau of In- Altendorf helped Witzke cross terfere when white officers or- vestigation, later the FBI. the border at Nogales, Ariz., dered them to suppress strikers Tolson left the War Depart- where Witzke was arrested_ that Witzke would organize to ment in 1928 to join the FBL He His luggage, snatched from shut down vital industries. became Hoover's No. 2 man by the Bowman Hotel on the Mexi- Witzke confirmed that radical 1947, which he remained until can side, contained coded mes- blacks had received weapons Hoover's death in 1972. sages and cipher tables, which and that German agents "have Many Hoover scholars believe Van Deman's cryptographers hidden our explosives under Tolson and his boss were lovers. soon broke. colored homes and floorboards Whatever their relationship, Those messages and other in- of colored churches." Tolson for 40 years would keep This information hit the War close contact with Army Intelli- formation developed through Deportment and White House gence, The Commercial Appeal's interrogating like German artillery. review of intelligence files Witzke and Van Demon, sitting in his new shows. others uncov- seven-story headquarters at 15tia Those intelligence documents ered plans to and M Streets NW, immediately provide clues to Hoover's unu- begin a revolts- cabled MID offices nationwide sual level of cooperation with don in Amer- to "make all efforts to uncover Army Intelligence. ica. Negro subversion_ ... Weapons The FBI director, obsessed Mines, fac- and explosives supplied by Ger- with turf and power, was no fan tories, rail- man agents are in this country," Of the Office of Naval Intelli- roads, bridges, Van Demon was given a free gence, the oldest government es- and telegraph hand to eliminate the threat. pionage organization in the and telephone Army Intelligence historian United States, or of the Central Luther systems were John P. Finnegan said Van De- Intelligence Agency, with which • Witzke targeted for si- man's emphasis on domestic spy. he battled for control of spying multaneous inside the United States. explosions. Weapons and explo- But Hoover and Van Deman, sives had been smuggled into often through Tolson, regularly designated sites by truck and shared information on their submarine, according to court- dual obsessions — Negro and martial records and Mn) docu- Communist agitators. Hoover ments. continued to share information Black British agent William with the Army's intelligence Gleaves, who Witzke thought branch long after Van Deman's was on his side, testified at retirement. er Mitchell Livingston WerBell of Atlanta, a former OSS agent Spying linked who ran his own paramilitary training camp on a 60-acre farm in Powder Springs, Ga. WerBell supplied military weapons to anybody with the Carmichael to cash to pay for them. WerBell also had key contacts through- out the Caribbean. Carmichael was photographed to Maj. Gen. William P. Yarbor- Chinese, Cuba talking to one of those contacts ough, Army assistant chief of staff for intelligence, at his regu- — Marti Tellez — in the Havana lar Thursday meeting at CIA Libre Hotel on July 27. Teller, a headquarters on Aug. 10. By Stephen G. Tompkins former Haitian army captain, On Aug. 2, five days after meet- The Commercial Appeal flew contraband for Burnstine's ing with Tellez, Carmichael said Miami-based Florida Atlantic he would lead an armed revolt Airlines. against his homeland. In early May 1967, Army Intel- A Cuban agent working for the ligence microphones hidden in "We are organizing urban CIA took the picture, and a re- guerrillas in the United States the Student Nonviolent Coordi- port on the meeting was for- nating Committee offices in At- according to the tactics inspired warded to Army Intelligence. by Guevara of creating two or lanta recorded SNCC co-chair- Carmichael was in Havana to man Stokely Carmichael discuss- three more Vietnams to bring attend meetings of the Organiza- the collapse of capitalism and ing an armed revolt by black tion of Latin American Solidar- Americans. imperialism," Carmichael said. ity. Carmichael then threatened CARMICHAEL: We'd learn a "These (OLAS) are radical lot from studying (Che) Gue- President Lyndon Johnson, Sec- Communist revolutionaries who retary of Defense Robert McNa- vara's tactics. But baby, we gotta advocate militant and coordinat- have the guns and stuff to do the mara and Secretary of State ed guerrilla warfare throughout Dean Rusk damage. The man don't under- the Americas," according to an "We are not waiting for them stand till you aim at his head. analysis of the meeting based on (Argentine-born Guevara was CIA reports. to kill us. We will kill first and Cuban strongman Fidel Castro's The analysis had been handed we will settle the score," Carmi- top lieutenant and wrote an in- chael said. "We must make ven- fluential book on guerrilla war- speech at New York's Kivermae geance against the leaders of the fare.) Church on April 4, 1967, Carmi- United States. We don't know if SNCC EMPLOYEE GEORGE chael encouraged a black audi- our people are ready yet, but our WARE: Yeah, well, where you ence in St. Petersburg, Fla., on list is ready. gonna get it? April 18 to support King's stance "We have no alternative but to CARMICHAEL: South, south of on Vietnam, "and when they ask use aggressive armed violence," here. you, tell them, 'Yeah, yeah, we Carmichael said. On May 5, Carmichael distrib- agree with Dr. King. We not On Oct. 10, Army Intelligence uted a secret report to SNCC gonna fight your filthy wars for sent a report to Army Chief of members. Army Intelligence ob- you anymore.' " Staff Harold Johnson that Car- tained a copy of the seven-page But the most damaging piece michael and his SNCC col- document, titled "Report from of secret information came from leagues were calling for "Ne- the Chairman." It said in part: Mexican Army Intelligence. groes to arm themselves in prep- "Around the world and par- Mexican agents uncovered in aration for guerrilla warfare ticularly in the Third World, we May 1967 a plot led by Javier are Looked to as the organization Fuentes Gutierrez, head of the "They seek to destroy the pres- inside the United States who is ent American economic, politi- Mexican Communist Party, to es- in a SNCC- ready to lay the foundation for a tablish a "socialist regime" with- cal and social systems revolution.... We must then be in Mexico. defined attempt to gain freedom prepared to wage a fight against Gutierrez and his cohorts for the Negro. this country inside the were financed by Hsinhua, the In January 1968, as King was country." Chinese Communist Press Agen- drumming up support for his Army Intelligence, already planned march on Washington, cy, which Mexican Intelligence in Hanoi, the alarmed by growing militancy discovered was a front for the Carmichael was among anti-war and civil rights Chinese Ministry of State Securi- capital of North Vietnam. In Feb- groups, saw the report and the ty, China's CIA. ruary, he met with King in taped conversation as evidence Gutierrez's followers already Washington. King was killed of Carmichael's willingness to had dynamited a Mexican Army two months later in Memphis. turn to violence and possible truck and were seeking rifles In March 1975, Burnstine was foreign influence. and mortars from arms dealers. convicted by Florida authorities Later evidence would hurt not But more important 'to U.S. of masterminding a S50 million- only Carmichael but Dr. Martin Army Intelligence, the Mexicans a-year cocaine drug smuggling Luther King Jr. as well. Army revealed Gutierrez also was a operation in Latin America and agents photographed and top organizer of the Havana- Mexico. bugged King and Carmichael in based Organization of Latin A year later, his World War II- meetings, and Carmichael often American Solidarity (OLAS) - era airplane, a P51 Mustang, quoted King. another group that received se- blew up while he was competing After King's famous anti-war in an air show. cret Chinese funding. In 1974, WerBell was subpoe- OLAS not only helped finance naed to testify before the Senate Gutierrez's activities but had set Permanent Subcommittee on In- up a secret terrorist training was camp in the jungles of Chiapas vestigations. The committee in southern Mexico. looking into financier Robert Black Americans had been Vesco's efforts to sell and manu- facture automatic weapons in spied training at the camp. the Caribbean. On July 19, Mexican troops WerBell invoked the Fifth raided the Chiapas camp and Amendment to every question snatched a large cache of auto- asked by subcommittee investi- matic rifles, grenades and ma- chineguns. gator Philip R. Manuel. According to still classified WerBell died of a heart attack in 1983. Testimony in Army Intelligence files, the AK- a thMatat 47 rifles eventually were traced Angeles courtroom later from gunrunner Kenneth G. year said WerBell had been poi- Burnstine of Miami to gun deal- soned. _