RFK Jr. Defends JFK Admin Wiretapping MLK Jr.: They Knew the FBI ‘Was Out to Ruin’ Him

AP Photo, File; AP Photo/Hannah Schoenbaum

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Politico that former President John F. Kennedy’s administration knew the FBI was “out to ruin” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — and that was why they authorized the agency’s wiretapping of the civil rights leader.

The wiretapping of King was authorized by Robert F. Kennedy, the president’s brother and attorney general at the time. RFK Jr. defended the decision as a way to prove that King wasn’t the Communist menace that former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover claimed he was during the Civil Rights Era of the late 1960s — even though it was Hoover who was collecting the information on King.

Kennedy told Politico in an interview published Sunday:

…Kennedy said that his father, Robert F. Kennedy — who authorized the wiretapping of King as attorney general — and President John F. Kennedy permitted the eavesdropping because they were “making big bets on King, particularly in organizing the March on Washington.”

“They were betting not only the civil rights movement but their own careers. And they knew that Hoover was out to ruin King. …

“There was good reason for them doing that at the time,” Kennedy said, “because J. Edgar Hoover was out to destroy Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement and Hoover said to them that Martin Luther King’s chief was a communist.

“My father gave permission to Hoover to wiretap them so he could prove that his suspicions about King were either right or wrong,” he continued. “I think, politically, they had to do it.”

Kennedy made these remarks while campaigning in Atlanta, Georgia, the birthplace of Dr. King. Politico put the comments in a present-day political context:

By defending his family’s participation in what is widely considered a shameful episode in presidential history, Kennedy may complicate his efforts to present himself to the electorate as a political truth teller who stands up for marginalized constituencies.

Kennedy also told Politico that had JFK been elected to a second term, he “would have fired Hoover.” He also said “he believed that President Kennedy had alerted King to the eavesdropping in a private conversation.”

While Kennedy was not wrong about the FBI’s intentions to destroy the reputation of Dr. King, the fact that the Kennedy administration authorized the wiretapping was seen as a particularly dark and humiliating moment that later haunted Robert F. Kennedy’s own presidential campaign in 1968.