Feds spied on Coretta King after civil rights icon slain

This story for today's Sun-Times I would find utterly disturbing, almost police state like. Though it is easy for me to blow this off as nothing less than a rumor from the conspiracy theorists, if it is proven then certainly it's far from just a rumor. Even then all that Mrs. King could have done was express her constitutional rights, I can see if she was working with the "enemy".

Ah well just read this story and I'm sure you've got your own ideas...

Federal agents spied on the widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for several years after his assassination in 1968, according to newly released documents that reveal the FBI worried about her following in the footsteps of the slain civil rights icon.

In memos that reveal Coretta Scott King being closely followed, the FBI noted concern that she might attempt ''to tie the anti-Vietnam movement to the civil rights movement.''

Four years after Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, the FBI closed its file on Coretta Scott King, saying, ''No information has come to the attention of Atlanta which indicates a propensity for violence or affiliation of subversive elements,'' according to a memo dated Nov. 30, 1972.

The documents were obtained by Houston television station KHOU in a story aired Thursday. Coretta Scott King died in January 2006 at the age of 78.

The Rev. Joseph Lowery, who headed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference -- which King co-founded in 1957 -- said the documents illustrate the FBI's pattern of ''despicable and devious'' civil rights era behavior against the organization and those affiliated with it.

''The FBI kept a microphone everywhere they could where the SCLC was concerned,'' said Lowery, who said the agency had an SCLC staff member on its payroll.

''Since we had nothing to hide, it was no great problem for us. But we don't put it past the FBI; [then-FBI Director] J. Edgar Hoover hated Martin Luther King and everything that the SCLC stood for.''