Martin Luther King, Jr.

J. Edgar Hoover instituted a surveillance campaign against him in 1961. In 1963 he received approval from Attorney General Robert Kennedy to bug King's home and offices. In October, the FBI issued an internal report.

The attached analysis of Communism and the Negro Movement is highly explosive. It can be regarded as a personal attack on Martin Luther King. There is no doubt it will have a heavy impact on the Attorney General and anyone else to whom we disseminate it. It is labeled TOP SECRET.

In late 1964, Hoover called TIME magazine's "Man of the Year" and recent recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize "the most notorious liar in the country" to a group of journalists. Earlier that year, Marquette University received a phone call from the FBI, recommending that they abstain from giving King an honorary degree. The same thing happened to Springfield College. The FBI claimed that King was "Communist affiliated."

Jesse Helms excoriated him on the Senate floor in October 1983.