Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defends his father's decision, while US attorney general calls move to wiretap civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. a “political” calculation said.
Potential candidates for 2024 told Politico Robert F. Kennedy had “good reasons” for authorizing FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to be wiretapped during a campaign stop in Atlanta on the eve of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Stated.
“J. Edgar Hoover was trying to destroy Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, and Hoover told them Martin Luther King Jr.'s leadership was a communist,” the 69-year-old said. Kennedy Jr. told the media.
“Father gave Hoover permission to wiretap to prove whether the allegations against King were true or false,” he added. “I think politically they had to do that.”
The comments come as the environmental lawyer and vaccine skeptic attempts to portray himself as a staunch defender of Americans' civil liberties and a critic of federal intelligence agencies that abuse their powers. It conflicts with our efforts.
RFK Jr. previously said the CIA was behind the assassination of his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy, and the man convicted of killing his father, Palestinian terrorist Sirhan Sirhan, is innocent and will be released on parole. argued that it should be done.
Last May, Kennedy Jr. told Fox News host Sean Hannity that the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of the 35th president at the behest of his successor, Lyndon Johnson, suppressed important evidence.
“Ten years later, when Congress investigated the crime with far more evidence than the Warren Commission had at its disposal, Congress discovered that, yes, it was a conspiracy. It was a conspiracy. Ta [and] There were multiple people involved,” RFK Jr. said at the time.
In June 2018, young Kennedy told the Washington Post After reviewing police and coroner's reports on his father's assassination and speaking to several witnesses, he visited Sirhan in prison and said he was “shaken by what I saw.”
“I was worried that the wrong person had been convicted of killing my father,” he said at the time. “My father was the top law enforcement officer in this country. I think he would have been upset if someone was incarcerated for a crime he didn't commit.”
John F. Kennedy was shot to death on November 22, 1963, while driving through Dallas in the presidential motorcade, and Martin Luther King Jr. was shot to death on April 4 on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Killed by Earl Ray. , 1968.
Two months and one day later, on June 5, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy, then a senator from New York, was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the Democratic presidential primary in California. It was done.
Under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, the FBI under Hoover targeted Martin Luther King Jr. through the Domestic Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO), but was unable to substantiate any ties to communism.
Although Kennedy Jr. acknowledged that Hoover was a “racist” and likely would have had the ax to grind if JFK had been re-elected in 1964, he also questioned the motives for the FBI's wiretaps on MLK Jr. He expressed that he did not have much doubt about it.
RFK Jr. also told Politico that at the time the Baptist minister took office, the Kennedy administration was “making a big bet on Dr. King, especially in organizing the March on Washington.”
“They were putting their careers on the line, not just the civil rights movement. And they knew that Hoover was going to destroy Dr. King,” he said, adding that this person was several He pointed out that he had ties to former communists.
Kennedy Jr. added that he believes his uncle personally informed Martin Luther King Jr. about the FBI wiretaps.
He will headline Sunday's campaign along with Angela Stanton King, a former Republican House candidate in Georgia who was pardoned by former President Donald Trump in February 2020 and now works for Kennedy Jr.'s campaign. served as
A New York Times poll in November showed Kennedy trailing Trump and Biden by about 10 points in a hypothetical three-way race in six battleground states. .
