Among the grim litany of revelations was a blackmail letter
F.B.I. agents had sent anonymously to the Rev. Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr., threatening to expose his extramarital
affairs if he did not commit suicide.
Actually he got his hands on some FOIA documents after a lawsuit, he has some of them on his web page:
This is why the NSA revelations are so scary. This kind of stuff has already been done, and the NSA could do it so much worse, to so many more people.
Until 2013 it was possible to think that the NSA spying wasn't really pervasive, wasn't really against all Americans. Now we know better, but we still think that NSA blackmailing of politicians and others is just too out there, conspiracy theory.
But the government has already done exactly that, and probably more. And they'll do it again. Dick Cheney's office outed a covert CIA spy for political revenge.
Every overly powerful organization, whether government, corporate or just personal wealth, will be corrupted eventually, because they will inevitably attract corrupt people.
The NSA is not "that bad", yet, probably. But the potential is there, if anything the potential for badness is far worse and the ability to reign it in seemingly diminished.
Edit: Also, the fundamental problem today is not the NSA, it's just a symptom. Even if we completely defunded the NSA tomorrow as well as put every NSA employee on a rocket and shot them into the Sun it would still not solve the underlying problem and it would just be a matter of time before we'd be facing the same issues from some other direction.
The problem is that the constitution has been weakened, in pretty much every way. But one important aspect to that is the idea that things that happen on the internet aren't "real" in some basic way that makes the absence of legal protection of fundamental liberties online acceptable.
I disagree, 100%. The NSA is far more powerful, and far - FAR - more dangerous now than the FBI ever was under Hoover.
If you don't think this is the case, I don't think you're really looking honestly at the situation. In the Hoover/FBI days, we had a chance - the Operation Snow Whites' and so on. Now, however, there is no such chance: the NSA has far, far too many safe-guards in place to protect itself, and has infiltrated - and controls, directly - too many so-called 'peace movements' and other groups that might have a chance at awakening the sheeple. We must be more diligent, and with greater resolve to fight back now, than ever before in history - because we are at the cusp of allowing a seriously evil influence over the world to have its will - whereas in the 60's and 70's, people were willing to stand up and fight, now hardly anyone will. At all.
Back in the worst days with Hoover they were actively targeting specific political activists and basically running black ops against them. We haven't reached that stage with NSA, as far as I can tell, though the potential is certainly there.
Maybe you misinterpreted what I said, it shouldn't be an excuse to wait until things get worse before taking action. The fact that the potential is there should be enough.
Nothing happened, the programs continued, the people running it back then are now happily retired or left the world without a mark on their record. There were no mass firings of the hundreds of agents directly implicated in these obviously unethical and illegal things.
The people running COINTELPRO back then to find the communists tutored the government agents that are now trawling through the massive NSA data to find terrorists. The capabilities were only expanded.
We HAVE reached that stage, and worse. The NSA - and other spook agencies - are actively engaged in warfare with various social/peacenik groups, and has been demonstrated time and again as a constant source of infiltration, provocation, and so on. Agent-Provocateur isn't just the name of a knicker factory - its a real tactic deployed against enemies of the regime, which include civic groups (unions), churches and other citizen organizations.
We simply cannot have this power out there, in the hands of these people.
I've seen similar sentiments expressed about Dr. King. In short, he was a womanizer who does not deserve our praise. He is lauded for political purposes.
It makes me wonder if the government embraces, and perhaps even plants, ideas like this. Nobody is perfect, and the more stuff somebody accomplishes, the less perfect they're likely to be. No hero will be without something like this to tarnish their image. By convincing the public that a hero should be perfect, they can hold their past transgressions over them in order to gain compliance, as the FBI tried to do here. They can control the narrative afterwards, by concentrating on the flaws of heroes they don't like, and ignoring the flaws of those they do.
It certainly seems to have happened in politics, anyway. Few candidates with anything interesting to say make it to office, since they inevitably have something pointless but "scandalous" in their past. If they do, then the threat of exposure should work wonders for getting them to behave.
With full awareness that governments have done this, I really wish people would stop thinking that if a group of rational people oppose things done by one of our heroes, that it could only be as a result of a government sockpuppet.
Rhetoric as a concept or tool is incredibly expansive, it's hardly limited to just government. And it wasn't that long ago that Che Guevara was insulting the USA during his speech to the UN for the Ku Klux Klan, the existence of which should readily demonstrate that the people themselves will erect biases and grudges of their own independent of (and often contrary to) government interference.
The same government responsible for the agency that threatened MLK, also had to forcibly integrate segregated schools, and forcibly adopt so many other civil rights measures that are still debated today.
But in any event if you have paid enough attention to politics (or at least American politics) it would be clear that having minor scandals is not only not a roadblock, but can often be used to great effect in a politician's career. If one thinks "the people" are too stupid to figure this out then would could possibly be the point of a democracy?
Let people point out what they want about Dr. King, Nelson Mandela, or anyone else (especially if it's true!). People see the world through different lenses, one may worry more about what our hero does "when no one is watching for compliance" as a measure of integrity. Another may worry only about what the hero does in public as a measure of effectiveness. That doesn't make one or the other of these people a government plant, it just means that we're (wonderfully) different.
However, I disagree that some people worry more about what a hero does when nobody is watching as a measure of his integrity. I have never once seen anyone apply this idea consistently. Always, always, always it is used against those heroes whom the person dislikes, while similar transgressions by those they like are ignored.
I'm sure there's somebody out there who doesn't do that, but I have yet to meet him.
I saw the same thing- but mostly from liberals claiming conservatives were whitewashing his legacy and shortchanging the struggle against apartheid.