Sometimes we wonder whether something horrendous that has been done to us is at all possible. Misery loves company. There is a yearning to feel a sense of belonging. We look for others who’ve experienced the same if for no other reason other than to know that we are not alone in our suffering.Today is the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr's assassination. When I started this blogging project I knew there was much to learn about his life but I was drawn to the mystery surrounding his death. I was particularly interested in finding out the extent to which the FBI investigated Martin Luther King Jr. - what tactics they employed to make sense of what has occurred in my own life after learning I was a subject of a federal investigation. It is by no means an attempt to compare or contrast my own life to a much greater man. Rather, it is to learn from his life so I can make my own better, taking direction from his teachings and his life’s work. Somehow, I think that is what he wanted for myself - to actualize my own personal “dreams” and that of my family’s.
The only thing that Dr. King and I have in common is that we are both members of the “FBI Tormented Club”, defined as individuals who the FBI investigated, but could not, would not or did not prosecute yet whose lives where left in absolute disarray as a result of their investigation and disruptive techniques. The similarities end there. So, to ascribe an elevation of my own stature or importance is a fault that the reader will have in their own hands.
Much has been written about Dr. King’s life and the times in which he lived. In the interest of brevity, I purposefully left much of those facts out, leaving only enough to create the proper context to understand the ideas and the arguments we are advancing. The reader can avail of excellent articles and journalistic works about his much studied life now largely available on the web.
TODAY’S BUREAU
The modern FBI trains their agents in the art of stealth and deception. The safety of their people depend on keeping their identities, activities and intentions hidden from easy discernment. As illustrated by Donnie Brasco, the federal agent that successfully infiltrated the Mafia, they are quite adept at changing identities. So, by design, an individual who is the subject of a federal investigation shouldn’t know that the person that he or she has befriended or have decided to conduct business with is a federal agent. If the Bureau’s mission is later modified to sabotage a person’s business, or create marital discord, or deploy any of their disruptive techniques, a target is not supposed to know it was the handy-work of the FBI.
Fourty-three years after the death of Dr. King, does the FBI still use the same techniques of investigation? Are disruptive technologies and tactics still a part of their operations set? If so, they may be meting to their targets “cruel and unusual punishment” barred by the 8th Amendment of the US Constitution. There is sharp disagreement whether the victim must be confined before they can invoke such rights. But the results are clear, whether Dr. King was in custody or not, he was most certainly a victim of an FBI sanctioned extra-judicial punitive action. So horrendous it was, in fact, one is left to wonder how rampant these deplorable FBI activities are today. We have no idea until we can open their books and try to answer the following questions:
(1) How many investigations did the FBI undertake in a given period?
(2) How many of those investigated by the FBI were indicted and punished?
(3) Of those who were not judicially punished, how many of them experienced the following?
- lost their job(s)
- their business mysteriously failed
- contracted an illness
- ended up divorced
- got estranged from their family
- became indigents
(5) How many of these individuals knew that they were being investigated by the FBI?
If because of a federal investigation an individual experiences any of the failures above without being prosecuted, then they were victims of any number of deprivations protected by the US Constitution. If we ever find out the answers to these question, we will know whether or not the FBI is still being true to their mission of protecting the rights of Americans.
TOMORROW - PART II -The MLK Sex Tapes
