According to FBI memos, the Bureau aimed to paint King as “a fraud, demagogue, and scoundrel” in order to “take him off his pedestal.” FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover-who publicly dubbed King “the most notorious liar in the country”-wrote that he wanted “to neutralize or completely discredit the effectiveness of Martin Luther King Jr.” The FBI carried all this out under a covert Counter Intelligence Program known as COINTELPRO. Within this program, Dr. King was slotted under the “Black Nationalist Hate Groups” rubric, despite the fact that he preached love, not hate and that he relied on moral force, not physical force. The Hidden Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr
