Word: levison
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...According to Bearing the Cross (Morrow; $19.95), King's many liaisons included one long-term affair that, writes Garrow, "increasingly became the emotional centerpiece" of his life. The FBI stumbled upon them in the course of investigating King's links to New York Attorney Stanley Levison, a former Communist who had become one of the civil rights leader's most trusted friends. Suspecting that Levison was part of a Communist plot to infiltrate the movement, Hoover persuaded Attorney General Robert Kennedy to authorize a tap on Levison's phones. Alarmed by the discovery that Levison had recommended another former Communist...
When King kept indirect contacts with Levison despite this advice, Robert Kennedy "reluctantly" acceded to Hoover's plea to bug King's hotel rooms. That failed to prove that King was under the influence of Communists but provided a lode of scandalous data about King's philandering. The FBI wasted no time in circulating gamy samples of the recordings to Government officials, friendly journalists and even King's wife in an attempt to persuade King to withdraw from an active role in the movement...