RFK Jr. defends FBI wiretapping Martin Luther King Jr., arguing there was no political alternative

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is defended the FBI surveillance of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., arguing that his uncle, the late-Robert F. Kennedy, the U.S. attorney general at the time, had little to no political alternative. 

Kennedy Jr., now running as an independent to become president, made the comment during an interview with Politico published Sunday, one day before the MLK Jr. federal holiday.

He also said powerful FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wanted King surveilled in 1963 and that his father and others feared political revenge if they didn't comply.

He also suggested wire-tapping King, in the early 1960s, would prove he wasn't a communist, as Hoover suspected.

“They were betting not only on the civil rights movement but their own careers. And they knew that Hoover was out to ruin King,” Kennedy Jr. said during the interview.

“There was good reason for them doing that at the time because J. Edgar Hoover was out to destroy Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, and Hoover said to them that Martin Luther King’s chief was a communist."

Kennedy Jr. also speculated that his father gave Hoover permission to wiretap King Jr. to "prove that his suspicions about King were either right or wrong."

"I think, politically, they had to do it," he concluded.