Army used U2 spy planes to monitor Blacks

The intelligence branch of the United States Army spied on the family of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for three generations. Top secret, often illegal, intrusions into the lives of Black Americans began as far back as 1909 with the founder and first president of the NAACP Joel Spingarn a Jew who was secretly gathering intelligence for the US Army.

At first, the Army used a reporting network of private citizens that included church members, Black businessmen and educators. It later employed cadres of infiltrators, wiretaps and aerial photography by U2 spy planes.

As the civil rights movement merged with anti-war protests in the late 1960s, some Army units began supplying sniper rifles and other weapons of war to civilian police departments. Army Intelligence began planning for what some officers believed would soon be armed rebellion.

By March 1968, King was preparing to lead a march in Memphis in support of striking sanitation workers and another march a few weeks later that would swamp Washington with people demanding less attention to Vietnam and more resources for America’s poor. By then the Army’s intelligence system was keenly focused on King and desperately searching for a way to stop him.

…On April 3, King returned to Memphis. Army agents from the 111th Military Intelligence Group shadowed his movements and monitored radio traffic from a sedan crammed with electronic equipment.
Eight Green Beret soldiers from an “Operation Detachment Alpha 184 Team” were also in Memphis carrying out an unknown mission. Such “A-teams” usually contained 12 members.

On April 4, at 6:01 p.m., a bullet from a 30.06 rifle equipped with a scope struck King down on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.