text: 'MLK/FBI' review: Sam Pollard's documentary probes 'the darkest part' of the bureau's history | CNN
  Published 12:47 PM EST, Fri January 15, 2021
  The government-sanctioned harassment of Martin Luther King Jr. provides the chilling spine of "MLK/FBI," a documentary timed to the annual holiday for the civil rights icon. Director Sam Pollard's film also raises an interesting question – namely, what historians and journalists owe King's legacy in terms of releasing material amassed specifically in an effort to sully his name.
  Former FBI director James Comey describes J. Edgar Hoover's obsession with King, and his unsettling campaign to discredit him, as "the darkest part of the bureau's history." Determined to uncover communist influence within the civil-rights movement, FBI surveillance revealed a more salacious fact – that King was unfaithful to his wife, Coretta Scott King, a disclosure that Hoover sought to use as leverage against him.
  Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington in 1963 (Photo by Central Press/Getty Images)
  Hoover's vendetta – stemming from his belief that King was "morally unfit," says historian David Garrow – offers a troubling portrait of government overreach and wiretapping. Yet the intellectual exercise buried within the film lies in the fact the intelligence gathered is scheduled to become unsealed in 2027, raising issues of how to handle material that is historically significant – in terms of understanding the full extent of the FBI's transgressions – and horribly intrusive to King's memory.