Not much different from today is it?

‘You are done’: A secret letter to Martin Luther King Jr. sheds light on FBI’s malice

An unpublished letter written by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, condemning Martin Luther King Jr., was found tucked inside the pages of an old book. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)

The secret letter was tucked inside the pages of an old book. It had been written by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to a top lieutenant, condemning civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

It was Nov. 19, 1964, and Hoover the previous day had assailed King at a news conference as “the most notorious liar in the country.” Now he was writing a colleague privately to say he hoped King was getting his “just deserts.”

“I certainly hope so,” Hoover wrote.

Four years later, King would be assassinated. And the letter — previously unknown to the public, a local author says — sheds yet more light on the historic malice the FBI director had toward King.

It also touches on a later, even more nefarious FBI effort to damage King.

Washington scholar James L. Swanson said he found the letter inside an envelope clipped to a page in Hoover’s 1938 book, “Persons in Hiding,” which Swanson said he purchased in a bookstore several years ago.

James Swanson, author of “Chasing King’s Killer: The Hunt for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Assassin,” found the letter written by J. Edgar Hoover. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)

The envelope was marked “PERSONAL” and “DO NOT MAIL.” Inside was a letter from Hoover to his subordinate, William C. Sullivan, then the FBI’s head of domestic intelligence and the bureau’s No. 3 officer.

(The book, which Swanson believes once belonged to Sullivan, is inscribed, “To William Sullivan, Best wishes, J. Edgar Hoover.”)

Hoover the day before had held a rare, three-hour news conference with female reporters in Washington. There, he had attacked King for allegedly saying that FBI agents in Georgia didn’t pursue civil rights cases because they were Southerners.

Sullivan had sent the notoriously vain Hoover a note of praise, and the director had dashed off an appreciative “Dear Bill” reply.

“I share your view in thinking that [King’s] exposure is long overdue,” Hoover wrote. “It is grand to know that I have the support and goodwill of my close associates in the Bureau.”

The letter is reproduced in Swanson’s new book for young adults, “Chasing King’s Killer,” about the hunt for King’s assassin, James Earl Ray, due out in January.

“This is a hitherto unknown and unpublished letter,” Swanson said in telephone interview last week. He said he was stunned to find it.

“It’s an ominous and disturbing letter,” he said. But it “in no way indicates that the FBI or Hoover was plotting against King’s very life.”

Martin Luther King Jr. speaking at Vermont Avenue Baptist Church in Washington in 1968. (Matthew Lewis/The Washington Post)

“What happened was this: It was announced [the previous month] that Dr. King had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and that provoked Hoover,” he said. King was scheduled to accept the award in Norway in December.

Hoover believed that King and his movement were threats to the social order and that King was influenced by close associates who were communists.

The FBI had begun wiretapping King’s home and office, and bugging his hotel rooms the previous year, according to Yale historian Beverly Gage.

No serious links to communism were uncovered, but hints about King’s sexual dalliances allegedly were.

In the note to Sullivan, an aggrieved Hoover wrote: “I have always been reluctant about holding press conferences . . . [but] there were a number of things I wanted to get off my chest.”

For his part, King denied that he had accused Southern FBI agents of foot-dragging.

“I have sincerely questioned the effectiveness of the FBI in racial incidents, particularly where bombings and brutalities against Negroes are at issue,” he responded in a telegram to Hoover. “But I have never attributed this to the presence of southerners in the FBI.”

In a separate statement, he said Hoover seemed to have “faltered under the awesome burden, complexities and responsibilities of his office.”

But Hoover and Sullivan were not finished with King.

Days after Hoover’s news conference, a salacious anonymous letter was delivered to King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, and later given to King. This letter was from a person masquerading as an angry African American.

The letter was in a package that also containing a tape recording that allegedly captured evidence of King’s sexual misconduct.

The typed letter condemned King as “a colossal fraud . . . and a dissolute, abnormal moral imbecile.”

“Your ‘honorary degrees,’ your Nobel Prize (What a grim farce) . . . will not save you,” the letter said. “You are done.”

J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, is seen in his Washington office on Sept. 30, 1966. (AP)

“There is only one thing left for you to do,” the letter said. “You know what it is . . . There is but one way out . . . You better take it before your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self is bared to the nation.”

King suspected that the FBI was behind the letter and interpreted it as an attempt to blackmail him, apparently into committing suicide.

Swanson and Gage believe that the letter was probably written by Sullivan, who later admitted his involvement in the plan during testimony before a Senate committee but claimed that he had been opposed to the idea.

A draft copy of the letter was later found among Sullivan’s files, Senate investigators said in 1975, noting that Sullivan claimed that it had been planted there and was written by someone else.

In a 1979 book, Sullivan said he knew about the tape but not about the letter. Hoover was behind both, Sullivan suggested.

Swanson, author of top-selling books on the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations, said King was “one of the bravest men in American history.”

“Unlike John Kennedy, unlike Abraham Lincoln, King was under constant threat of harassment and death,” he said. “He was shot at. His home was bombed. He was hit with rocks and bottles and stones. . . . He received death threats.”

“For more than a decade during his rise, Martin Luther King was under constant threat of violence and fear,” he said. “And the FBI was very much part of this.”

By 1971, Hoover and Sullivan had developed bitter differences, and that year Hoover forced Sullivan to retire.

Two years later, Sullivan told the Los Angeles Times that Hoover was “a master blackmailer.”

In 1977, Sullivan was killed in a hunting accident in New Hampshire when he was shot by another hunter who mistook him for a deer.

(This is interesting. From reports, I read Hoover was a homosexual who liked to dress up in women's clothes. Back then homo's weren't popular like they are today. Wonder if Sullivan was about to unveil Hoover's true identity? What we have learned about the FBI and the DOJ lately I wouldn't put anything past them.)

Not much different from today is it?

"I am Adam Lanza's Mother"

You better thank God your not that stupid!

 Before you read the BS article below know this.

Adam Lanza, 20, shot and killed his mother in their home, then killed 26 people, mostly children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., using a Bushmaster XM-15 rifle and a .22-caliber Savage Mark II rifle.

Mr. Lanza graduated from high school. Some classmates said he had been bullied in high school. He struggled with a developmental disorder and was described as acutely shy, not known to have close friends.

He was “completely untreated in the years before the shooting” for psychiatric and physical ailments like anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, a state report found.

His mother, Nancy Lanza, a gun enthusiast, legally obtained and registered a large collection of weapons and would often take her sons to shooting ranges.

Mr. Lanza used his mother’s guns to kill her and 26 others.

My source is none other than the NYT's.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/03/us/how-mass-shooters-got-their-guns.html

Don't know who needed psychiatric care more... the mother or the son. What fool would take a psychotic lunatic to the shooting range and allow him full access to guns in the home?

All the deaths, in this case, are of his mother's own volition.

Including hers.

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Mental health care worries linger 5 years after Sandy Hook

T

he Associated PressFILE - This undated identification file photo released Wednesday, April 3, 2013 by Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, Conn., shows former student Adam Lanza, who authorities said opened fire inside the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on Friday, Dec. 14, 2012, killing 26 students and educators, after killing his mother at their home. A 2014 report by the Office of Connecticut Child Advocate concluded that Lanza's actions were not directly caused by his psychiatric problems, but it noted that his mother rejected psychologists' recommendations that her son should be medicated and undergo treatment for anxiety and other conditions. (AP Photo/Western Connecticut State University, File)

Anguished mothers with mentally ill children have sought out Liza Long for help ever since she wrote an essay, "I am Adam Lanza's Mother," comparing experiences with her son to the emotionally troubled 20-year-old who carried out the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

The massacre sounded alarms nationally about gaps in mental health care and led to calls for better screening and services, especially for young people showing a propensity for violence, but some key reforms enacted in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting depend on funding that has yet to be delivered by Congress. And Long still hears almost daily from families overwhelmed by their children's behaviors and struggling to get treatment.

"We're still not seeing the health access, the access to mental health care," said Long, an Idaho mother of four and community college instructor who credited her essay with attracting the attention of a physician who correctly diagnosed and treated her then-13-year-old son for bipolar disorder.

Like other mass shootings before and since, the tragedy prompted calls for tighter controls on guns and improved mental health treatment. Five years later, mental health care providers are waiting for promised boosts in funding, and many families are still battling insurance companies to cover their children's services.

While advocates say the quality of mental health care varies widely by state, they also see reason for optimism in a push for more early intervention programs and changing public attitudes about mental illness.

"There's a lot of reason to feel optimistic," said Ron Honberg, senior policy adviser at the National Alliance on Mental Illness. "But there are a lot of challenges too, particularly around financing these services."

The 21st Century Cures Act, which was signed into law by then-President Barack Obama in December 2016, was inspired in part by the tragedy and included what proponents touted as the first major mental health reform package in nearly a decade. The measures that were included in the law but still await funding include grants for intensive early intervention for infants and young children showing signs of mental illness.

"There were a lot of things people took credit for passing," said U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Esty, a Democrat whose district includes Newtown. "If they're not funded, it's a nice piece of paper and something hanging on somebody's wall, but it's not going to help save lives."

Mental health experts point out the vast majority of people diagnosed with psychiatric disorders do not commit violent crimes, and no motive has ever been determined for the Dec. 14, 2012, massacre in which Lanza fatally shot his mother at home and then gunned down 20 children and six educators at the school in Newtown.

A report by the Connecticut Child Advocate noted Lanza's mother rejected recommendations that her son be medicated and get treatment for anxiety and other conditions, but it concluded his actions were not directly caused by his psychiatric problems.

Rather, it said, his "severe and deteriorating internalized mental health problems," when combined with a preoccupation with violence and access to deadly weapons, "proved a recipe for mass murder."

In her column, Long wrote that she was terrified of her son, who was prone to violent rages and had been placed in juvenile detention facilities four times. Only a few weeks earlier, her son had pulled out a knife and threatened to kill her. Since receiving treatment, her son, who is now 18, has not had another violent episode.

"People don't understand the world that parents live in when they have a child with mental illness," Long said. When other mothers reach out to her, she tries to match them up with resources in their states.

Many patients find the right treatment only after going through a lot of detours, said Dr. Vinod Srihari, director of the clinic for Specialized Treatment Early in Psychosis at the Connecticut Mental Health Center in New Haven.

"The nature of these illnesses is that they're often misunderstood," said Srihari, also an associate professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. "And so, families with a young person with psychosis can often not rely on others around them to assist because what they're struggling with is misunderstood and could be a source of shame and embarrassment. And that means that they can't leverage their community supports to get the care they need."

The tragedy also spurred some to focus more on the root causes of violence, including Jeremy Richman, a neuroscientist who started a nonprofit dedicated to brain health in his daughter's name.

"There are answers," he said. "We just need to start turning over the rocks and looking under them."

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, said he expects it will be difficult to secure funding for the new programs in the Republican-controlled Congress. But, he said, there are other recent reforms that are also making a difference.

The creation of an assistant secretary position at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services dedicated to improving behavioral health care has put pressure on insurance companies to cover the cost of mental health conditions equally as physical health, he said.

The 21st Century Cures Act also created a committee to advise Congress and federal agencies on the needs of adults and young people with serious mental illness. It is scheduled to meet Thursday, the fifth anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre, to discuss the group's first report to Congress.

Committee member John Snook, executive director of the Virginia-based Treatment Advocacy Center, said there is cautious optimism about improvements to come from the focus the Sandy Hook shooting put on mental health.

"We are definitely cognizant that the window is closing and attention is shifting," Snook said. "You don't want another tragedy to be the reason people are reminded they need to focus on these issues."

"I am Adam Lanza's Mother"

Nice going Alabama

Oh...I almost forgot the final indignity.

#ikneel... adds that special touch.

Nice going Alabama

Trump's got to be loving this!

Ratings Rout: Last Place CNN Had Terrible 2017

Hey...this time he got it right.

---------------------------------------------

The ratings results are in for the full year of 2017 and show that CNN not only came in last place, but that the left-wing network’s primetime viewership eroded by double digits — even as second place MSNBC soared, and ratings champ Fox News held tight.

Fox had an extraordinary year, its second in a row where its total viewers beat not just its left-wing competition in the form of MSNBC and CNN, but all of basic cable. Fox News was not only the number one basic cable channel; its average primetime viewership of 2.4 million was not far behind the Fox broadcast network’s average of 3.5 million.

By comparison, ABC, NBC, and CBS primetime earned 4.6 million, 6 million, and 6.3 million viewers, respectively.

But it is up against MSNBC and CNN, where Fox’s ongoing dominance is most striking. The reasons for this are obvious and will be explained below.

Total Average Viewers Throughout Day

FNC: 1,501,000 (up eight percent)

CNN: 783,000 (up four percent)

MSNBC: 885,000 (up 47 percent)

Throughout the entire year, Fox attracted almost as many viewers throughout the day as MSNBC and CNN combined. Fox News also doubled CNN’s growth (eight percent, compared to just four percent).

An astonishing growth of 47 percent proves that MSNBC is gobbling up all President Trump-haters CNN tries so hard to attract and satisfy.

Average Demo (25-54 Years Old) Viewers Throughout Day 

FNC: 321,000 (up 15 percent)

CNN: 257,000 (up 11 percent)

MSNBC: 203,000 ages 25-54 (up 33 percent)

This is CNN’s only second place showing. The demo is really only important when it comes to advertising rates.

Average Primetime Viewers

FNC: 2,422,000 (flat)

CNN: 1,060,000 (down 15 percent)

MSNBC: 1,624,000 (up 50 percent)

Again, but this time during the all-important primetime hours, Fox is able to attract nearly as many viewers as CNN and MSNBC combined. And in this case, CNN is in last place by a mile and losing viewers by double digits, a whopping 15 percent.

Average Demo (25-54 Years Old) Primetime Viewers

FNC 488,000 A25-54 (up 1 percent)

CNN: 370,000 A25-54 (down 13 percent)

MSNBC 370,000 A25-54 (up 37 percent)

While Fox held steady (a remarkable feat considering the loss of Bill O’Reilly) and MSNBC capitalized on the anti-Trump resistance, CNN again lost viewers by double digits.

The reasoning behind CNN’s ongoing ratings humiliation is fairly obvious.

To begin with, MSNBC is not built on the foundation of a massive lie. To its credit, MSNBC advertises itself as a left-wing network. CNN, on the other hand, is built on a lie. CNN is even further to the left than MSNBC but still claims to be an objective news outlet. No one likes to be lied to, to be played for a fool.

Secondly, CNN is a firehose of fake news and, therefore, wholly unreliable. Imagine how disheartening it must be for Trump-haters to be told over and over again by CNN that this terrible thing is true about Trump and that terrible thing will be Trump’s undoing, only to discover later that it was yet another CNN hoax, another deliberate and calculated lie told by deliberate and calculating liars.

NBC News has its share of problems — including a climate of sexual harassment, abuse, and enabling — but no one believes anything CNN reports anymore — nor should they.

CNN chief Jeff Zucker has been a catastrophic failure. Under his partisan and unethical management, CNN has dropped from second place to last place and suffered permanent reputational damage that continues to this day.

Trump's got to be loving this!

Like RICE-A-RONI... illegals are The San Francisco Treat

Illegal immigrant found guilty in murder of family of five in San Francisco

If you're going to use this guy as the yardstick...

Then I'm kind of shocked by the by the sentence handed down to Binh Thai Luc. I expected the charge to be 'reckless swinging of a hammer' then fined $100 and 1-month community service at the nearest  Chinese daycare center. 

March 25, 2012: Binh Thai Luc after his arrest for the murder of the family of five. (SFPD)

An illegal immigrant from Vietnam faces life in prison after being convicted Monday in the 2012 hammer-killing of a family of five after losing money at a casino earlier in the evening.

Binh Thai Luc, who had a violent criminal history and was supposed to be deported in 2006, was found guilty in the murders of a family of Chinese immigrants. He was also found guilty of five counts of attempted robbery and two counts of burglary.

Luc, who was in debt and served an eviction notice, killed the family during a robbery after he lost money at a casino on March 23, 2012.

Prosecutors said the family kept thousands of dollars in cash in the San Francisco home. Luc had more than $6,500 with him during his arrest. The jury was told that Luc settled his debt after the killings.

“This was a very gruesome, brutal murder, and we’re pleased we’re getting some accountability for the family and for the community,” District Attorney George Gascón told The San Francisco Chronicle.

Despite no eyewitness accounts of Luc’s involvement, investigators said one of the family member’s blood was found spattered on Luc’s jeans. Luc’s blood was found on a pack of cigarettes, a receipt and a cabinet drawer, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Luc spent a decade in prison for robbery and assault with a deadly weapon for the 1996 armed robbery of a Chinese restaurant. He was ordered to be deported from the U.S. to his native Vietnam after his release, but the Vietnamese government did not provide the proper documents.

U.S. federal immigration authorities released Luc into the community in 2006.

The defense argued that someone else murdered the family, possibly a Chinatown gangster or an ex-boyfriend of one of the victims. Defense attorney Mark Goldrosen said the prosecution did not establish a motive for the crime.

Luc did not speak after the verdict was announced. Goldrosen said he was “quite disappointed” with the verdict. 

“He understands that this is the beginning of the process and there are appellate procedures,” Goldrosen said. 

Like RICE-A-RONI... illegals are The San Francisco Treat