"Civil rights photographer was FBI informant" by New York Times | September 14, 2010
ATLANTA — That photo of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. riding one of the first desegregated buses in Montgomery, Ala.? He took it. The well-known image of black sanitation workers carrying “I Am A Man’’ signs in Memphis? His. He was the only photojournalist to document the entire trial in the murder of Emmett Till, and he was there in Room 306 of the Lorraine Hotel, King’s room, on the night he was assassinated.
But now an unsettling asterisk must be added to the legacy of Ernest C. Withers, one of the most celebrated photographers of the civil rights era: He was a paid FBI informant.
No wonder the FBI knew so much about King. They were literally in the room with him.
On Sunday, The Commercial Appeal in Memphis published the results of a two-year investigation that showed Withers, who died in 2007 at age 85, had collaborated closely with two FBI agents in the 1960s to keep tabs on the civil rights movement.
It was an astonishing revelation about a former police officer nicknamed the Original Civil Rights Photographer, whose previous claim to fame had been the trust he had engendered among high-ranking civil rights leaders, including King.
“It is an amazing betrayal,’’ said Athan Theoharis, a historian at Marquette University who has written books on the FBI....
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Looks like the GOVERNMENT has BOTH SIDES COVERED!
"Attorney: FBI trained NJ blogger to incite others" by Katie Nelson, Associated Press Writer | August 18, 2009
HARTFORD, Conn. --A New Jersey blogger facing charges in two states for allegedly making threats against lawmakers and judges had training from the FBI on how to be deliberately provocative, his attorney said Tuesday.
Hal Turner worked for the FBI from 2002 to 2007 as an "agent provocateur"and was taught by the agency "what he could say that wouldn't be crossing the line," defense attorney Michael Orozco said.
"His job was basically to publish information which would cause other parties to act in a manner which would lead to their arrest," Orozco said.
Prosecutors have acknowledged that Turner was an informant who spied on radical right-wing organizations, but Turner was not working for the FBI when he allegedly made threats against Connecticut legislators and wrote that three federal judges in Illinois deserved to die....
Randall Samborn, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago, said the office would not comment on Orozco's statements. The FBI office in Chicago didn't immediately return a call for comment Tuesday.
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