FBI Spied on Coretta Scott King

FBI agents mounted a four-year spying operation to scrutinize Martin Luther King's widow, Coretta Scott King, following the assassination of the civil rights leader. The newly released documents reveal that the Nixon administration feared Mrs. King, who died last year, might unite the civil rights movement and anti-war protesters into a single movement.

Andrew Young, a top aide to King, expressed outrage over the surveillance. "If ever there was a woman that had the makings of a saint, it was Coretta," he said. The operation was halted in 1972 when FBI officers determined that "no information indicates a propensity for violence or affiliation of subversive elements." (More Martin Luther King Jr. stories.)