Outspoken Ali was an FBI target
The FBI kept a close watch on the activities of boxer Muhammad Ali in 1966, with a particular focus on his links to the Nation of Islam, a black movement that the agency viewed as subversive, according to archival documents posted on the FBI website.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation released the documents in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the conservative group Judicial Watch.
Ali, one of the world’s most famous celebrities and a revered role model for African-Americans, died in June, aged 74. His death triggered an outpouring of affection for the former heavyweight cham- pion, known as much for his social activism and humanitarianism as for his legendary boxing career.
The FBI’s disclosures reveal another example of the agency’s surveillance activities during the 1960s and 1970s under the direction of J Edgar Hoover.
Among the public figures the FBI monitored during those turbulent years were civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King Jr and musician John Lennon.
The latest batch of about 140 pages of FBI documents includes previously classified material on Ali from 1966.
In the FBI’s view, Ali may have posed a threat because he was a potential source of money and charismatic leadership for the civil rights movement, which Hoover opposed, said Michael Ezra, a professor at Sonoma State University and author of a book on Ali.
‘‘Ali was an important symbol to the civil rights movement, a galvanising force, and him running around free was a problem for the FBI.’’
Representatives of the FBI could not be reached for comment. James Comey, FBI director since 2013, has said he regrets the bureau’s abuses under Hoover.
The papers, which used Ali’s birth name Cassius Clay, include a request for agents to monitor his divorce that year from his first wife as a ‘‘lead’’.
‘‘The Miami office is requested to follow the divorce action between Cassius and Sonja Clay with particular emphasis being placed on any NOI (Nation of Islam) implication being brought into this matter,’’ one memo stated.
A separate FBI memo, on a speech Ali gave in 1966 at a mosque, said he discussed efforts to strip him of his heavyweight title and blamed the ‘‘white man’’.
The controversy centred on Ali’s refusal to be drafted into the United States military during the Vietnam War and his claim of conscientious objector status, which led to him being stripped of the boxing title in 1967.
Following a successful legal battle, Ali regained the title in a 1974 bout.
One memo said Ali’s connection to the African-American political and religious group the Nation of Islam, which was under FBI investigation at the time, made the bureau interested in his activities ‘‘from an intelligence standpoint’’.
Some of the documents mention Main Bout Inc, a boxing promotion company that Ali established with the leaders of the Nation of Islam. The company was a source of money for them until Ali’s 1967 conviction for draft evasion.
The information in the file was not necessarily derogatory to Ali, said Chris Farrell, research director at Judicial Watch, which routinely asks the FBI to release its files on famous people who have died.
‘‘Historically, it’s interesting because it . . . gives a snapshot of what the FBI was doing, what it was spending its time and energy on, at that time with this very notable public figure,’’ Farrell said.
Judicial Watch had received even more FBI documents about Ali than the 140 pages posted on the bureau’s website, and would release them after a review, Farrell said.