NSA kept tabs on King, other VietnamWar critics

WASHINGTON — Amid raging anti- Vietnam War protests that be deviled two presidential administrations, operatives at theNational Security Agency tapped the overseas communications of war critics including Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammad Ali, Sen. Frank Church, D- Idaho, and even Washington Post humor columnist Art Buchwald, according to newly declassified NSA documents.

Oddly, another senator, Howard Baker, R- Tenn. — an ardent supporter of the war — also was put on the NSA “watch list,” which grew to more than 1,600 names and was active from1967 to 1973, covering the terms of Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, the documents say.

Government spying and domestic eavesdropping on 1960s and ’ 70s civil rights leaders, prominent war protesters and political opponents is well- known. But a new portion of a declassified NSA history, released Wednesday by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, brings context tomore recent revelations about the agency’s monitoring of Americans’ communications.

Basically, it’s been going on for a while.

In 1967, “the country appeared to be going up in flames,” the NSA internal history notes. Johnson wanted to find out whether the domestic anti- war movement was “receiving help from abroad,” the document says. The eavesdropping job went to the NSA, which officially dubbed the program Minaret in1969.

The documents provide just seven names on the list: King and fellow civil rights leader Whitney Young, head of the Urban League; heavyweight boxing champion Ali, who famously refused to be drafted; Church and Baker, both influential legislators; Buchwald and New York Times columnist Tom Wicker.

An NSA lawyer who later reviewed Minaret “stated that the people involved seemed to understand that the operation was disreputable if not outright illegal,” the account says.