# Martin Luther King Jr.

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "Martin Luther King Jr.," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/martin-luther-king/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*The civil rights leader whose Letter from Birmingham Jail John Kiriakou explicitly honored in naming his own Letters from Loretto, and whose example, with Mandela and Gandhi, anchored Kiriakou's decision to forgive his prosecutors: "I only lost two years of my life, not 35." Kiriakou's parents marched for civil rights with King; he quotes King's line about preaching nonviolence while his government is the world's major purveyor of violence, and lists King's assassination among the acts attributed to the unelected security state.*

- **Who:** Civil rights leader; author of Letter from Birmingham Jail
- **Kiriakou's tribute:** The Letters from Loretto were named in his honor
- **The lesson Kiriakou took:** Forgiveness, King, Mandela, and Gandhi "were telling the truth"
- **Family link:** Kiriakou's parents marched for civil rights with King

**Martin Luther King Jr.** is the figure [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) reached for at the two hardest points of his story, naming his prison writing, and deciding not to be bitter.

## Letter from Birmingham Jail, Letter from Loretto

Kiriakou wrote his first prison dispatch *"to honor Martin Luther King and his Letter from Birmingham Jail."*[1] King, he says, is *"such a giant and a beacon in my life... I'm not comparing myself to Martin Luther King, I could never shine Martin Luther King's shoes, but Letter from Birmingham Jail was an inspiration for me."*[2] The [Letters from Loretto](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/letter-from-loretto) became the vehicle of his prison years.

## The forgiveness model

Kiriakou's refusal of bitterness runs through King: Mandela did it, King did it, Gandhi did it, *"these guys were all giants, and I thought when they said that they weren't bitter and that they forgave, they were telling the truth."*[3] People like King were wronged far worse than he was, assassinated for what he believed, *"and so if they could forgive the people who wronged them, I could forgive the people who wronged me. I only lost two years of my life, not 35."*[4][5]

## Politics and inheritance

Kiriakou's parents marched against Vietnam and marched for civil rights with Martin Luther King, the politically active left-wing household he measures today's Democratic Party against.[6] He quotes King's hardest line as his own: *"How do I preach non-violence to young kids in a ghetto when my government is the major purveyor of violence in the world today?"*[7] And he places King's assassination in his catalogue of what the unelected security state has been implicated in, alongside the breakup of the Black Panthers and the surveillance of Occupy.[8]

That is not a passing suspicion. Kiriakou has set out his reasoning on the killing at length, the implausibility of James Earl Ray as lone gunman, and the FBI's documented attempt two years earlier to push King into suicide, in a case he treats as the weakest of the three covered by the 1992 assassination-records statute. See [MLK assassination](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mlk-assassination).[9][10]

## Two hundred agents, and a bug in the receiver

Discussing the documentary *MLK/FBI* in January 2023, Kiriakou set out what surveillance meant before the [Vault 7](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/vault-7) era. Agents had to enter homes physically *"and unscrew the receiver on their phones and put a bug into the phone, screw it back up, and say, 'thank you, we just improved your phone service.' And then they leave."*[11]

One of King's deputies told him he thought they were under surveillance and their phones were tapped. *"And Martin Luther King responded: the FBI has far more important things to worry about than what we're saying."* In fact he was under round-the-clock coverage, with two hundred agents assigned to destroying him.[11][12]

The effort travelled with him: *"when Martin Luther King would travel to different cities, all of the FBI agents in each of those cities would literally drop everything they were doing and spy on Martin Luther King. Every city that he travelled to."*[12]

Kiriakou identifies the Nobel Prize as an aggravating factor rather than a protection: *"they were particularly upset because he won the Nobel Prize. They did not want him to be a role model. They didn't want him to be a hero, and they didn't support the civil rights movement."*[13]

## See also

- [MLK assassination](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mlk-assassination)
- [Letter from Loretto](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/letter-from-loretto)
- [FCI Loretto](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/fci-loretto)
- [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)

## Sources

1. LA Progressive interview with John Kiriakou (2021-10-13), at 25:32. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfezVxYzOGE&t=1532s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2021-10-13-sharon-kyle-la-progressive-interview-with-john-kiriakou/
2. Whistleblower John Kiriakou On the Rob Kall Bottom up Show (2017-06-29), at 48:15. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2t-xAWvn0g&t=2895s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-06-29-rob-kall-bottom-up-show/
3. John Kiriakou, CIA Whistleblower, Doing Time Like a Spy, (2017-05-23), at 57:18. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twDSUsMh2ws&t=3438s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-23-podcast-ufo-live-shows/
4. EXCLUSIVO: Parceria Lava Jato-EUA foi movida por ódio e dinh (2021-11-21), at 34:34. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6YVXC1HGsw&t=2074s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2021-11-21-dcm-tv-exclusivo-parceria-lava-jato-eua-foi-movida-p/
5. EXCLUSIVO: Parceria Lava Jato-EUA foi movida por ódio e dinh (2021-11-21), at 35:05. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6YVXC1HGsw&t=2105s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2021-11-21-dcm-tv-exclusivo-parceria-lava-jato-eua-foi-movida-p/
6. Doing Time Like A Spy — On Prison Survival & the CIA (2017-06-06), at 1:14:28. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-5yxHqYJ-k&t=4468s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-06-06-disruption-network-lab/
7. Scheer Intelligence: Kiriakou on Biden's Groveling (2022-07-24), at 27:07. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Wj4fhopkfc&t=1627s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2022-07-24-scheerpost-scheer-intelligence-kiriakou-on-biden-s-grove/
8. Spelunking the Deep State with John Kiriakou (2023-01-11), at 10:02. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is0yrElNSFA&t=602s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-11-real-progressives/
9. #278 — MK Ultra, USAID, Overthrowing Governments (2025-02-25), at 2:12:28. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CFWmuIgQIE&t=7948s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-02-25-mk-ultra-usaid-overthrowing-governments/
10. #278 — MK Ultra, USAID, Overthrowing Governments (2025-02-25), at 2:14:32. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CFWmuIgQIE&t=8072s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-02-25-mk-ultra-usaid-overthrowing-governments/
11. ScheerPost (2023-01-20), at 12:33. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT8DwRsee84&t=753s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-20-scheerpost-scheerpost/
12. ScheerPost (2023-01-20), at 13:04. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT8DwRsee84&t=784s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-20-scheerpost-scheerpost/
13. ScheerPost (2023-01-20), at 13:38. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT8DwRsee84&t=818s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-20-scheerpost-scheerpost/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/martin-luther-king/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt