From: eckinator
2010/9/15 Daniel J. Matyola <danmaty...@gmail.com>:
I agree. ?I don't understand why the newspaper insisted on
investigating and reporting on this either. ?He was a good
photographer, and took some great images of the civil rights
movement. ?I am confident nothing he told the FBI harmed Martin
Luther King or the movement. ?Why drag it up now?
I guess maybe because of the fact that being an informer is at least
questionable. Also it may be something to do with the history of how
the FBI tried to undermine the civil rights movement. Why not drag
it up now? Would any other time be better?
Cheers Ecke
The story originates from the local newspaper in Memphis where Withers
lived and worked.
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2010/sep/12/photographer-ernest-withers-fbi-informant/
It appears they were working on a story about the FBI and the 1968
Memphis sanitation workers strike when one of the documents received
from a FOIA request revealed Withers name in association with an
informant number that had appeared in documents released 30 years ago.
I don't think there's anything questionable about the FACT of his having
been an informant. That he was a PAID informant is conjecture ...
"Withers, who was assigned a racial informant number and produced a
large volume of confidential reports, fits the profile of a closely
supervised, paid informant, experts say."
Experts say a lot of things that eventually turn out to be wrong.
"It would be shocking to me that he wasn't paid,'' said Theoharis,
author of the books "Spying on Americans" and "The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover
and the Great American Inquisition".
[Theoharis is a retired Marquette University professor who the newspaper
consulted about the documents revealing Withers role as an informant.]
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