Byrd Got FBI Documents on Civil Rights Movement - New York Times:
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Senator Robert C. Byrd obtained secret F.B.I. documents about the civil rights movement that were leaked by the C.I.A. and set off an angry confrontation between the two agencies in the 1960s, according to newly released F.B.I. records.
Mr. Byrd, a Democrat from West Virginia who died in June 2010 at age 92, sought the intelligence because he suspected that Communists and subversives were guiding the civil rights cause, the records show. Decades before he became the longest-serving member of Congress in history, he stalled and voted against major civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s. He also belonged to the Ku Klux Klan as a young man in the 1940s, and the F.B.I. cited that membership while weighing his requests for the classified information, the records show.
“He eventually had a change of heart about a lot of that stuff,” said Ray Smock, a former historian for Congress who now oversees Mr. Byrd’s archives. Mr. Smock said Mr. Byrd’s hard-line belief in law and order played a role in his view of the civil rights movement. Mr. Byrd also repeatedly called his time with the Klan a serious mistake, Mr. Smock said.
The F.B.I. released more than 750 pages from its files, many with words, sentences or entire paragraphs redacted, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by The Associated Press. The records date to the mid-1950s, when Mr. Byrd served in the House. He was elected to the first of his record nine terms in the Senate in 1958.
The documents that revealed the leak, which happened in September 1966, caused outrage among top F.B.I. officials and prompted an internal C.I.A. investigation that singled out two agency employees as the culprits.
The episode damaged Mr. Byrd’s standing with the bureau, though only briefly, the records show. Numerous documents depict him as an outspoken supporter of the F.B.I. and particularly of J. Edgar Hoover, its longtime director, even toward the end of Mr. Hoover’s tenure, as criticism of him mounted.
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