Effort to discredit blacks is charged to ex-FBI chief

Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover deliberately set out to discredit black leaders, including Stokely Carmichael and Angela Davis, by trying to manipulate the news media, according to reports in the New York Times and the New York Daily News. The reports also said Mr. Hoover, in a series of memos during the late 1960s and early '70s, directed agents to discredit sympathizers of black groups, including conductor Leonard Bernstein. The declassified memos were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by lawyers for Richard Moore, a former Black Panther Party leader now in prison for attempted murder.