Coretta Scott King watched by FBI

HOUSTON, Aug. 31 (UPI) -- The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation stepped up surveillance of Coretta Scott King after her husband, Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated.

Recently released FBI documents detailed how agents closely watched and scrutinized King's public appearances, speeches and private communications, KHOU-TV, Houston, reported Friday.

The papers show the FBI's biggest fear about King was her involvement in the peace and "anti-Vietnam War" movement. One agent said the U.S. government was afraid she would try to continue her husband's work and "attempt to tie the anti-Vietnam war movement to the civil rights movement."

The documents also reveal data from the surveillance of King sometimes went as high as the White House. An FBI agent reported then New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s phone call to King after her husband’s death to the White House and a later report to U.S. President Richard Nixon and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, outlined the FBI's findings from the surveillance.

The King file was closed months after the death of former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in 1972.