Best of the new soft-covers; FBI case on King revisted; The FBI and Martin Luther King Jr., by David J. Garrow. New York: Penguin Books. 320 pp. $5.95.

August 12, 1983

On two scores this book is remarkable: first, for its well backed-up indictment of the practices of the FBI in the 1960s during its investigation of Martin Luther King Jr. The

chronicle shows how scandalously the FBI invaded the private life of Dr. King. The book is remarkable, too, for providing new evidence that the FBI's original motive for the inquiry was sound - a suspicion that the American Communist Party, and therefore the Soviet Union, were exercising substantial influence over Dr. King and the civil rights movement. Dr. Garrow concludes the suspicion was unfounded.