FBI investigators finally discovered the bodies of the three missing civil rights workers in Mississippi, although it would be difficult to prosecute the murders given the likely complicity of local police. Ironically, the FBI was at that same time surveilling and disrupting efforts by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to challenge the segregationist delegation to the Democratic National Convention, which threatened Johnson’s grip on the South. Hoover also helped Johnson to spin riots in Harlem and assure the public that they had nothing to do with civil rights, thus angering his conservative allies. A scandal then broke when the FBI’s main liaison with the White House was caught having sex with a man in a YMCA bathroom. As the Goldwater campaign denounced him as a national-security threat, Hoover did yet another favor for Johnson and absolved the agent of anything other than personal misconduct. Johnson crushed Goldwater in the 1964 election, and Hoover promised his continuing support.

With Johnson secure for at least four more years, Hoover planned an offensive against Martin Luther King Jr., whom he denounced to reporters as “the most notorious liar in the country.” Public backlash was intense, especially as King was poised to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, but Hoover did not back down.