Found it. Was a lawyer and former assistant to King that tried yo have them destroyed....a judged ordered them sealed.
Bernard Lee
Bruh I didn't realize it. racist ass Jesse Helms wanted this declassified so he could undermine the establishment of an MLK Holiday
Found it:
F.B. I. Ordered to Send King Tapes to Archives (Published 1977)
F.B. I. Ordered to Send King Tapes to Archives
Feb. 1, 1977
The New York Times Archives
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February 1, 1977, Page 12
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WASHINGTON, Jan. 31 (AP)—A Federal judge today ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation to turn over all tapes and transcripts gathered in the wiretapping of the. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to the National Archives and directed that they be kept there under seal for 50 years.
A suit for damages had been brought by Bernard Lee, former assistant to the slain civil rights leader, and by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which Mr. King headed until his death in 1968.
They charged that the F.B.I. taperecorded Mr. King's conversations in a room at Washington's Willard Hotel between 1963 and 1968. Mr. Lee had charged that the F.B.I. tape‐recorded conversations in the hotel room in 1963 and then sent a copy of the tape to Mrs. King in 1964.
Federal Judge John Lewis Smith Jr. ordered that the archivists of the United States “shall take such actions as are necessary to the preservation of said tapes and documents but shall not disclose the tapes or documents, or their, contents,” except by an order from a court.
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