Newly released FBI files show that U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond tried to get the FBI to build a case against civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1965 on the grounds that King was “controlled by communists.” Earlier this week the FBI released 600 pages of Thurmond’s FBI file. The files show that an aide of Thurmond once met with FBI officials in order to inquire whether “there was a concerted effort on the part of the FBI to discredit King.” Around the same time Thurmond publicly criticized King for “injecting himself into matters of foreign policy.” Thurmond died in 2003 at the age of 100 after serving nearly a half-century in the Senate. While Thurmond was one of the fiercest opponents of the civil rights movement, he kept a secret that only emerged in recent years. 80 years ago he fathered a daughter with his black house servant. Their offspring, Essie May Washington Williams, recently wrote a memoir titled Dear Senator.