Ex-FBI Agent Denies Klan Leader Had Mole Inside FBI

Early Days of KKK ./ fbi via national archive

By Allan Lengel

An ex-FBI agent is dismissing allegations by an informant that former  Mississippi Ku Klux Klan leader Sam Bowers said he had a tipster inside the FBI during the civil rights movement, who disclosed which Klansmen were talking to the bureau, according to Jackson Clarion-Ledger.

The paper reported that, according to FBI documents, an informant told the FBI in the fall of 1964 of the allegations.

But the paper reported that former FBI agent Jay Cochran, who was there at time laughed and said: “That’s a new one on me. I don’t think there’s even a remote possibility of that.”

But the paper reported that the Klan may have gotten help from state troopers. A Jan. 5, 1965, FBI memo stated that a highway patrolman told a Klansman there was an FBI informant in Lincoln County getting paid $500 a month.

The paper reported that statements were included in 40,000 pages of FBI documents related to the investigation of the Klan’s June 21, 1964, killings of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.