Why James Comey Might Call Himself Niebuhr on Twitter

James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, keeps a document from the bureau's archives on his desk, like a memento mori. It's the application that his predecessor, J. Edgar Hoover, made to the Justice Department to wiretap the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., together with the approval granted by the Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy. It is a single page. “The entire application is five sentences long, it is without fact or substance, and it is predicated on the naked assertion that ‘there is Communist influence in the racial situation,' ” Comey told an audience at Georgetown University in February of 2015. He explained that these days, as the bureau's director, he requires F.B.I. agents and analysts in training to “study the F.B.I.'s interaction” with King and pay a visit to the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial in Washington, D.C. “The reason I do those things is to insure that we remember our mistakes and that we learn from them,” he said.