How have I never heard of this one?
William C. Sullivan, once the third-highest-ranking official in the FBI, was set to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1977. The committee investigating the murders of JFK and MLK.
He had already blown the whistle to the Church Committee a year earlier, admitting the FBI surveilled Martin Luther King Jr. under Hoover’s direction. He claimed he disagreed with the program and feared it would damage the Bureau's credibility.
Then, just days before his scheduled HSCA testimony… Sullivan was shot and killed by a hunter who claimed he mistook him for a deer.
Authorities ruled it an accident. The shooter got a fine and lost his license.
Robert D. Novak an American syndicated columnist, journalist, television personality, author, and conservative political commentator wrote:
Sullivan came to our house in the Maryland suburbs in June 1972 for lunch and a long conversation about my plans for a biography of Hoover (a project I abandoned as just too ambitious an undertaking). Before he left, Bill told me someday I probably would read about his death in some kind of accident, but not to believe it. It would be murder.
Posted by SortByyControversial
2 Comments
Submission Statement: It was a tragic accident of course. I wonder what ever happened to the young man that “accidently” shot this guy?
Also, the anti-conspiracy theorists love to say…”Ha, you really think people can keep secrets? Why haven’t more come out of the woodwork and blown the whistle?”
>Sullivan had been scheduled to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations. **Sullivan was one of six top FBI officials who died in a six month period in 1977.** Others who were due to appear before the committee who died included Louis Nicholas, special assistant to J. Edgar Hoover and his liaison with the Warren Commission; Alan H. Belmont, special assistant to Hoover; James Cadigan, document expert with access to documents that related to death of John F. Kennedy; J. M. English, former head of FBI Forensic Sciences Laboratory where Oswald’s rifle and pistol were tested; Donald Kaylor, FBI fingerprint chemist who examined prints found at the assassination scene.
[Souce](https://spartacus-educational.com/USAfbi.htm?utm_source)
Yeah, that’s why. You get cleaned up quickly, even if you are at or near the top of the FBI.