In August 1967, for instance, the K.G.B. authorized a plan to discredit the Rev. Martin Luther King by planting articles in the African press portraying him as an ''Uncle Tom'' who was secretly being paid off by the Government so that he would make sure the civil rights movement would not threaten President Lyndon B. Johnson.
The K.G.B. was apparently frustrated that a moderate like Dr. King had emerged as the most influential voice in the civil rights movement, but Moscow's comical propaganda revealed the K.G.B.'s lack of understanding of American politics and society. The K.G.B.'s propaganda campaign had even less impact than the F.B.I.'s separate, but equally fumbling, efforts to smear Dr. King.
''News that the K.G.B. was attempting to plant false stories in the African press portraying Dr. King as an 'Uncle Tom,' at the very time when Dr. King was harshly attacking Johnson's conduct of the Vietnam War indicates that American police agencies were not the only Keystone Kops active in the 1960's,'' said David J. Garrow, a historian at Emory University and the author of ''The F.B.I. and Martin Luther King Jr.''