An unhappy Wofford told King, in words he said had been carefully chosen by his superiors, that the United States government considered Stanley Levison a prime security threat. It was not a matter of leftist beliefs or Communist sympathies, Wofford added, or even of membership in the Communist Party, but that Levison had been identified at the highest levels of the U.S. government as a key element of the Soviet espionage network, a “direct link to Moscow.” The Kennedy Administration was warning King confidentially, but in the strongest terms, to cease all contact with Levison.
