COINTELPRO

Last updated

COINTELPRO memo proposing a plan to expose the pregnancy of actress Jean Seberg, a financial supporter of the Black Panther Party, hoping to "possibly cause her embarrassment or tarnish her image with the general public". Covert campaigns to publicly discredit activists and destroy their interpersonal relationships were a common tactic used by COINTELPRO agents. COINTELPRO - Jean Seberg.jpg
COINTELPRO memo proposing a plan to expose the pregnancy of actress Jean Seberg, a financial supporter of the Black Panther Party, hoping to "possibly cause her embarrassment or tarnish her image with the general public". Covert campaigns to publicly discredit activists and destroy their interpersonal relationships were a common tactic used by COINTELPRO agents.

COINTELPRO (a syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert and illegal [1] [2] projects conducted between 1956 and 1971 by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting American political organizations that the FBI perceived as subversive. [3] [4] [5] [6] Groups and individuals targeted by the FBI included feminist organizations, [7] [8] the Communist Party USA, [9] anti-Vietnam War organizers, activists in the civil rights and Black power movements (e.g., Martin Luther King Jr., the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party), environmentalist and animal rights organizations, the American Indian Movement (AIM), Chicano and Mexican-American groups like the Brown Berets and the United Farm Workers, and independence movements (including Puerto Rican independence groups such as the Young Lords and the Puerto Rican Socialist Party). Although the program primarily focused on organizations that were part of the broader New Left, they also targeted white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan [10] [11] and the National States' Rights Party. [12]

Contents

The FBI has used covert operations against domestic political groups since its inception; however, covert operations under the official COINTELPRO label took place between 1956 and 1971. However, the official chronology of the program is the subject of the debate. According to a senate investigation, "If COINTELPRO had been a short-lived aberration, the thorny problems of motivation, techniques, and control presented might be safely relegated to history. However, COINTELPRO existed for years on an 'ad hoc basis before the formal programs were instituted, and more significantly, COINTELPRO-type activities may continue today under the rubric of 'investigation." [13] Many of the tactics used in COINTELPRO are alleged to have seen continued use, including discrediting targets through psychological warfare; smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; illegal violence; and assassination. [14] [15] [16] [17] According to a Senate report, the FBI's motivation was "protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order". [13]

Beginning in 1969, leaders of the Black Panther Party were targeted by the COINTELPRO and "neutralized" by being assassinated, imprisoned, publicly humiliated or falsely charged with crimes. Some of the Black Panthers targeted include Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, Zayd Shakur, Geronimo Pratt, Mumia Abu-Jamal, [18] and Marshall Conway. Common tactics used by COINTELPRO were perjury, witness harassment, witness intimidation, and withholding of exculpatory evidence. [19] [20] [21]

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover issued directives governing COINTELPRO, ordering FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of these movements and especially their leaders. [22] [23] Under Hoover, the official in charge of COINTELPRO was assistant director William C. Sullivan. [24] Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy personally authorized some of the programs, [25] giving written approval for limited wiretapping of Martin Luther King's phones "on a trial basis, for a month or so". [26] Hoover extended the clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for evidence in any areas of King's life they deemed worthy. [27]

History

The FBI initiated COINTELPRO, an abbreviation for Counterintelligence Program, in 1956 with the aim of undermining the operations of the Communist Party of the United States. In the 1960s, the scope of the organization was broadened to encompass various additional domestic factions, including the Ku Klux Klan, the Socialist Workers Party, and the Black Panther Party. The cessation of all COINTELPRO operations occurred in 1971. Despite its relatively small scale (constituting approximately 0.2% of the FBI's overall workload during a 15-year timeframe), COINTELPRO was subsequently subject to criticism from both Congress and the American public for infringing upon first amendment rights and other grounds. [28]

Tactics included anonymous phone calls, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audits, and the creation of documents that would divide the American communist organization internally. [9] An October 1956 memo from Hoover reclassified the FBI's ongoing surveillance of black leaders, including it within COINTELPRO, with the justification that the movement was infiltrated by communists. [29] In 1956, Hoover sent an open letter denouncing Dr. T. R. M. Howard, a civil rights leader, surgeon, and wealthy entrepreneur in Mississippi who had criticized FBI inaction in solving recent murders of George W. Lee, Emmett Till, and other African Americans in the South. [30] When the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an African-American civil rights organization, was founded in 1957, the FBI began to monitor and target the group almost immediately, focusing particularly on Bayard Rustin, Stanley Levison, and eventually Martin Luther King Jr. [31]

Part of the 1964 "suicide letter" that the FBI mailed anonymously to Martin Luther King Jr.. King interpreted the letter as an effort to persuade him to commit suicide. More portions of the letter would be released in 2014. Mlk-uncovered-letter.png
Part of the 1964 "suicide letter" that the FBI mailed anonymously to Martin Luther King Jr.. King interpreted the letter as an effort to persuade him to commit suicide. More portions of the letter would be released in 2014.

After the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Hoover singled out King as a major target for COINTELPRO. Under pressure from Hoover to focus on King, Sullivan wrote: [33]

In the light of King's powerful demagogic speech ... We must mark him now if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national security.

Soon after, the FBI was systematically bugging King's home and his hotel rooms, as they were now aware that King was growing in stature daily as the most prominent leader of the civil rights movement. [34]

In the mid-1960s, King began to publicly criticize the Bureau for giving insufficient attention to the use of terrorism by white supremacists. Hoover responded by publicly calling King the most "notorious liar" in the United States. [35] In his 1991 memoir, Washington Post journalist Carl Rowan asserted that the FBI had sent at least one anonymous letter to King encouraging him to commit suicide. [36] Historian Taylor Branch documents an anonymous "suicide package" sent by the FBI on November 21, 1964, that contained audio recordings obtained through tapping King's phone and placing bugs throughout various hotel rooms over the past two years, [37] and that was created two days after the announcement of King's impending Nobel Peace Prize. [37] The tape, which was prepared by FBI audio technician John Matter, [37] documented a series of sexual indiscretions by King combined with a letter telling him: "There is only one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self is bared to the nation". [38] King believed that he was subsequently informed that the audio would be released to the media if he did not acquiesce and commit suicide prior to accepting his Nobel Peace Prize. [37] When King refused to satisfy their coercion tactics, FBI Associate Director, Cartha D. DeLoach, commenced a media campaign offering the surveillance transcript to various news organizations, including Newsweek and Newsday . [37] Even by 1969, as has been noted elsewhere, "[FBI] efforts to 'expose' Martin Luther King Jr. had not slackened even though King had been dead for a year. [The Bureau] furnished ammunition to opponents that enabled attacks on King's memory, and ... tried to block efforts to honor the slain leader." [38] However, more portions of the FBI letter to King were made public in 2014 which suggested that the FBI's intent was to push King out of leadership and have "older leaders" like Roy Wilkins lead the civil right movement. [32] The claim that the FBI's intent was to remove King from SCLC leadership was also previously backed in 1976 by the findings of the Church Committee. [39]

During the same period the program also targeted Malcolm X. While an FBI spokesman has denied that the FBI was "directly" involved in Malcolm's murder in 1965, it is documented that the Bureau worked to "widen the rift" between Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad through infiltration and the "sparking of acrimonious debates within the organization", rumor-mongering, and other tactics designed to foster internal disputes, which ultimately led to Malcolm's assassination. [40] [41] The FBI heavily infiltrated Malcolm's Organization of Afro-American Unity in the final months of his life. The Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Malcolm X by Manning Marable asserts that most of the men who plotted Malcolm's assassination were never apprehended and that the full extent of the FBI's involvement in his death cannot be known. [42] [43]

Amidst the urban unrest of July–August 1967, the FBI began "COINTELPRO–BLACK HATE", which focused on King and the SCLC, as well as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), the Deacons for Defense and Justice, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Nation of Islam. [44] BLACK HATE established the Ghetto Informant Program and instructed 23 FBI offices to "disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist hate type organizations". [45]

A March 1968 memo stated the program's goal was to "prevent the coalition of militant black nationalist groups"; to "Prevent the RISE OF A 'MESSIAH' who could unify ... the militant black nationalist movement"; "to pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them before they exercise their potential for violence [against authorities]"; to "Prevent militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining RESPECTABILITY, by discrediting them to ... both the responsible community and to liberals who have vestiges of sympathy"; and to "prevent the long-range GROWTH of militant black organizations, especially among youth". Dr. King was said to have potential to be the "messiah" figure, should he abandon nonviolence and integrationism, [46] and Kwame Ture was noted to have "the necessary charisma to be a real threat in this way" as he was portrayed as someone who espoused a much more militant vision of "black power". [47] While the FBI was particularly concerned with leaders and organizers, they did not limit their scope of target to the heads of organizations. Individuals such as writers were also listed among the targets of operations. [48]

This program coincided with a broader federal effort to prepare military responses for urban riots and began increased collaboration between the FBI, Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, and the Department of Defense. The CIA launched its own domestic espionage project in 1967 called Operation CHAOS. [49] A particular target was the Poor People's Campaign, a national effort organized by King and the SCLC to occupy Washington, DC. The FBI monitored and disrupted the campaign on a national level, while using targeted smear tactics locally to undermine support for the march. [50] The Black Panther Party was another targeted organization, wherein the FBI collaborated to destroy the party from the inside out. [48]

Overall, COINTELPRO encompassed disruption and sabotage of the Socialist Workers Party (1961), the Ku Klux Klan (1964), the Nation of Islam, the Black Panther Party (1967), and the entire New Left social/political movement, which included antiwar, community, and religious groups (1968). A later investigation by the Senate's Church Committee (see below) stated that "COINTELPRO began in 1956, in part because of frustration with Supreme Court rulings limiting the Government's power to proceed overtly against dissident groups." [51] Official congressional committees and several court cases [52] have concluded that COINTELPRO operations against communist and socialist groups exceeded statutory limits on FBI activity and violated constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and association. [1]

Program revealed

The building broken into by the Citizen's Commission to Investigate the FBI, at One Veterans Square, Media, Pennsylvania One Vets Sq Media Delco PA.JPG
The building broken into by the Citizen's Commission to Investigate the FBI, at One Veterans Square, Media, Pennsylvania

The program was secret until March 8, 1971, when the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI burgled an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania, took several dossiers, and exposed the program by passing this material to news agencies. [1] [53] The boxing match known as the Fight of the Century between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in March 1971 provided cover for the activist group to successfully pull off the burglary. Muhammad Ali was a COINTELPRO target because he had joined the Nation of Islam and the anti-war movement. [54]

Many news organizations initially refused to immediately publish the information, with the notable exception of The Washington Post . After affirming the reliability of the documents, it published them on the front page (in defiance of the Attorney General's request), prompting other organizations to follow suit. Within the year, Director J. Edgar Hoover declared that the centralized COINTELPRO was over, and that all future counterintelligence operations would be handled case by case. [55] [56]

Additional documents were revealed in the course of separate lawsuits filed against the FBI by NBC correspondent Carl Stern, the Socialist Workers Party, and a number of other groups. In 1976 the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities of the United States Senate, commonly referred to as the "Church Committee" after its chairman, Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho), launched a major investigation of the FBI and COINTELPRO. Many released documents have been partly or entirely redacted.

The Final Report of the Select Committee castigated the conduct of the intelligence community in its domestic operations (including COINTELPRO) in no uncertain terms:

The Committee finds that the domestic activities of the intelligence community at times violated specific statutory prohibitions and infringed the constitutional rights of American citizens. The legal questions involved in intelligence programs were often not considered. On other occasions, they were intentionally disregarded in the belief that because the programs served the "national security" the law did not apply. While intelligence officers on occasion failed to disclose to their superiors programs which were illegal or of questionable legality, the Committee finds that the most serious breaches of duty were those of senior officials, who were responsible for controlling intelligence activities and generally failed to assure compliance with the law. [1] Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that ... the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence. [51]

The Church Committee documented a history of the FBI (initially called BOI until 1936) exercising political repression as far back as World War I, and through the 1920s, when agents were charged with rounding up "anarchists, communists, socialists, reformists and revolutionaries" for deportation. From 1936 through 1976, the domestic operations were increased against political and anti-war groups.

FBI claimed intent of COINTELPRO

The FBI claimed that the purpose behind COINTELPRO was to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, or otherwise neutralize" groups that the FBI officials believed were "subversive" [57] by instructing FBI field operatives to: [58]

  1. Create a negative public image for target groups (for example through surveilling activists and then releasing negative personal information to the public)
  2. Break down internal organization by creating conflicts (for example, by having agents exacerbate racial tensions, or send anonymous letters to try to create conflicts)
  3. Create dissension between groups (for example, by spreading rumors that other groups were stealing money)
  4. Restrict access to public resources (for example, by pressuring non-profit organizations to cut off funding or material support)
  5. Restrict the ability to organize protest (for example, through agents promoting violence against police during planning and at protests)
  6. Restrict the ability of individuals to participate in group activities (for example, by character assassinations, false arrests, surveillance)

Range of targets

At its inception, the program's main target was the Communist Party. [48]

In an interview with the BBC's Andrew Marr in February 1996, Noam Chomsky—a political activist and MIT professor of linguistics—spoke about the purpose and the targets of COINTELPRO, saying: [59]

COINTELPRO was a program of subversion carried out not by a couple of petty crooks but by the national political police, the FBI, under four administrations ... by the time it got through, I won't run through the whole story, it was aimed at the entire new left, at the women's movement, at the whole black movement, it was extremely broad. Its actions went as far as political assassination.

According to the Church Committee: [60]

While the declared purposes of these programs were to protect the "national security" or prevent violence, Bureau witnesses admit that many of the targets were nonviolent and most had no connections with a foreign power. Indeed, nonviolent organizations and individuals were targeted because the Bureau believed they represented a "potential" for violence—and nonviolent citizens who were against the war in Vietnam were targeted because they gave "aid and comfort" to violent demonstrators by lending respectability to their cause.

The imprecision of the targeting is demonstrated by the inability of the Bureau to define the subjects of the programs. The Black Nationalist program, according to its supervisor, included "a great number of organizations that you might not today characterize as black nationalist but which were in fact primarily black". Thus, the nonviolent Southern Christian Leadership Conference was labeled as a Black Nationalist "Hate Group".

Furthermore, the actual targets were chosen from a far broader group than the titles of the programs would imply. The CPUSA program targeted not only Communist Party members but also sponsors of the National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee and civil rights leaders allegedly under Communist influence or deemed to be not sufficiently "anti-Communist". The Socialist Workers Party program included non-SWP sponsors of anti-war demonstrations which were cosponsored by the SWP or the Young Socialist Alliance, its youth group. The Black Nationalist program targeted a range of organizations from the Panthers to SNCC to the peaceful Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and included every Black Student Union and many other black student groups. New Left targets ranged from the SDS to the InterUniversity Committee for Debate on Foreign Policy, from Antioch College ("vanguard of the New Left") to the New Mexico Free University and other "alternate" schools, and from underground newspapers to students' protesting university censorship of a student publication by carrying signs with four-letter words on them.

Examples of surveillance, spanning all presidents from FDR to Nixon, both legal and illegal, contained in the Church Committee report: [61]

Groups that were known to be targets of COINTELPRO operations include: [62]

The COINTELPRO operators targeted multiple groups at once and encouraged splintering of these groups from within. In letter-writing campaigns (wherein false letters were sent on behalf of members of parties), the FBI ensured that groups would not unite in their causes. For instance, they launched a campaign specifically to alienate the Black Panther Party from the Mau Maus, Young Lords, Young Patriots and SDS. These racially diverse groups had been building alliances, in part due to charismatic leaders such as Fred Hampton and his attempts to create a "Rainbow Coalition". The FBI was concerned with ensuring that groups could not gain traction through unity, specifically across racial lines. One of the main ways of targeting these groups was to arouse suspicion between the different parties and causes. In this way the bureau took on a divide-and-conquer offensive. [48]

The COINTELPRO documents show numerous cases of the FBI's intentions to prevent and disrupt protests against the Vietnam War. Many techniques were used to accomplish this task. "These included promoting splits among antiwar forces, encouraging red-baiting of socialists, and pushing violent confrontations as an alternative to massive, peaceful demonstrations." One 1966 COINTELPRO operation tried to redirect the Socialist Workers Party from their pledge of support for the antiwar movement. [63]

The FBI has said that it no longer undertakes COINTELPRO or COINTELPRO-like operations. However, critics have claimed that agency programs in the spirit of COINTELPRO targeted groups such as the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, [64] the American Indian Movement, [65] [66] Earth First!, [67] and the anti-globalization movement. [68]

Methods

Body of Fred Hampton, national spokesman for the Black Panther Party, who was assassinated by members of the Chicago Police Department, with the raid itself being a COINTELPRO operation, although there is not proof the assassination itself was. Fred Hampton dead body.jpg
Body of Fred Hampton, national spokesman for the Black Panther Party, who was assassinated by members of the Chicago Police Department, with the raid itself being a COINTELPRO operation, although there is not proof the assassination itself was.

According to attorney Brian Glick in his book War at Home, the FBI used five main methods during COINTELPRO:

  1. Infiltration: Agents and informers did not merely spy on political activists. Their main purpose was to discredit, disrupt and negatively redirect action. Their very presence served to undermine trust and scare off potential supporters. The FBI and police exploited this fear to smear genuine activists as agents.
  2. Psychological warfare: The FBI and police used a myriad of "dirty tricks" to undermine movements. They planted false media stories and published bogus leaflets and other publications in the name of targeted groups. They forged correspondence, sent anonymous letters, and made anonymous telephone calls. They spread misinformation about meetings and events, set up pseudo movement groups run by government agents, and manipulated or strong-armed parents, employers, landlords, school officials, and others to cause trouble for activists. They used bad-jacketing to create suspicion about targeted activists, sometimes with lethal consequences. [73]
  3. Harassment via the legal system: The FBI and police abused the legal system to harass dissidents and make them appear to be criminals. Officers of the law gave perjured testimony and presented fabricated evidence as a pretext for false arrests and wrongful imprisonment. They discriminatorily enforced tax laws and other government regulations and used conspicuous surveillance, "investigative" interviews, and grand jury subpoenas in an effort to intimidate activists and silence their supporters. [72] [74]
  4. Illegal force: The FBI conspired with local police departments to threaten dissidents; to conduct illegal break-ins in order to search dissident homes; and to commit vandalism, assaults, beatings and assassinations. [72] The objective was to frighten or eliminate dissidents and disrupt their movements.
  5. Undermine public opinion: One of the primary ways the FBI targeted organizations was by challenging their reputations in the community and denying them a platform to gain legitimacy. Hoover specifically designed programs to block leaders from "spreading their philosophy publicly or through the communications media". Furthermore, the organization created and controlled negative media meant to undermine black power organizations. For instance, they oversaw the creation of "documentaries" skillfully edited to paint the Black Panther Party as aggressive, and false newspapers that spread misinformation about party members. The ability of the FBI to create distrust within and between revolutionary organizations tainted their public image and weakened chances at unity and public support. [48]

The FBI specifically developed tactics intended to heighten tension and hostility between various factions in the black power movement, for example between the Black Panthers and the US Organization. For instance, the FBI sent a fake letter to the US Organization exposing a supposed Black Panther plot to murder the head of the US Organization, Ron Karenga. They then intensified this by spreading falsely attributed cartoons in the black communities pitting the Black Panther Party against the US Organization. [48] This resulted in numerous deaths, among which were San Diego Black Panther Party members John Huggins, Bunchy Carter and Sylvester Bell. [72] Another example of the FBI's anonymous letter writing campaign is how they turned the Blackstone Rangers head, Jeff Fort, against former ally Fred Hampton, by stating that Hampton had a hit on Fort. [48] They also were instrumental in developing the rift between Black Panther Party leaders Eldridge Cleaver and Huey Newton, as executed through false letters inciting the two leaders of the Black Panther Party. [48]

Dhoruba Bin Wahad, a former Black Panther, reflects on how these tactics made him feel, saying he had a combat mentality and felt like he was at war with the government. When asked about why he thinks the Black Panthers were targeted he said, "In the United States, the equivalent of the military was the local police. During the early sixties, at the height of the civil rights movement, and the human rights movement, the police in the United States became increasingly militaristic. They began to train out of military bases in the United States. The Law Enforcement Assistance Act supplied local police with military technology, everything from assault rifles to army personnel carriers. In his opinion, the Counterintelligence Program went hand-in-hand with the militarization of the police in the Black community, with the militarization of police in America." [75]

The FBI also conspired with the police departments of many U.S. cities (San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Philadelphia, Chicago) to encourage repeated raids on Black Panther homes—often with little or no evidence of violations of federal, state, or local laws—which resulted in the police killing many members of the Black Panther Party, most notably Chicago Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton on December 4, 1969. Whether or not the FBI sanctioned his killing remains unproven. [16] [72] [76] Before the death of Hampton, long-term infiltrator, William O'Neal, shared floor plans of his apartment with the COINTELPRO team. He then gave Hampton a dose of secobarbital that rendered Hampton unconscious during the raid on his home. [48]

In order to eliminate black militant leaders whom they considered dangerous, the FBI is believed to have worked with local police departments to target specific individuals, [77] accuse them of crimes they did not commit, suppress exculpatory evidence and falsely incarcerate them. Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, a Black Panther Party leader, was incarcerated for 27 years before a California Superior Court vacated his murder conviction, ultimately freeing him. Appearing before the court, an FBI agent testified that he believed Pratt had been framed, because both the FBI and the Los Angeles Police Department knew he had not been in the area at the time the murder occurred. [78] [79]

Some sources claim that the FBI conducted more than 200 "black bag jobs", [80] [81] which were warrantless surreptitious entries, against the targeted groups and their members. [82]

In 1969 the FBI special agent in San Francisco wrote Hoover that his investigation of the Black Panther Party had concluded that in his city, at least, the Panthers were primarily engaged in feeding breakfast to children. Hoover fired back a memo implying the agent's career goals would be directly affected by his supplying evidence to support Hoover's view that the Black Panther Party was "a violence-prone organization seeking to overthrow the Government by revolutionary means". [83]

Hoover supported using false claims to attack his political enemies. In one memo he wrote: "Purpose of counterintelligence action is to disrupt the Black Panther Party and it is immaterial whether facts exist to substantiate the charge." [84]

Viola's family endured Hoover's claiming that cuts on her arm from the car's shattered window indicated "recent drug use" and that her proximity to Moton resembled "a necking party," despite an autopsy revealing no traces of drugs in her system and indicating she hadn't had sex recently before her death.

—On the FBI's targeting of Viola Liuzzo [85]

In one particularly controversial 1965 incident, white civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo was murdered by Ku Klux Klansmen, who gave chase and fired shots into her car after noticing that her passenger was a young black man; one of the Klansmen was Gary Thomas Rowe, an acknowledged FBI informant. [86] [87] The FBI spread rumors that Liuzzo was a member of the Communist Party and had abandoned her children to have sexual relationships with African Americans involved in the civil rights movement. [88] [89] FBI records show that J. Edgar Hoover personally communicated these insinuations to President Johnson. [90] [91] Despite this, three Klansmen would be convicted in a federal trial for Liuzzo's murder in December 1965. [92]

FBI informant Rowe has also been implicated in some of the most violent crimes of the 1960s civil rights era, including attacks on the Freedom Riders and the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. [86]

The ACLU has claimed the FBI supported an extreme right-wing group of former Minutemen, transforming it into a group called the Secret Army Organization that targeted groups, activists, and leaders involved in the Anti-War Movement, using both intimidation and violent acts. [93] [94] [95] [96]

Hoover ordered preemptive action "to pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them before they exercise their potential for violence." [22]

Illegal surveillance

The final report of the Church Committee concluded:

Too many people have been spied upon by too many Government agencies and too much information has been illegally collected. The Government has often undertaken the secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when those beliefs posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power. The Government, operating primarily through secret and biased informants, but also using other intrusive techniques such as wiretaps, microphone "bugs", surreptitious mail opening, and break-ins, has swept in vast amounts of information about the personal lives, views, and associations of American citizens. Investigations of groups deemed potentially dangerous—and even of groups suspected of associating with potentially dangerous organizations—have continued for decades, despite the fact that those groups did not engage in unlawful activity.

Groups and individuals have been assaulted, repressed, harassed and disrupted because of their political views, social beliefs and their lifestyles. Investigations have been based upon vague standards whose breadth made excessive collection inevitable. Unsavory, harmful and vicious tactics have been employed—including anonymous attempts to break up marriages, disrupt meetings, ostracize persons from their professions, and provoke target groups into rivalries that might result in deaths. Intelligence agencies have served the political and personal objectives of presidents and other high officials. While the agencies often committed excesses in response to pressure from high officials in the Executive branch and Congress, they also occasionally initiated improper activities and then concealed them from officials whom they had a duty to inform.

Governmental officials—including those whose principal duty is to enforce the law—have violated or ignored the law over long periods of time and have advocated and defended their right to break the law.

The Constitutional system of checks and balances has not adequately controlled intelligence activities. Until recently the Executive branch has neither delineated the scope of permissible activities nor established procedures for supervising intelligence agencies. Congress has failed to exercise sufficient oversight, seldom questioning the use to which its appropriations were being put. Most domestic intelligence issues have not reached the courts, and in those cases when they have reached the courts, the judiciary has been reluctant to grapple with them. [97] [98]

Later similar operations

While COINTELPRO was officially terminated in April 1971, domestic espionage continued. [99] [100] [101] Between 1972 and 1974, it is documented that the Bureau planted over 500 bugs without a warrant and opened over 2,000 pieces of personal mail. More recent targets of covert action include the American Indian Movement (AIM), Earth First!, and Committees in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. [102] Documents released under the FOIA show that the FBI tracked the late David Halberstam—a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author—for more than two decades. [103] "Counterterrorism" guidelines implemented during the Reagan administration have been described as allowing a return to COINTELPRO tactics. [104] Some radical groups accuse factional opponents of being FBI informants or assume the FBI is infiltrating the movement. [105] COINTELPRO survivor Filiberto Ojeda Rios was killed by the FBI's hostage rescue team in 2005, [106] his death described by a United Nations special committee as an assassination. [107]

Environmentalist Eric McDavid, convicted on arson charges, was released after documents emerged demonstrating that the FBI informant in his Earth Liberation Front group provided crucial leadership, information, and material without which the crime could not have been committed, [108] repeating the same pattern of behavior of COINTELPRO. [109] It has been claimed these sorts of practices have become widespread in FBI "counter-terrorism" cases targeting Muslims in the 2009 Bronx terrorism plot and others. [110] [111] [112] [113]

Authors such as Ward Churchill, Rex Weyler, and Peter Matthiessen allege that the federal government intended to acquire uranium deposits on the Lakota tribe's reservation land, and that this motivated a larger government conspiracy against AIM activists on the Pine Ridge reservation. [65] [66] [114] [115] [116] Others believe COINTELPRO continues and similar actions are being taken against activist groups. [116] [117] [118] Caroline Woidat says that, with respect to Native Americans, COINTELPRO should be understood within a historical context in which "Native Americans have been viewed and have viewed the world themselves through the lens of conspiracy theory." [116] Other authors argue that while some conspiracy theories related to COINTELPRO are unfounded, the issue of ongoing government surveillance and repression is real. [119] [120]

FBI Agent Richard G. Held is known to have increased FBI support for the Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOON) squads, who were a private paramilitary group established in 1972 by the elected tribal chairman, Dick Wilson, under authority of the Oglala Sioux. AIM accused GOONs of involvement in 300 assaults and 64 homicides of political opponents. Despite this, The Bureau rarely investigated them and instead used its resources overwhelmingly to prosecute AIM. [121] In 2000, the FBI released a report regarding these alleged unsolved violent deaths on Pine Ridge reservation and accounted for most of the deaths and disputed the claims of unsolved murders. The report stated that only four deaths were unsolved and that some deaths were not murders. [122] [123]

A lawsuit filed by Dhoruba bin-Wahad, a former member of the Black Panther Party, revealed the existence of multiple programs similar to COINTELPRO including "Newkill" (New York Police Killings), Chesrob (a program focused on Panther Assata Shakur), and PRISACTS (The Prison Activists Surveillance Program), a program that focused on "neutralizing" political activists who were already in prison, many of whom (like bin-Wahad) had been targeted by COINTELPRO. [124] [125]

In April 2018, the Atlanta Black Star characterized the FBI as still engaging in COINTELPRO behavior by surveilling the Black Lives Matter movement. Internal documents dated as late as 2017 showed that the FBI had surveilled the movement. [126] In 2014, the FBI tracked a Black Lives Matter activist using surveillance tactics which The Intercept found "reminiscent of a rich American history of targeting black Americans," including COINTELPRO. [127] This practice, along with the imprisonment of black activists for their views, has been associated with the new FBI designation of "Black Identity Extremists". [128] [129]

Defending Rights & Dissent, a civil liberties group, cataloged known instances of First Amendment abuses and political surveillance by the FBI since 2010. The organization found that the FBI devoted disproportionate resources to spy on peaceful left-leaning civil society groups, including Occupy Wall Street, economic justice advocates, racial justice movements, environmentalists, Abolish ICE, and various anti-war movements. [130] [131]

In December 2012, the FBI released redacted documents in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF). Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, the executive director of PCJF, said the documents showed that FBI counterterrorism agents had monitored the Occupy movement from its inception in August 2011 and that the FBI acted improperly by collecting "information on people's free-speech actions" and entering it into "unregulated databases, a vast storehouse of information widely disseminated to a range of law-enforcement and, apparently, private entities" (see Domestic Security Alliance Council). [132] The FBI also communicated with the New York Stock Exchange, banks, private businesses and state and local police forces about the movement. [133] In 2014, the PCJF obtained an additional 4,000 pages of unclassified documents through a Freedom of Information Act request, showing "details of the scrutiny of the Occupy protests in 2011 and 2012 by law enforcement officers, federal officials, security contractors and others." [134]

In October 2020, Katie Reiter, chief of staff to Michigan state Senator Rosemary Bayer, had an FBI task force come to her house and aggressively question her about a draft bill she had recently discussed which would have limited the use of tear gas against protesters. Reiter had discussed the proposed ban on tear gas on a private 90-minute Zoom call with Bayer and a handful of other staffers. Reiter says the two officers refused to answer any questions about how they became aware of her private meeting. The Intercept reported about the incident: “Reiter said that the FBI’s visit left her confused and fearful. ‘It has impacted my sleep, it has caused me quite a bit of anxiety,’ she said. ‘And it has certainly impacted how we talk. I try not to let it, I’ll just be like, ‘No, we’re going to talk about this.’ But it's in my mind all the time.’” A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment on the record, as did a spokesperson for Zoom. [135]

Notable people targeted

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Federal Bureau of Investigation</span> U.S. federal law enforcement agency

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. An agency of the United States Department of Justice, the FBI is a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community and reports to both the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence. A leading U.S. counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and criminal investigative organization, the FBI has jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crimes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. Edgar Hoover</span> American law-enforcement administrator (1895–1972)

John Edgar Hoover was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the final Director of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI) and the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). President Calvin Coolidge first appointed Hoover as director of the BOI, the predecessor to the FBI, in 1924. After 11 years in the post, Hoover became instrumental in founding the FBI in June 1935, where he remained as director for an additional 37 years until his death in May 1972 – serving a total of 48 years leading both the BOI and the FBI under eight Presidents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee</span> Activist organization during the US civil rights movement

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emerging in 1960 from the student-led sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee, the Committee sought to coordinate and assist direct-action challenges to the civic segregation and political exclusion of African Americans. From 1962, with the support of the Voter Education Project, SNCC committed to the registration and mobilization of black voters in the Deep South. Affiliates such as the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Alabama also worked to increase the pressure on federal and state government to enforce constitutional protections.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stokely Carmichael</span> American activist (1941–1998)

Kwame Ture was an American activist who played a major role in the civil rights movement in the United States and the global pan-African movement. Born in Trinidad in the Caribbean, he grew up in the United States from the age of 11 and became an activist while attending the Bronx High School of Science. He was a key leader in the development of the Black Power movement, first while leading the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), then as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party, and last as a leader of the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fred Hampton</span> African-American activist (1948–1969)

Fredrick Allen Hampton Sr. was an American civil rights activist. He came to prominence in his late teens and early 20s in Chicago as deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party and chair of the Illinois chapter. As a progressive African American, he founded the anti-racist, anti-classist Rainbow Coalition, a prominent multicultural political organization that initially included the Black Panthers, Young Patriots, and the Young Lords, and an alliance among major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change. A Marxist-Leninist, Hampton considered fascism the greatest threat, saying "nothing is more important than stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Young Lords</span> Civil and human rights organization

The Young Lords was a Chicago-based street gang that became a civil rights and human rights organization. The group aimed to fight for neighborhood empowerment and self-determination for Puerto Rico, Latinos, and colonized people. Tactics used by the Young Lords include mass education, canvassing, community programs, occupations, and direct confrontation. The Young Lords became targets of the United States FBI's COINTELPRO program.

Charles "Chuck" Koen was an African-American minister and civil rights activist from Cairo, Illinois who served as prime minister of the Black Liberators and the executive directors of the Black United Front Cairo. Koen worked with organizations in Southern Illinois during the mid- and late 1960s. He founded the Black Liberators in St. Louis, Missouri in 1968; he later went on to lead nationally noted campaigns in Cairo, Illinois, most notably a boycott of white owned businesses. During his Cairo struggles, Koen was honored with a tribute on an album by jazz drummer Max Roach.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black bag operation</span> Covert entries to gather intelligence

Black bag operations or black bag jobs are covert or clandestine entries into structures to obtain information for human intelligence operations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bunchy Carter</span> American activist

Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter was an American activist. Carter is credited as a founding member of the Southern California chapter of the Black Panther Party. Carter was shot and killed by a rival group, Ron Karenga's "Us", and is celebrated by his supporters as a martyr in the Black Power movement in the United States. Carter is portrayed by Gaius Charles in the 2015 TV series Aquarius.

In the United States and Canada, Red Squads were police intelligence units that specialized in infiltrating, conducting counter-measures and gathering intelligence on political and social groups during the 20th century. Dating as far back as the Haymarket Riot in 1886, Red Squads became common in larger cities such as Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles during the First Red Scare of the 1920s. They were set up as specialized units of city police departments, as a weapon against labor unions, communists, socialists, and other dissidents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William C. Sullivan</span> Federal Bureau of Investigation official

William Cornelius Sullivan was an assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who was in charge of the agency's domestic intelligence operations from 1961 to 1971. Sullivan was forced out of the FBI at the end of September 1971 due to disagreements with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. The following year, Sullivan was appointed as the head of the Justice Department's new Office of National Narcotics Intelligence, which he led from June 1972 to July 1973. Sullivan died in a hunting accident in 1977. His memoir of his thirty-year career in the FBI, written with journalist Bill Brown, was published posthumously by commercial publisher W. W. Norton & Company in 1979.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Project MINARET</span> National Security Agency surveillance operation

Project MINARET was a domestic espionage project operated by the National Security Agency (NSA), which, after intercepting electronic communications that contained the names of predesignated US citizens, passed them to other government law enforcement and intelligence organizations. Intercepted messages were disseminated to the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD), and the Department of Defense. The project was a sister project to Project SHAMROCK.

Operation CHAOS or Operation MHCHAOS was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) domestic espionage project targeting American citizens operating from 1967 to 1974, established by President Lyndon B. Johnson and expanded under President Richard Nixon, whose mission was to uncover possible foreign influence on domestic race, anti-war, and other protest movements. The operation was launched under Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Richard Helms by chief of counter-intelligence James Jesus Angleton, and headed by Richard Ober. The "MH" designation is to signify the program had a global area of operations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black Panther Party</span> US Black political organization (1966–1982)

The Black Panther Party was a Marxist–Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California. The party was active in the United States between 1966 and 1982, with chapters in many major American cities, including San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia. They were also active in many prisons and had international chapters in the United Kingdom and Algeria. Upon its inception, the party's core practice was its open carry patrols ("copwatching") designed to challenge the excessive force and misconduct of the Oakland Police Department. From 1969 onward, the party created social programs, including the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, education programs, and community health clinics. The Black Panther Party advocated for class struggle, claiming to represent the proletarian vanguard.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FBI Index</span> System used to track American citizens and other people

The FBI Indexes, or Index List, was a system used to track American citizens and other people by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) before the adoption of computerized databases. The Index List was originally made of paper index cards, first compiled by J. Edgar Hoover at the Bureau of Investigations before he was appointed director of the FBI. The Index List was used to track U.S. citizens and others believed by the FBI to be dangerous to national security, and was subdivided into various divisions which generally were rated based on different classes of danger the subject was thought to represent.

The Ghetto Informant Program (GIP) was an intelligence-gathering operation run by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 1967 to 1973. Its official purpose was to collect information pertaining to riots and civil unrest. Through GIP, the FBI used more than 7000 people to infiltrate poor black communities in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mass surveillance in the United States</span>

The practice of mass surveillance in the United States dates back to wartime monitoring and censorship of international communications from, to, or which passed through the United States. After the First and Second World Wars, mass surveillance continued throughout the Cold War period, via programs such as the Black Chamber and Project SHAMROCK. The formation and growth of federal law-enforcement and intelligence agencies such as the FBI, CIA, and NSA institutionalized surveillance used to also silence political dissent, as evidenced by COINTELPRO projects which targeted various organizations and individuals. During the Civil Rights Movement era, many individuals put under surveillance orders were first labelled as integrationists, then deemed subversive, and sometimes suspected to be supportive of the communist model of the United States' rival at the time, the Soviet Union. Other targeted individuals and groups included Native American activists, African American and Chicano liberation movement activists, and anti-war protesters.

<i>1971</i> (2014 film) American film by Johanna Hamilton

1971 is a 2014 American documentary film and the directorial debut of producer Johanna Hamilton, who also co-wrote the film. The film had its world premiere on 18 April 2014 at the Tribeca Film Festival and focuses on the break-in of an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania on Monday, March 8, 1971, to steal over 1000 classified documents. It was pitched at the Sheffield Doc/Fest 2011 MeetMarket preceding its debut. The break-in took place on the night of the first Ali-Frazier boxing title fight dubbed the Fight of the Century.

Defending Rights & Dissent (DRAD) is a national not-for-profit advocacy organization in the United States, dedicated to defending civil liberties, exposing government repression, and protecting the right of political dissent. DRAD was formed as the merger of the Defending Dissent Foundation (DDF) and the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC). DRAD is currently active in defending the right to protest, opposing political surveillance, and campaigning against the prosecution of national security whistleblowers.

PRISACTS was a covert project of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting political activity within the United States prison system.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "I. Introduction and Summary" (PDF). Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans – Church Committee final report. II. United States Senate. April 26, 1976. p. 10. Archived (PDF) from the original on April 18, 2014. Retrieved July 15, 2014.
  2. ↑ Wolf, Paul (1 September 2001). COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story. World Conference Against Racism. Durbin, South Africa. p.  11. Archived from the original on 9 March 2016. Retrieved 14 February 2018.
  3. ↑ Jalon, Allan M. (March 8, 2006). "A break-in to end all break-ins". The Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on December 3, 2013. Retrieved July 15, 2014.
  4. ↑ The Dangers of Domestic Spying by Federal Law Enforcement (PDF) (Report). American Civil Liberties Union. 2002. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 5, 2018. Retrieved November 14, 2017.
  5. ↑ Morris, Rose (2019). Chronicle of the Seventh Son Black Panther Mark Clark. Rose Morris. pp. 209–214. ISBN   978-1733581714.
  6. ↑ Jeffreys-Jones, Rhodri (2008) [2007]. The FBI: A History. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. p. 189. ISBN   978-0-300-14284-6. OCLC   223872966.
  7. ↑ "The Women's Liberation Movement and COINTELPRO" (PDF). www.freedomarchives.org. Archived (PDF) from the original on July 24, 2015.
  8. ↑ Salper, Roberta (2008). "U.S. Government Surveillance and the Women's Liberation Movement, 1968–1973: A Case Study". Feminist Studies. 34 (3): 431–455. JSTOR   20459215 . Retrieved July 12, 2022– via JSTOR.
  9. 1 2 Weiner 2012 , p. 195.
  10. ↑ Bosi, Lorenzo; Giugni, Marco; Uba, Katrin, eds. (2016). The Consequences of Social Movements. Cambridge University Press. p. 66. ISBN   978-1107539211.
  11. ↑ Newton, Michael (2014). White Robes and Burning Crosses: A History of the Ku Klux Klan from 1866. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. p. 146. ISBN   978-0-7864-7774-6. OCLC   877370955.
  12. ↑ "Groups targeted by COINTELPRO". Archived from the original on September 10, 2012.
  13. 1 2 Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities, Book III: Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans (PDF) (Final Report). 1976. S. Rep. No. 94-755. Archived (PDF) from the original on April 18, 2014. Retrieved November 17, 2017.
  14. ↑ Walby, Kevin; Monaghan, Jeffery (2016). "Private Eyes and Public Order: Policing and Surveillance in the Suppression of Animal Rights Activists in Canada". In Bezanson, Kate; Webber, Michelle (eds.). Rethinking Society in the 21st Century (4th ed.). Toronto: Canadian Scholars. p.  148, note 1. ISBN   978-1-55130-936-1. OCLC   1002804017.
  15. ↑ Orr, Martin (2010). "The Failure of Neoliberal Globalization and the End of Empire". In Berberoglu, Berch (ed.). Globalization in the 21st Century: Labor, Capital, and the State on a World Scale. Springer. p.  182. ISBN   978-0-230-10639-0. OCLC   700167013.
  16. 1 2 3 Swearingen, M. Wesley (1995). FBI Secrets: An Agent's Expose. Boston: South End Press. ISBN   978-0-89608-502-2. OCLC   31330305. [Special Agent Gregg York:] We expected about twenty Panthers to be in the apartment when the police raided the place. Only two of those black nigger fuckers were killed, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.
  17. ↑ "Murder of Fred Hampton" (PDF). It's About Time – Black Panther Party Legacy & Alumni. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 15, 2010. Retrieved July 19, 2009.
  18. ↑ Corrigan, Lisa M. (2016). Prison Power: How Prison Influenced the Movement for Black Liberation. Univ. Press of Mississippi. pp. 86–88. ISBN   978-1496809100.
  19. ↑ Neal, Cleaver, Kathleen (1998). "Mobilizing for Mumia Abu-Jamal in Paris". Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities. 10 (2). ISSN   1041-6374. Archived from the original on April 6, 2019. Retrieved February 25, 2018.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  20. ↑ On', Shaba (22 April 1996). "25th Ann. of Panther 21 Acquittal: Program in NYC" (Press release). Archived from the original on 28 December 2017. Retrieved 5 February 2018– via Hartford Web Publishing.
  21. ↑ Ogbar, Jeffrey O. G. (January 16, 2017). "The FBI's War on Civil Rights Leaders". The Daily Beast. Archived from the original on February 12, 2018. Retrieved February 25, 2018. Hundreds of Panthers were stopped, harassed and arrested by the police across the country. Hoover explained the 'purpose of counterintelligence action is to disrupt the BPP and it is immaterial whether facts exist to substantiate the charge'. The effectiveness of COINTELPRO was overwhelming. Many organizations were destabilized with arrests, raids, break-ins, and killings.
  22. 1 2 "COINTELPRO Revisited – Spying & Disruption – In Black & White: The F.B.I. Papers". What Really Happened. Archived from the original on May 16, 2008. Retrieved June 23, 2008.
  23. ↑ "A Huey P. Newton Story – Actions – COINTELPRO". PBS. Archived from the original on May 15, 2011. Retrieved June 23, 2008.
  24. ↑ Weiner 2012 , p. 196: "Sullivan would become Hoover's field marshal in matters of national security, chief of FBI intelligence, and commandant of COINTELPRO. In that top secret and tightly compartmentalized world, an FBI inside of the FBI, Sullivan served as the executor of Hoover's most clandestine and recondite demands.".
  25. ↑ Weiner 2012 , p. 233: "RFK knew much more about this surveillance than he ever admitted. He personally renewed his authorization for the taps on Levison's office, and he approved Hoover's request to tap Levison's home telephone, where King called late at night several times a week."
  26. ↑ Hersh 2007 , p. 372.
  27. ↑ Hersh 2007 , pp. 372–374.
  28. ↑ "FBI Records: The Vault — COINTELPRO" . Retrieved February 19, 2024.
  29. ↑ Weiner 2012 , p. 198: "On October 2, 1956, Hoover stepped up the FBI's long-standing surveillance of black civil rights activists. He sent a COINTELPRO memo to the field, warning that the Communist Party was seeking to infiltrate the movement."
  30. ↑ Beito, David T.; Beito, Linda Royster (2009). Black Maverick: T. R. M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. pp. 148, 154–159. ISBN   978-0-252-03420-6. OCLC   690465801.
  31. ↑ Weiner 2012 , p. 200.
  32. 1 2 3 4 Gage, Beverly (November 11, 2014). "What an Uncensored Letter to M. L. K. Reveals". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 7, 2015. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
  33. ↑ Weiner 2012 , p. 235.
  34. ↑ Weiner 2012 , p. 236: "The bugs got quick results. When King traveled, as he did constantly in the ensuing weeks, to Washington, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, and Honolulu, the Bureau planted hidden microphones in his hotel rooms. The FBI placed a total of eight wiretaps and sixteen bugs on King.".
  35. ↑ Branch, Taylor (1999). Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963–1965. Simon & Schuster. pp. 524–529. ISBN   978-1-4165-5870-5. OCLC   933467815 – via Google Books.
  36. ↑ Rowan, Carl T. (1991). Breaking Barriers: A Memoir (1st ed.). Boston: Little, Brown. p.  260. ISBN   978-0-316-75977-9. OCLC   22110131.
  37. 1 2 3 4 5 Churchill, Ward; Vander Wall, Jim (2002) [1990]. The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States. South End Press. ISBN   978-0-89608-648-7.
  38. 1 2 Branch 1999 , pp. 527–529.
  39. ↑ Church, Frank (April 23, 1976), "Church Committee Book III", Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Case Study, Church Committee
  40. ↑ Branch 1999 , p. 243.
  41. ↑ Kane, Gregory (14 May 2000). "FBI should acknowledge complicity in the assassination of Malcolm X". Baltimore Sun. Archived from the original on 24 May 2015. Retrieved 26 May 2015.
  42. ↑ Touré (17 June 2011). "Malcolm X: Criminal, Minister, Humanist, Martyr". Sunday Book Review. The New York Times. p. BR18. Archived from the original on 29 August 2017. Retrieved 26 February 2017.
  43. ↑ Douglass, James W. (29 March 2006). The Converging Martyrdom of Malcolm and Martin. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture. Princeton Theological Seminary. Archived from the original on 25 January 2015. Retrieved 17 October 2014.
  44. ↑ "Guide to the Microfilm Edition of FBI Surveillance Files: Black Extremist Organizations, Part 1" (PDF). Lexis-Nexis. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 3, 2013. Retrieved October 7, 2014.
  45. ↑ Weiner 2012 , p. 271.
  46. ↑ Hoover, J. Edgar. "The FBI Sets Goals for COINTELPRO". HERB: Resources for Teachers. City University of New York. Archived from the original on October 12, 2014. Retrieved October 7, 2014.
  47. ↑ Warden, Rob (February 10, 1976). "Hoover Rated Carmichael As 'Black Messiah'" (PDF). Chicago Daily News. Archived (PDF) from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved October 8, 2014– via Harold Weisberg Archive, Hood College.
  48. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Churchill, Ward; Vander Wall, Jim (1990). The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Domestic Dissent. Boston: South End Press. ISBN   978-0896083608. OCLC   21908953.
  49. ↑ Weiner 2012 , p. 272: "Some 1,500 army intelligence officers in civilian clothing undertook the surveillance of some 100,000 American citizens. Army intelligence shared all their reports over the next three years. The CIA tracked antiwar leaders and black militants who traveled overseas, and it reported back to the FBI. The FBI, in turn, shared thousands of selected files on Americans with army intelligence and the CIA. All three intelligence services sent the names of Americans to the National Security Agency for inclusion on a global watch list; the NSA relayed back to the FBI hundreds of transcripts of intercepted telephone calls to and from suspect Americans."
  50. ↑ McKnight 1998 , pp. 26–28: "By March the Hoover Bureau's campaign against King was virtually on a total war footing. In a March 21 'urgent' teletype, Hoover urged all field offices involved in the POCAM project to exploit every tactic in the bureau's arsenal of covert political warfare to bring down King and the SCLC."
  51. 1 2 "FBI leadership claimed Bureau was 'almost powerless' against KKK, despite making up one-fifth of its membership". Muckrock. December 8, 2017. Archived from the original on January 24, 2019. Retrieved December 8, 2018.
  52. ↑ See, for example, Hobson v. Wilson , Archived 2017-04-10 at the Wayback Machine , 737 F.2d 1 (1984); Rugiero v. U.S. Department of Justice , Archived 2017-04-10 at the Wayback Machine , 257 F.3d 534, 546 (2001).
  53. ↑ Hamilton, Johanna (18 May 2015). "1971: Citizens Who Exposed COINTELPRO". PBS: Independent Lens. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 25 August 2017.
  54. 1 2 Medsger, Betty (June 6, 2016). "In 1971, Muhammad Ali Helped Undermine the FBI's Illegal Spying on Americans". The Intercept . Archived from the original on April 27, 2017. Retrieved April 17, 2017.
  55. ↑ Cassidy, Mike; Miller, Will (May 26, 1999). "A Short History of FBI COINTELPRO". Albion Monitor. Wayward Press. Archived from the original on September 28, 2007. Retrieved July 13, 2007.
  56. ↑ Weiner 2012 , p. 293.
  57. ↑ Deflam, Mathieu (2008). Surveillance and governance: crime control and beyond. Emerald Publishing Group. p. 182. ISBN   978-0-7623-1416-4. Archived from the original on April 5, 2019. Retrieved December 29, 2017.
  58. ↑ Deflam, Mathieu (2008). Surveillance and governance: crime control and beyond. Emerald Publishing Group. pp. 184–185. ISBN   978-0-7623-1416-4. Archived from the original on April 5, 2019. Retrieved December 29, 2017.
  59. ↑ "Noam Chomsky v Andrew Marr: 'The Big Idea' Part 2". August 27, 2006. Retrieved February 19, 2024– via www.youtube.com.
  60. ↑ Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (Book II, Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans) (PDF). 1976. p. 213.
  61. ↑ Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (Book II, Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans) (PDF). 1976. p. 9.
  62. ↑ Various Church Committee reports reproduced online at ICDC: Final Report, 2A Archived 2006-10-19 at the Wayback Machine ; Final Report, 2Cb Archived 2005-04-07 at the Wayback Machine ; Final Report, 3A Archived 2011-11-13 at the Wayback Machine ; Final Report, 3G Archived 2005-04-07 at the Wayback Machine . Various COINTELPRO documents reproduced online at ICDC: CPUSA Archived 2008-02-11 at the Wayback Machine ; SWP Archived 2006-12-10 at the Wayback Machine ; Black Nationalist Archived 2008-04-22 at the Wayback Machine ; White Hate Archived 2008-02-28 at the Wayback Machine ; New Left Archived 2008-02-14 at the Wayback Machine ; Puerto Rico .
  63. ↑ Blackstock, Nelson (1975). COINTELPRO: The FBI's Secret War on Political Freedom. New York: Pathfinder. p. 111. ISBN   0-87348-877-6. OCLC   46439435.
  64. ↑ Gelbspan, Ross. (1991) Break-Ins, Death Threats, and the FBI: The Covert War Against the Central America Movement, Boston: South End Press.
  65. 1 2 Churchill & Vander Wall 1990 , pp. xii, 303
  66. 1 2 Churchill, Ward; and James Vander Wall. Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement, 1988, Boston, South End Press.
  67. ↑ Pickett, Karen. "Earth First! Takes the FBI to Court: Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney's Case Heard after 12 Years, Archived 2009-11-15 at the Wayback Machine , Earth First Journal, no date.
  68. ↑ Hoffman, Hank (October 1, 2001). "To the Extreme". In These Times. ISSN   0160-5992. Archived from the original on December 15, 2018. Retrieved December 11, 2018.
  69. ↑ Williams, Jakobi (2013). From the Bullet to the Ballot: The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago. UNC Press Books. p. 10. ISBN   978-1469608167.
  70. ↑ Michael Newton. Famous Assassinations in World History: An Encyclopedia Archived 2017-01-13 at the Wayback Machine . ABC-CLIO, p. 205. ISBN   1610692853
  71. ↑ Kendall (3 November 2009). "Shoot It Out? The Death of Fred Hampton". Archived from the original on 15 March 2016. Retrieved 18 April 2016.
  72. 1 2 3 4 5 "The FBI'S Covert Action Program to Destroy the Black Panther Party". Archived from the original on January 13, 2013. Retrieved April 20, 2005.
  73. ↑ Ward Churchill (2002), Agents of Repression (Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement ed.), South End Press, ISBN   978-0896086463, OCLC   50985124, OL   25433596M, 0896086461
  74. ↑ "Assassination Archive and Research Center". Archived from the original on September 18, 2014. Retrieved May 5, 2015.
  75. ↑ Bin Wahad, Dhoruba; Abu-Jamal, Mumia; Shakur, Assata (1993). Still Black, Still Strong. Semiotext(e). pp. 18–19. ISBN   978-0936756745.
  76. ↑ Brown, Elaine (1992). A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story. New York: Doubleday. pp. 204–206. ISBN   978-0385471077.
  77. ↑ Paul Wolf, "COINTELPRO" Archived 2009-09-27 at the Wayback Machine , ICDC
  78. ↑ "Former Black Panther freed after 27 years in jail". CNN. Archived from the original on April 15, 2009. Retrieved April 30, 2010.
  79. ↑ "In re Pratt, 82 Cal" . Retrieved February 19, 2024.
  80. ↑ Cockburn, Alexander; St. Clair, Jeffrey (1998). Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press. Verso. p. 69. ISBN   978-1-85984-139-6. Archived from the original on December 28, 2015. Retrieved December 12, 2015.
  81. ↑ FBI document, 19 July 1966, DeLoach to Sullivan re: "Black Bag" Jobs.
  82. ↑ Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Book III: Warrantless Surreptitious Entries: FBI "Black Bag" Break-Ins and Microphone Installations (Report). Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities United States Senate. April 23, 1976. Archived from the original on February 12, 2005.
  83. ↑ FBI document, 27 May 1969, "Director FBI to SAC San Francisco", available at the FBI reading room.
  84. ↑ FBI document, 16 September 1970, Director FBI to SAC's in Baltimore, Detroit, Los Angeles, New Haven, San Francisco, and Washington Field Office. Available at the FBI reading room.
  85. ↑ Britt, Donna. "A white mother went to Alabama to fight for civil rights. The Klan killed her for it". washingtonpost.com. Archived from the original on June 16, 2020. Retrieved June 16, 2020.
  86. 1 2 May, Gary (2005). The Informant: The FBI, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Murder of Viola Liuzzo. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN   978-0-300-18413-6. OCLC   57549917.
  87. ↑ "Jonathan Yardley". The Washington Post . Archived from the original on May 4, 2011. Retrieved April 30, 2010.
  88. ↑ Giannino, Joanne. "Viola Liuzzo". Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography. Archived from the original on December 27, 2008. Retrieved September 29, 2008.
  89. ↑ Houston, Kay. "The Detroit housewife who moved a nation toward racial justice". The Detroit News, Rearview Mirror. Archived from the original on April 27, 1999.
  90. ↑ "Uncommon Courage: The Viola Liuzzo Story". Archived from the original on February 23, 2006.
  91. ↑ Stanton, Mary (2000). From Selma to Sorrow: The Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo. University of Georgia Press. p. 190.
  92. ↑ Coleman, Ken (December 3, 2021). "On this day in 1965: KKK members are convicted of killing civil rights activist". Michigan Advance. Retrieved July 24, 2024.
  93. ↑ Holles, Everett R. (June 27, 1975). "A.C.L.U. Says FBI Funded 'Army' to Terrorize Antiwar Protesters". The New York Times (Newspaper). New York: 4. Archived from the original on July 27, 2019. Retrieved July 28, 2019– via The New York Times Archives. from the original on 28 July 2019. Original scan available.
  94. ↑ "1972". Archived from the original on May 14, 2007. Retrieved January 26, 2009.
  95. ↑ Kowalewski, David (2003). "Vigilantism". International Handbook of Violence Research. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. pp. 339–349. doi:10.1007/978-0-306-48039-3_18. ISBN   9780306480393.
  96. ↑ Andrews, Bruce (1980). "Privacy and the protection of national security". In Bier, William Christian (ed.). Privacy, a Vanishing Value?. Fordham Univ Press. ISBN   9780823210442 – via Google Books.
  97. ↑ Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (Book II, Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans) (PDF). 1976. p. 5.
  98. ↑ Radden Keefe, Patrick (February 2, 2006). "Tapped Out Why Congress won't get through to the NSA". Slate. Archived from the original on February 9, 2006. Retrieved May 11, 2006.
  99. ↑ Schultz, Bud (2001). The Price of Dissent: Testimonies to Political Repression in America. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN   0-520-22402-7. OCLC   45248227. Although the FBI officially discontinued COINTELPRO immediately after the Pennsylvania disclosures 'for security reasons,' when pressed by the Senate committee, the bureau acknowledged two new instances of 'Cointelpro-type' operations. The committee was left to discover a third, apparently illegal operation on its own.
  100. ↑ Newton, Michael (2012). The FBI Encyclopedia. McFarland. pp. 143–146. ISBN   978-1476604176.
  101. ↑ Theoharis, Athan G. (1999). The FBI: A Comprehensive Reference Guide . Phoenix, Ariz.: Oryx Press. ISBN   0-585-09871-9. OCLC   42330983. More recent controversies have focused on the adequacy of recent restrictions on the Bureau's domestic intelligence operations. Disclosures of the 1970s that FBI agents continued to conduct break-ins, and of the 1980s that the FBI targeted CISPES, again brought forth accusations of FBI abuses of power—and raised questions of whether reforms of the 1970s had successfully exorcised the ghost of FBI Director Hoover.
  102. ↑ Hastedt, Glenn P. (2011). Spies, Wiretaps, and Secret Operations: An Encyclopedia of American Espionage. ABC-CLIO. p. 180. ISBN   978-1851098071.
  103. ↑ Associated Press, "FBI tracked journalist for over 20 years". Toronto Star. November 7, 2008. Archived from the original on December 11, 2008. Retrieved November 23, 2008.
  104. ↑ Schultz, Bud (2001). The Price of Dissent: Testimonies to Political Repression in America. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 399. ISBN   0-520-22402-7. OCLC   45248227. The problem persists after Hoover…."The record before this court," Federal Magistrate Joan Lefkow stated in 1991, "shows that despite regulations, orders and consent decrees prohibiting such activities, the FBI had continued to collect information concerning only the exercise of free speech.
  105. ↑ Mosedale, Mike (February 16, 2000). "Bury My Heart". City Pages. Vol. 21, no. 1002.
  106. ↑ Weiner, Tim (2013). Enemies: A History of the FBI. Random House Publishing Group. pp. 439–441. ISBN   978-0812979237.
  107. ↑ "UN General Assembly Committee urges self-determination for Puerto Rico". UN News. June 13, 2006. Archived from the original on June 12, 2018. Retrieved June 7, 2018.
  108. ↑ "Role of FBI informant in eco-terrorism case probed after documents hint at entrapment". The Guardian. Archived from the original on January 23, 2019. Retrieved January 24, 2019.
  109. ↑ Medsger, Betty (2014). The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI. Vintage. ISBN   978-0804173667.
  110. ↑ "Fake terror plots, paid informants: the tactics of FBI 'entrapment' questioned". The Guardian. Archived from the original on January 23, 2019. Retrieved January 24, 2019.
  111. ↑ "How a suicidal pizza man found himself ensnared in an FBI terror sting". CNN. November 29, 2017. Archived from the original on January 23, 2019. Retrieved January 24, 2019.
  112. ↑ "Attorney: FBI entrapped terror suspect". The Detroit News. Archived from the original on January 23, 2019. Retrieved January 24, 2019.
  113. ↑ "The Would-Be Terrorist vs. the FBI". GQ. Archived from the original on January 23, 2019. Retrieved January 24, 2019.
  114. ↑ Weyler, Rex (1982). Blood of the Land: The Government and Corporate War Against First Nations. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN   0-394-71732-5. OCLC   9371425.
  115. ↑ Matthiessen, Peter (1983). In the Spirit of Crazy Horse . New York: Penguin Books. ISBN   0-14-014456-0. OCLC   25313752.
  116. 1 2 3 Woidat, Caroline M. (2006). "The Truth Is on the Reservation: American Indians and Conspiracy Culture". The Journal of American Culture. 29 (4): 454–467. doi:10.1111/j.1542-734X.2006.00422.x.
  117. ↑ McQuinn, Jason (Winter 1996). "Conspiracy Theory vs Alternative Journalism". Alternative Press Review. 2 (3).
  118. ↑ Horowitz, David. "Johnnie's Other O.J.", Front Page Magazine.com, September 1, 1997.
  119. ↑ Berlet, Chip (1998). "The X-Files Movie: Facilitating Fanciful Fun, or Fueling Fear and Fascism?". PublicEye.org. Archived from the original on June 11, 2007. Retrieved January 19, 2020.
  120. ↑ Berlet, Chip; Lyons, Matthew N. (1998). "One key to litigating against government prosecution of dissidents: Understanding the underlying assumptions". PublicEye.org. Archived from the original on February 6, 2008. Retrieved January 19, 2020.
  121. ↑ Newton, Michael (2012). The FBI Encyclopedia. McFarland. pp. 143–145. ISBN   978-1476604176. Archived from the original on April 5, 2019. Retrieved June 13, 2018.
  122. ↑ Melmer, David (July 19, 2000). "Unsolved deaths debunked by FBI Case by case examination puts some rumors to rest". Indian Country Today. Archived from the original on May 6, 2006. Retrieved October 29, 2007.
  123. ↑ staff (May 2000). "Accounting For Native American Deaths, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota". Federal Bureau of Investigation Minneapolis Division. Archived from the original on June 25, 2007. Retrieved October 29, 2007.
  124. ↑ Bin Wahad, Dhoruba; Abu-Jamal, Mumia; Shakur, Assata (1993). Fletcher, Jim; Jones, Tanaquil; Lotringer, Sylvère (eds.). Still Black, still strong: survivors of the U.S. war against Black revolutionaries. Semiotexte active agents series. New York: Semiotexte. ISBN   978-0-936756-74-5.
  125. ↑ Burton, Orisanmi (2023). Tip of the spear: black radicalism, prison repression, and the long attica revolt. Oakland, California: University of California Press. ISBN   978-0-520-39633-3.
  126. ↑ "COINTELPRO Continues As Documents Reveal FBI Surveillance of Black Lives Matter". Atlanta Black Star. March 27, 2018. Archived from the original on May 31, 2018. Retrieved May 26, 2018.
  127. ↑ Joseph, George; Hussain, Murtaza (March 19, 2018). "FBI Tracked an Activist Involved With Black Lives Matter as They Travelled Across the U.S., Documents Show". The Intercept. Archived from the original on March 20, 2018. Retrieved January 19, 2020.
  128. ↑ "US judge orders release of 'first Black Identity Extremist'". Al Jazeera. Archived from the original on June 10, 2018. Retrieved June 10, 2018.
  129. ↑ "The FBI's New U.S. Terrorist Threat: 'Black Identity Extremists'". Foreign Policy. Archived from the original on June 9, 2018. Retrieved June 10, 2018.
  130. ↑ Gibbons, Chip. "Still Spying on Dissent". Defending Rights & Dissent. Archived from the original on November 5, 2019. Retrieved November 5, 2019.
  131. ↑ Speri, Alice (October 22, 2019). "The FBI Has a Long History of Treating Political Dissent as Terrorism". The Intercept. Archived from the original on November 5, 2019. Retrieved November 5, 2019.
  132. ↑ Michael S. Schmidt & Colin Moynihan, F.B.I. Counterterrorism Agents Monitored Occupy Movement, Records Show, New York Times (December 24, 2012).
  133. ↑ "The FBI vs. Occupy: Secret Docs Reveal "Counterterrorism" Monitoring of OWS from Its Earliest Days". Democracy Now!. December 27, 2012. Retrieved April 30, 2021.
  134. ↑ Government Surveillance of the Occupy Protests, New York Times (May 22, 2014).
  135. ↑ Speri, Alice; Biddle, Sam (January 4, 2021). "FBI Questioned a Michigan Senate Staffer After Zoom Call About Banning Tear Gas". The Intercept. Retrieved May 28, 2021.
  136. ↑ Maxwell, William J. (2015). F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover's Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature. Princeton University Press. ISBN   978-1400852062.
  137. ↑ "Rethinking H. Rap Brown and Black Power – AAIHS". September 29, 2018. Retrieved November 18, 2019.
  138. ↑ "Malcolm X Assassination & FBI COINTELPRO". NOI.org Official Website. September 11, 2013. Archived from the original on November 3, 2019. Retrieved November 18, 2019.

Sources

Further reading

Books

Articles

Lessons

FBI files

U.S. government reports

  • U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Internal Security. Hearings on Domestic Intelligence Operations for Internal Security Purposes. 93rd Cong., 2d sess, 1974.
  • U.S. Congress. House. Select Committee on Intelligence. Hearings on Domestic Intelligence Programs. 94th Cong., 1st sess, 1975.
  • U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Government Operations. Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Hearings on Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders. 90th Cong., 1st sess. – 91st Cong., 2d sess, 1967–1970.
  • U.S. Congress. Senate. Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. Hearings – The National Security Agency and Fourth Amendment Rights. Vol. 6. 94th Cong., 1st sess, 1975.
  • U.S. Congress. Senate. Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. Hearings – Federal Bureau of Investigation. Vol. 6. 94th Cong., 1st sess, 1975.
  • U.S. Congress. Senate. Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. Final Report – Book II, Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans. 94th Cong., 2d sess, 1976.
  • U.S. Congress. Senate. Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. Final Report – Book III, Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans. 94th Cong., 2d sess, 1976.
  • Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. United States Senate, 94th Congress, 2nd Session, April 26 (legislative day, April 14), 1976. [AKA "Church Committee Report"]. Archived at Archive.org by the Boston Public Library
  • Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities: Intelligence Reports and the Rights of Americans: Book II . April 24, 1976.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.