Related Research Articles
COINTELPRO (1956–1971) was a series of covert and illegal projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic American political organizations. FBI records show COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals the FBI deemed subversive, including feminist organizations, the Communist Party USA, anti–Vietnam War organizers, activists of the civil rights movement and Black Power movement, environmentalist and animal rights organizations, the American Indian Movement (AIM), independence movements, a variety of organizations that were part of the broader New Left, and right-wing groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the National States' Rights Party.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, the FBI is also 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. counter-terrorism, counterintelligence, and criminal investigative organization, the FBI has jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crimes.
Helen Wilburforce Gandy was the longtime secretary to Federal Bureau of Investigation director J. Edgar Hoover, who called her "indispensable". Serving in that role for 54 years she exercised great behind-the-scenes influence on Hoover and the workings of the Bureau. Following Hoover's death in 1972, she spent weeks destroying his "Personal File", thought to be where the most incriminating material he used to manipulate and control the most powerful figures in Washington was kept.
John Edgar Hoover was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States for nearly 48 years. He was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation – the FBI's predecessor – in 1924 and was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director for another 37 years until his death in 1972 at the age of 77. Hoover has been credited with building the FBI into a larger crime-fighting agency than it was at its inception and with instituting a number of modernizations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories. Hoover is also credited with establishing and expanding a national blacklist, referred to as the FBI Index or Index List, renamed in 2001 as the Terrorist Screening Database which the FBI still compiles and manages.
George Gordon Battle Liddy was an American lawyer, FBI agent, talk show host, actor, and figure in the Watergate scandal as the chief operative in the White House Plumbers unit during the Nixon administration. Liddy was convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and illegal wiretapping for his role in the scandal.
Fredrick Allen Hampton Sr. was an American activist. He came to prominence 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 antiracist, anticlass 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.”
Melvin Horace Purvis II was an American law enforcement official and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent. Given the nickname "Little Mel" because of his short, 5 ft 4 in (163 cm) frame, Purvis became noted for leading the manhunts that captured or killed bank robbers such as Baby Face Nelson, John Dillinger, and Pretty Boy Floyd, but his high public profile was resented by local law enforcement. Purvis asserted he had killed Floyd single-handed, others variously claimed that Floyd had been already wounded, or even that Purvis had ordered Floyd summarily shot dead for refusing to provide information.
Black bag operations are covert or clandestine entries into structures to obtain information for human intelligence operations. This usually entails breaking and entering into denied areas.
Jack Northman Anderson was an American newspaper columnist, syndicated by United Features Syndicate, considered one of the fathers of modern investigative journalism. Anderson won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his investigation on secret U.S. policy decision-making between the United States and Pakistan during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. In addition to his newspaper career, Anderson also had a national radio show on the Mutual Broadcasting System, acted as Washington bureau chief of Parade magazine, and was a commentator on ABC-TV's Good Morning America for nine years.
William Mark Felt Sr. was an American law enforcement officer who worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 1942 to 1973 and was known for his role in the Watergate scandal. Felt was an FBI special agent who eventually rose to the position of Associate Director, the Bureau's second-highest-ranking post. Felt worked in several FBI field offices prior to his promotion to the Bureau's headquarters. In 1980 he was convicted of having violated the civil rights of people thought to be associated with members of the Weather Underground, by ordering FBI agents to break into their homes and search the premises as part of an attempt to prevent bombings. He was ordered to pay a fine, but was pardoned by President Ronald Reagan during his appeal.
Curtis Marsena "Curt" Gentry was an American writer, born in Lamar, Colorado.
Clarence M. Kelley was an American law enforcement officer. He served as the Chief of the Kansas City Police Department in Kansas City, Missouri from 1961 to 1973, and as the second Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1973 to 1978.
The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI was an activist group operational in the US during the early 1970s. Their only known action was breaking into a two-man Media, Pennsylvania, office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and stealing over 1,000 classified documents. They then mailed these documents anonymously to several US newspapers to expose numerous illegal FBI operations which were infringing on the First Amendment rights of American civilians. Most news outlets initially refused to publish the information, saying it related to ongoing operations and that disclosure might have threatened the lives of agents or informants. However, The Washington Post, after affirming the veracity of the files which the Commission sent them, ran a front-page story on March 24, 1971, at which point other media organizations followed suit.
Athan George Theoharis was an American historian, professor of history at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As well as his extensive teaching career, he was noteworthy as an expert on the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), J. Edgar Hoover, and U.S. intelligence agencies, having written and edited many books on these and related subjects.
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. There is no indication the FBI stopped adding names onto its Index List before September 11, 2001.
William Cooper Davidon was an American professor of physics and mathematics, and a peace activist. As the mastermind of the March 8, 1971, FBI office break-in, in Media, Pennsylvania, Davidon was the informal leader of the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI. The Media break-in resulted in the disclosure of COINTELPRO, which in turn led to subsequent investigations and reforms of the FBI.
John Curtis Raines was an American professor, activist, and whistleblower. He was a member of the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI, which stole documents from an FBI office and exposed illegal activity and abuses of power, including COINTELPRO.
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.
The FBI–King suicide letter or blackmail package was an anonymous 1964 letter and package by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) meant to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr. The suicide letter was part of the FBI's COINTELPRO operation against King.
Joyce Haber (1931–1993) was an American gossip columnist who worked for the Los Angeles Times.
References
- ↑ "Betty Medsger". Investigating Power. Retrieved 8 November 2018.
- ↑ Garrow, David (2014-01-23). "Review: 'The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI' by Betty Medsger". Washington Post. Retrieved 9 November 2018.
- ↑ Shaffer, Robert (2015-10-23). "BettyMedsger. The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014". Peace & Change. 40 (4): 572–575. doi:10.1111/pech.12155.
- ↑ Oshinsky, David (2014-01-31). "Breaking In". New York Times. Retrieved 8 November 2018.
- ↑ Johnson, Carrie. "The Secret Burglary That Exposed J. Edgar Hoover's FBI". NPR. Retrieved 9 November 2018.
- ↑ Oppenheimer, Martin (2014). "How We Found Out About COINTELPRO". Monthly Review. 66 (4): 54–60. doi:10.14452/MR-066-04-2014-08_7.
- ↑ Gaffni, Matthias (7 March 2021). "'Something had to be done'". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 31 July 2021.
- ↑ "Journalism Professor Emerita Betty Medsger Broke Story of 1971 Break-In to FBI Office". San Francisco State University. Retrieved 31 July 2021.
| General | |
|---|---|
| National libraries | |
| Other | |
