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COINTELPRO

 
Intelligence Encyclopedia: COINTELPRO
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COINTELPRO (for Counter Intelligence Program) was a set of programs commenced by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1956 and officially terminated in 1971. COINTELPRO included programs variously named Espionage COINTELPRO; New Left COINTELPRO; Disruption of White Hate Groups (targeting the Ku Klux Klan); Communist Party, USA COINTELPRO; Black Extremists COINTELPRO; and the Socialist Workers' Party Disruption Program. Although these were "counterintelligence" programs by name, the FBI did not consider most of these groups to be engaged in intelligence activities (e.g., spying for the Soviet Union). Rather, it deemed their political activities dangerous, and assumed that various court decisions had made it impossible to control them by nonsecret, legal means (e.g., arrests for illegal acts). COINTELPRO began by targeting the Communist Party, but quickly expanded to include other groups. The FBI's "black extremist" category included not only the Black Panthers but the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and its president, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and other civil rights groups of the 1950s and 1960s. COINTELPRO also targeted groups opposed to the Vietnam War.

COINTELPRO remained secret until a large number of documents were stolen from the FBI office in the town of Media, Pennsylvania, in 1971. Lawsuits brought by political groups who believed that they were being observed and disrupted by the FBI soon produced other COINTELPRO-related documents. In 1975, a Senate committee—the Select Committee to Study Governmental Relations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, better known as the Church Committee after its chair, Senator Frank Church (D, Idaho)—was appointed to investigate COINTELPRO and other domestic espionage and disruption programs conducted by the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, Army intelligence, and the Internal Revenue Service. The Church Committee concluded in 1976 that "the domestic activities of the intelligence community at times violated specific statutory prohibitions and infringed the constitutional rights of American citizens," and stated that the FBI had gathered information by illegal means, disseminated that information illegally, and otherwise violated the law in its efforts to disrupt political activities that it considered subversive. The committee's report stated that "the abusive techniques used by the FBI in COINTELPRO from 1956 to 1971 included violations of both federal and state statutes prohibiting mail fraud, wire fraud, incitement to violence, sending obscene material through the mail, and extortion. More fundamentally, the harassment of innocent citizens engaged in lawful forms of political expression did serious injury to the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech and the right of the people to assemble peaceably and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

Disruption techniques used by the FBI during COINTELPRO, according to the findings of the Church Committee, included burglaries; illegal opening and photographing of first-class mail; planting of forged documents to make it appear that individuals were government informants; anonymous letters to spouses, designed to break up marriages; secretly communicating with employers in order to get individuals fired; planting of news articles and editorials (covertly authored by FBI agents) in U.S. magazines and newspapers; anonymous letters containing false statements designed to encourage violence between street gangs and the Black Panthers; anonymous letters denouncing Catholic priests who allowed their churches to be used for Black Panther breakfasts sent to their bishops; requests for selective tax audits; encouragement of violent tactics by paid FBI informants posing as members of antiwar groups in order to discredit those groups; and others.

Further Reading

Electronic

"Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities." United States Senate. April 26, 1976. <http://www.derechos.net/paulwolf/cointelpro> (March 18, 2003).

— LARRY GILMAN

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Law Encyclopedia: Cointelpro
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This entry contains information applicable to United States law only.

Between 1956 and 1971, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conducted a campaign of domestic counterintelligence. The agency's Domestic Intelligence Division did more than simply spy on U.S. citizens and their organizations; its ultimate goal was to disrupt, discredit, and destroy certain political groups. The division's operations were formally known within the bureau as COINTELPRO (the Counterintelligence Program). The brainchild of former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, the first COINTELPRO campaign targeted the U.S. Communist party in the mid-1950s. More organizations came under attack in the 1960s. FBI agents worked to subvert civil rights groups, radical organizations, and white supremacists. COINTELPRO existed primarily because of Director Hoover's extreme politics and ended only when he feared its exposure by his critics. A public uproar followed revelations in the news media in the early 1970s, and congressional hearings criticized COINTELPRO campaigns in 1976.

In 1956 Hoover interpreted a recent federal law — the Communist Control Act of 1954 (50 U.S.C.A. § 841) — as providing the general authority for a covert campaign against the U.S. Communist party. Officially, the law stripped the party of "the rights, privileges, and immunities attendant upon legal bodies created under the jurisdiction of the laws of the United States." Hoover saw the party as a peril to national security and ordered a large-scale effort to infiltrate and destabilize it.

Employing classic espionage techniques, FBI agents joined the party and recruited informants. They spread dissension at party meetings by raising embarrassing questions about the recent Soviet invasion of Hungary, for instance, or about Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who had been a hero to U.S. Communists. Agents also engaged in whispering campaigns identifying party members to employers and neighbors. The FBI intensified its harassment by enlisting the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to conduct selective tax audits of party members. And it spread rumors within the party itself — employing a practice known as snitch jacketing — that painted loyal members as FBI informants. In all, the government executed 1,388 separate documented efforts, and they worked: whereas party membership was an estimated twenty-two thousand in the early 1950s, it fell to some three thousand by the end of 1957.

After his initial success, Hoover did not rest. From the late 1950s through the end of the 1960s, he unleashed his agents against a wide range of political groups. Some were civil rights organizations, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Others were radical, such as the Black Panther party, the American Indian Movement, and the Socialist Workers party. Yet another target was the nation's oldest white hate group, the Ku Klux Klan, although Hoover was less enthusiastic about pursuing it and did so chiefly because of political pressure resulting from the Klan's highly publicized murders of civil rights workers. In internal FBI memorandums, Hoover's motive for these operations is given as the need to stamp out Communism and subversion, but the historical record reveals a muddier picture. What turned Hoover's attention to the NAACP, for example, was the organization's criticism of FBI hiring practices for excluding minorities.

In their scope and tactics, these FBI operations occasionally went much further than the original anti-Communist COINTELPRO effort. They involved at least twenty documented burglaries of the offices of the SCLC, an organization headed byMartin Luther King, Jr. Hoover detested King, whom he called "one of the most reprehensible … individuals on the American scene today," and urged his agents to use "imaginative and aggressive tactics" against King and the SCLC. To this end, agents bugged King's hotel rooms; tape-recorded his infidelities; and mailed a recording, along with a note urging King to commit suicide, to the civil rights leader's wife. The COINTELPRO operation against the radical Black Panther party, which Hoover considered a black nationalist hate group, tried to pit the party's leaders against each other while also fomenting violence between the Panthers and an urban gang. In at least one instance, FBI activities did lead to violence. In 1969, an FBI informant's tip culminated in a police raid that killed Illinois Panther chairman Fred Hampton and others; more than a decade later, the federal government agreed to pay restitution to the victims' survivors, and a federal judge sanctioned the bureau for covering up the facts in the case.

Political changes in the early 1970s weakened Hoover's position. Critics in the media and Congress began to question Hoover's methods, and the newly created Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C.A. § 552, promised to pierce the veil of secrecy that had always protected him. In 1971, a break-in at an FBI field office in Pennsylvania yielded secret documents that were ultimately published. Fearing greater exposure of FBI counterintelligence programs, Hoover formally canceled them on April 28, 1971. Some small-scale operations continued, but the days when agents had carte blanche to carry out the director's will were over.

Hoover died May 2, 1972, at the age of seventy-seven. His death was followed by the realization of his greatest fear. In 1973 and 1974, NBC reporter Carl Stern gained access to COINTELPRO documents through an FOIA claim. More revelations followed, producing a public outcry and leading to an internal investigation by Attorney General William B. Saxbe. The U.S. Congress was next: in 1975 and 1976, hearings of the House and Senate Select Committees on Intelligence further probed COINTELPRO. Even as Hoover's legacy was laid bare, supporters tried to keep the cover on: House lawmakers kept their committee's report secret. The Senate did not; its report, released on April 28, 1976, denounced a "pattern of reckless disregard of activities that threatened our constitutional system."

Along with revealing other instances of FBI illegalities under Hoover, the investigation of his activities set in motion a process of reform. Congress ultimately limited the term of the director of the FBI to ten years, to be served at the pleasure of the president, a safeguard designed to ensure that no single individual could again run the bureau indefinitely and without check. Details about COINTELPRO continue to be made public through government documents.

Wikipedia: COINTELPRO
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Federal Bureau of Investigation
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COINTELPRO (an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States. The FBI used covert operations from its inception, however formal COINTELPRO operations took place between 1956 and 1971.[2] The FBI's stated motivation at the time was "protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order." [3]

According to FBI records, 85% of COINTELPRO resources were expended on infiltrating, disrupting, marginalizing, and/or subverting groups suspected of being subversive,[4] such as communist and socialist organizations; the women's rights movement; militant black nationalist groups, and the non-violent civil rights movement, including individuals such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and others associated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Congress of Racial Equality, the American Indian Movement, and other civil rights groups; a broad range of organizations labeled "New Left", including Students for a Democratic Society, the National Lawyers Guild, the Weathermen, almost all groups protesting the Vietnam War, and even individual student demonstrators with no group affiliation; and nationalist groups such as those "seeking independence for Puerto Rico." The other 15% of COINTELPRO resources were expended to marginalize and subvert "white hate groups," including the Ku Klux Klan and National States' Rights Party.[5]

The directives governing COINTELPRO were issued by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who ordered FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of these movements and their leaders.[6][7]

Contents

History

COINTELPRO began in 1956 and was designed to "increase factionalism, cause disruption and win defections" inside the Communist Party U.S.A. (CPUSA). However, the program was soon enlarged to include disruption 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 socio-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..."[8] Congress and several court cases[9] later concluded that the COINTELPRO operations against communist and socialist groups exceeded statutory limits on FBI activity and violated constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and association.

The program was secret until 1971, when an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania was burglarized by a group of left-wing radicals calling themselves the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI. Several dossiers of files were taken and the information passed to news agencies, many of which initially refused to publish the information. Within the year, Director Hoover declared that the centralized COINTELPRO was over, and that all future counterintelligence operations would be handled on a case-by-case basis.[10]

Further 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. A major investigation was launched in 1976 by the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities of the United States Senate, commonly referred to as the "Church Committee" for its chairman, Senator Frank Church of Idaho. However, millions of pages of documents remain unreleased, and many released documents have been partly, or entirely, redacted.

In the Final Report of the Select Committee, COINTELPRO was castigated in no uncertain terms:

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.[8]

The Church Committee documented a history of FBI directors' using the agency for purposes of political repression as far back as World War I, through the 1920s, when they were charged with rounding up "anarchists and revolutionaries" for deportation, and then building from 1936 through 1976.

Range of targets

In an interview with the BBC's Andrew Marr, MIT professor of linguistics and political activist Noam Chomsky spoke about the purpose and the targets of COINTELPRO saying, "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." [11]

According to the Church Committee:

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, legal and illegal, contained in the Church Committee report:[12]

  • President Roosevelt asked the FBI to put in its files the names of citizens sending telegrams to the White House opposing his "national defense" policy and supporting Col. Charles Lindbergh.
  • President Truman received inside information on a former Roosevelt aide's efforts to influence his appointments, labor union negotiating plans, and the publishing plans of journalists.
  • The Kennedy Administration had the FBI wiretap a Congressional staff member, three executive officials, a lobbyist, and a Washington law firm. US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy received the fruits of an FBI "tap" on Martin Luther King, Jr. and a "bug" on a Congressman, both of which yielded information of a political nature.
  • President Johnson asked the FBI to conduct "name checks" of his critics and members of the staff of his 1964 opponent, Senator Barry Goldwater. He also requested purely political intelligence on his critics in the Senate, and received extensive intelligence reports on political activity at the 1964 Democratic Convention from FBI electronic surveillance.

The COINTELPRO documents disclose numerous cases of the FBI's intentions to stop the mass protest against the Vietnam War. Many techniques were used to accomplish the assignment. "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 attempted to redirect the Socialist Workers Party from their pledge of support for the antiwar movement.[13]

The FBI claims that it no longer undertakes COINTELPRO or COINTELPRO-like operations. However, critics claim that agency programs in the spirit of COINTELPRO targeted groups like the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador,[14] the American Indian Movement,[2][15] Earth First![16], the White Separatist Movement[17], and the Anti-Globalization Movement.[citation needed]

Methods

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

  1. Infiltration: Agents and informers did not merely spy on political activists. Their main purpose was to discredit and disrupt. 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 From the Outside: The FBI and police used a myriad of other "dirty tricks" to undermine progressive 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.
  3. Harassment Through 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.[18]
  4. Extralegal Force and Violence: 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.[18][19][20] The object was to frighten, or eliminate, dissidents and disrupt their movements.

The FBI specifically developed tactics intended to heighten tension and hostility between various factions the black militancy movement, for example between the Black Panthers, the United Slaves and the Blackstone Rangers. This resulted in numerous deaths, among which were the United Slave assassinations of San Diego Black Panther Party members Jim Huggins, Bunchy Carter and Sylvester Bell.[18]

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 directly in the police killing of many members of the Black Panther Party, most famously the assassination of Chicago Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton on December 4, 1969.[18][19][20]

In order to eliminate black militant leaders whom they considered dangerous, the FBI conspired with local police departments to target specific individuals,[21] accuse them of crimes they did not commit, suppress exculpatory evidence and falsely incarcerate them. One Black Panther Party leader, Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, 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 been out of the area at the time the murder occurred. [22][23]

The FBI conducted more than 200 "black bag jobs",[24][25] which were warrantless surreptitious entries, against the targeted groups and their members.[26]

In 1969 the FBI special agent in San Francisco wrote Hoover that his investigation of the Black Panther Party (BPP) revealed that in his city, at least, the Black nationalists were primarily feeding breakfast to children. Hoover fired back a memo implying the career ambitions of the agent were directly related to his supplying evidence to support Hoover's view that the BPP was "a violence-prone organization seeking to overthrow the Government by revolutionary means".[27]

Hoover was willing to use false claims to attack his political enemies. In one memo he wrote: "Purpose of counterintelligence action is to disrupt the BPP and it is immaterial whether facts exist to substantiate the charge."[28]

In one particularly controversial 1965 incident, 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 acknowledged FBI informant Gary Thomas Rowe.[29][30] Afterward COINTELPRO spread false rumors that Liuzzo was a member of the Communist Party and abandoned her children to have sexual relationships with African Americans involved in the civil rights movement.[31][32][33][34] 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.[29] In another instance in San Diego the FBI financed, armed, and controlled an extreme right-wing group of former Minutemen, transforming it into a group called the Secret Army Organization (USA)|Secret Army Organization which targeted groups, activists, and leaders involved in the Anti-War Movement for both intimidation and violent acts.[35][36][37][38]

Hoover ordered preemptive action "to pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them before they exercise their potential for violence."[6][39]

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 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 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 harassed and disrupted because of their political views and their lifestyles. Investigations have been based upon vague standards whose breadth made excessive collection inevitable. Unsavory 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.[40][41]

Reports that COINTELPRO tactics continue

While COINTELPRO was officially terminated in April 1971, suspicions persist that the program's tactics continued informally.[42][43] Critics have suggested that subsequent FBI actions indicate that post-COINTELPRO reforms in the agency did not succeed in ending the program's tactics.[44] The Associated Press reported in November 2008 that documents released under the FOIA reportedly show that the FBI tracked the late Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author David Halberstam for more than two decades.[45]

“Counterterrorism” guidelines implemented during the Reagan administration have been described as undercutting these reforms, allowing a return to earlier tactics.[46] Some radical groups accuse factional opponents of being FBI informants or assume the FBI is infiltrating the movement.[47]

Several authors have accused the FBI of continuing to deploy COINTELPRO-like tactics against radical groups after the official COINTELPRO operations were ended. Several authors have suggested the American Indian Movement (AIM) has been a target of such operations.

A few authors go further and 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.[2][15][48][49][50] Others believe COINTELPRO continues and similar actions are being taken against activist groups.[50][51][52]

Caroline Woidat argued 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."[53]

Other authors note that while there are conspiracy theories related to COINTELPRO, the issue of ongoing government surveillance and repression is nonetheless real.[54][55]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d "Quick Facts". Federal Bureau of Investigation. http://www.fbi.gov/quickfacts.htm. Retrieved 2009-11-20. 
  2. ^ a b c Churchill, Ward, and Jim Vander Wall, (1990), The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI’s Secret Wars Against Domestic Dissent, Boston: South End Press, pp. xii, 303.
  3. ^ http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIa.htm
  4. ^ Jeffreys-Jones, Rhodri. THE FBI, Yale University Press, 2008, p. 189
  5. ^ Various Church Committee reports reproduced online at ICDC: Final Report, 2A; Final Report,2Cb; Final Report, 3A; Final Report, 3G. Various COINTELPRO documents reproduced online at ICDC: CPUSA; SWP; Black Nationalist; White Hate; New Left; Puerto Rico.
  6. ^ a b COINTELPRO Revisited - Spying & Disruption - IN BLACK AND WHITE: THE F.B.I. PAPERS
  7. ^ "A Huey P. Newton Story - Actions - COINTELPRO". PBS. http://www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/actions/actions_cointelpro.html. Retrieved 2008-06-23. 
  8. ^ a b "Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans". United States Senate. http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIa.htm. Retrieved 2006-08-14. 
  9. ^ See, for example, Hobson v. Wilson, 737 F.2d 1 (1984); Rugiero v. U.S. Dept. of Justice, 257 F.3d 534, 546 (2001).
  10. ^ A Short History of FBI COINTELPRO. Retrieved July 13, 2007.
  11. ^ Video at YouTube
  12. ^ http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIa.htm
  13. ^ Blackstock, Nelson. COINTELPRO: The FBI's Secret War on Political Freedom, Pathfinder, New York. 1975. p. 111.
  14. ^ Gelbspan, Ross. (1991) Break-Ins, Death Threats, and the FBI: The Covert War Against the Central America Movement, Boston: South End Press.
  15. ^ a b 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.
  16. ^ Pickett, Karen. "Earth First! Takes the FBI to Court: Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney’s Case Heard after 12 Years," Earth First Journal, no date.
  17. ^ The Railroading of Matt Hale by Edgar J. Steele
  18. ^ a b c d http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIc.htm
  19. ^ a b FBI Secrets: An Agent's Expose. M. Wesley Swearigan. Boston. South End Press. 1995. 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."
  20. ^ a b http://www.itsabouttimebpp.com/Chapter_History/pdf/Chicago/Murder_of_Fred_Hampton_1969.pdf
  21. ^ http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/doc156.gif
  22. ^ http://www.cnn.com/US/9706/10/pratt.release/
  23. ^ http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/law/inrepratt82CalRptr2d260.htm
  24. ^ Alexander Cockburn; Jeffrey St. Clair (1998). Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press. Verso. pp. 69. ISBN 1859841392. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=s5qIj_h_PtkC&printsec=frontcover. 
  25. ^ FBI document, 19 July 1966, DeLoach to Sullivan re: "Black Bag" Jobs.
  26. ^ http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIf.htm, retrieved August 14, 2005.
  27. ^ FBI document, 27 May 1969, Director FBI to SAC San Francisco. Available at the FBI reading room.
  28. ^ 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.
  29. ^ a b Gary May, The Informant: The FBI, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Murder of Viola Luzzo, Yale University Press, 2005.
  30. ^ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/30/AR2005063001422_pf.html
  31. ^ Joanne Giannino. "Viola Liuzzo". Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography. http://www25-temp.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/violaliuzzo.html. Retrieved 2008-09-29. 
  32. ^ Kay Houston. "The Detroit housewife who moved a nation toward racial justice". The Detroit News, Rearview Mirror. http://web.archive.org/web/19990427180231/http://www.detroitnews.com/history/viola/viola.htm. 
  33. ^ Mary Stanton, FROM SELMA TO SORROW: The Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo, University of Georgia Press, 2000
  34. ^ http://www.plantingseedsmedia.com/violaliuzzo.html
  35. ^ http://www.chomsky.info/books/responsibility01.htm
  36. ^ http://osdir.com/ml/culture.discuss.cia-drugs/2005-10/msg00404.html
  37. ^ http://crca.ucsd.edu/~esisco/friendlyfire/A1972.html
  38. ^ http://www.start.umd.edu/data/tops/terrorist_organization_profile.asp?id=4258
  39. ^ http://www.opednews.com/articles/J-Edgar-Hoover-personally-by-Michael-Richardson-090123-327.html
  40. ^ "Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans Book II, Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities United States Senate (Church Committee)". United States Senate. http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIa.htm. Retrieved May 11, 2006. 
  41. ^ "Tapped Out Why Congress won't get through to the NSA.". Slate.com. http://www.slate.com/id/2135325/. Retrieved May 11, 2006. 
  42. ^ David Cunningham. There's Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and FBI. University of California Press, 2005: "However, strong suspicions lingered that the program's tactics were sustained on a less formal basis—suspicions sometimes furthered by agents themselves, who periodically claimed that counterintelligence activities were continuing, though in a manner undocumented within Bureau files."; Hobson v. Brennan, 646 F.Supp. 884 (D.D.C.,1986)
  43. ^ Bud Schultz, Ruth Schultz. The Price of Dissent: Testimonies to Political Repression in America. University of California Press, 2001: "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."
  44. ^ Athan G. Theoharis, et al. The FBI: A Comprehensive Reference Guide. Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999: "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."
  45. ^ SEE: Associated Press. FBI tracked journalist for over 20 years. Toronto Star. Nov 07, 2008. http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/533203 Retrieved November 23, 2008. SEE: Associated Press. Report: FBI kept file on writer David Halberstam. November 07, 2008. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gHBk0Wtol8FN8SMpFQIYL5CPxXfwD94AF32O0 Retrieved November 23, 2008. QUOTE: "The FBI tracked the late Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author David Halberstam for more than two decades, newly released documents show.
  46. ^ Bud Schultz, Ruth Schultz. The Price of Dissent: Testimonies to Political Repression in America. University of California Press, 2001: : "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."
  47. ^ Mike Mosedale, "Bury My Heart," City Pages, Volume 21 - Issue 1002 - Cover Story - February 16, 2000
  48. ^ Weyler, Rex. Blood of the Land: The Government and Corporate War Against First Nations.
  49. ^ Matthiessen, Peter, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, 1980, Viking.
  50. ^ a b Woidat, Caroline M. The Truth Is on the Reservation: American Indians and Conspiracy Culture, The Journal of American Culture 29 (4), 2006. Pages 454–467
  51. ^ McQuinn, Jason. "Conspiracy Theory vs Alternative Journalism", Alternative Press Review, Vol. 2, No. 3, Winter 1996
  52. ^ Horowitz, David. "Johnnie's Other O.J.", FrontPageMagazine.com. September 1, 1997.
  53. ^ Woidat, Caroline M. "The Truth Is on the Reservation: American Indians and Conspiracy Culture", The Journal of American Culture 29 (4), 2006. pp. 454–467.
  54. ^ Berlet, Chip. “The X-Files Movie: Facilitating Fanciful Fun, or Fueling Fear and Fascism? Conspiracy Theories for Fun, Not for False Prophets”, 1998, Political Research Associates
  55. ^ Berlet, Chip; and Matthew N. Lyons. 1998, "One key to litigating against government prosecution of dissidents: Understanding the underlying assumptions", Parts 1 and 2, Police Misconduct and Civil Rights Law Report (West Group), 5 (13), (January–February): 145–153; and 5 (14), (March–April): 157–162.

Further reading

Books

  • Blackstock, Nelson (1988). Cointelpro: The FBI's Secret War on Political Freedom. Pathfinder Press. ISBN 0-87348-877-6. 
  • Carson, Clayborne; Gallen, David, editors (1991). Malcolm X: The FBI File. Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 0-88184-758-5. 
  • Churchill, Ward; Vander Wall, Jim (2001). The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States. South End Press. ISBN 0-89608-648-8. 
  • Cunningham, David (2004). There’s Something Happening Here: The New Left, The Klan, and FBI Counterintelligence. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-23997-0. 
  • Davis, James Kirkpatrick (1997). Assault on the Left. Praeger Trade. ISBN 0-275-95455-2. 
  • Garrow, David (2006). The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr. (Revised ed.). Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-08731-4. 
  • Glick, Brian (1989). War at Home: Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About It. South End Press. ISBN 0-89608-349-7. 
  • Halperin, Morton; Berman, Jerry; Borosage Robert; Marwick, Christine (1976). The Lawless State: The Crimes Of The U.S. Intelligence Agencies. ISBN 0-14-004386-1. 
  • Olsen, Jack (2000). Last Man Standing: The Tragedy and Triumph of Geronimo Pratt. Doubleday. ISBN 0-38549-367-3. 
  • Perkus, Cathy (1976). Cointelpro. Vintage. 
  • Theoharis, Athan, Spying on Americans: Political Surveillance from Hoover to the Huston Plan (Temple University Press, 1978).

Articles

  • Drabble, John. "The FBI, COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE and the Decline of Ku Klux Klan Organizations in Mississippi, 1964–1971", Journal of Mississippi History, 66:4, (Winter 2004).
  • Drabble, John. "The FBI, COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE and the Decline Ku Klux Klan Organizations in Alabama, 1964–1971", Alabama Review, 61:1, (January 2008): 3-47.
  • Drabble, John. "To Preserve the Domestic Tranquility:” The FBI, COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE, and Political Discourse, 1964–1971", Journal of American Studies, 38:3, (August 2004): 297-328.
  • Drabble, John. “From White Supremacy to White Power: The FBI’s COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE Operation and the “Nazification” of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s,” American Studies, 48:3 (Fall 2007): 49-74.
  • Drabble, John. "Fighting Black Power-New Left coalitions: Covert FBI media campaigns and American cultural discourse, 1967-1971," European Journal of American Culture, 27:2, (2008): 65-91.

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.

External links

Documentary

Websites

Articles

U.S. government reports

  • 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 on COINTELPRO sources website. Transcription and html by Paul Wolf. Retrieved April 19, 2005.
  • Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Book II
I. Introduction and Summary
II. The Growth of Domestic Intelligence: 1936 to 1976
III. Findings
(A) Violating and Ignoring the Law
(B) Overbreadth of Domestic Intelligence Activity
(C) Excessive Use of Intrusive Techniques
(D) Using Covert Action to Disrupt and Discredit Domestic Groups
(E) Political Abuse of Intelligence Information
(F) Inadequate Controls on Dissemination and Retention
(G) Deficiencies in Control and Accountability
IV. Conclusions and Recommendations
  • Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports, Book III

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Intelligence Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Security. Copyright © 2004 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
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