FBI And Cointelpro; Revealed By Whistle Blowing Activists Who Stole FBI Documents in 1971 Revealing Illegal FBI And CIA Activities, FBI/CIA Still Believes That Dissenting And Truth Telling Makes Informed People The Enemy
THE STUFF THAT THE 1 PERCENT DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW
What was COINTELPRO? What made it controversial? Do government agencies continue to infiltrate activist organizations today?
Historically, 25 percent of effort and money was spent by COINTELPRO activities on actual hate groups, such as the KKK, but 75 percent of resources were used in the form of political repression against civil rights, peace, human rights, anti war, and other peaceful groups that had no violent or hate agenda, mission or purpose.
HOW DID COINTELPRO GET REVEALED TO THE PUBLIC?
AMY GOODMAN; DEMOCRACY NOW; Eight activists broke into FBI office and stole documents, revealing FBI abuses such as Cointelpro
VIDEO: https://youtu.be/FVuCu9rwh_E 1 hour 53 min.
"One of the great mysteries of the Vietnam War era has been solved. On March 8, 1971, a group of activists — including a cabdriver, a day care director and two professors — broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania. They stole every document they found and then leaked many to the press, including details about FBI abuses and the then-secret counter-intelligence program to infiltrate, monitor and disrupt social and political movements, nicknamed COINTELPRO. They called themselves the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI.
No one was ever caught for the break-in. The burglars' identities remained a secret until this week when they finally came forward to take credit for the caper that changed history. Today we are joined by three of them — John Raines, Bonnie Raines and Keith Forsyth; their attorney, David Kairys; and Betty Medsger, the former Washington Post reporter who first broke the story of the stolen FBI documents in 1971 and has now revealed the burglars' identities in her new book, "The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI."
Wikipedia; "COINTELPRO (an acronym for COunter INTELligence PROgram) was a series of covert, and at times illegal,[1][2] projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.[3]
CHARACTER ASSASSINATION WAS AND STILL IS A COMMON PLOY
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.
PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE VIA THE MASS MEDIA AND US GOVERNMENT AGENCIES IS USED AS NORMAL PART OF COINTELPRO, EVEN TODAY
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.[4] COINTELPRO tactics have been alleged to include discrediting targets through psychological warfare; smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; and illegal violence, including assassination.[5][6][7] The FBI's stated motivation was "protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order."[8]
FBI records show that COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals that the FBI deemed "subversive",[9] including communist and socialist organizations;
organizations and individuals associated with the Civil Rights Movement, including Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others associated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Congress of Racial Equality and other civil rights organizations;
black nationalist groups;
the Young Lords;
the Rainbow Coalition;
the white supremist groups;
the Ku Klux Klan;
a broad range of organizations labeled "New Left", including Students for a Democratic Society and the Weathermen;
almost all groups protesting the Vietnam War, as well as individual student demonstrators with no group affiliation;
organizations and individuals associated with the women's rights movement;
nationalist groups such as those seeking independence for Puerto Rico, United Ireland, and Cuban exile movements including Orlando Bosch's Cuban Power and the Cuban Nationalist Movement;
and additional notable Americans.[10]
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover issued directives governing COINTELPRO, ordering FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, neutralize or otherwise eliminate" the activities of these movements and their leaders.[11][12] Under Hoover, the agent in charge of COINTELPRO was William C. Sullivan.[13] Attorney GeneralRobert F. Kennedy personally authorized some of these programs.[14] Kennedy would later learn that he also had been a target of FBI surveillance.[citation needed]
HISTORY OF COINTELPRO
The FBI engaged in the political repression of "communism" almost from the time of the agency's inception in 1908, at a time of widespread social disruption due to anarchists and labor movements. Beginning in the 1930s, antecedents to COINTELPRO operated under Franklin D. Roosevelt and continued in the Truman and Eisenhower administrations.
The expanse of the FBI's surveillance was broad and intrusive, with even committed liberalism being perceived as a stepping stone to communism. Albert Einstein, for instance, had his mail opened, phone tapped, and trash picked through in a search for "derogatory information" after he criticized the nuclear arms race.[15]
Centralized operations under COINTELPRO officially began in August 1956 with a program designed to "increase factionalism, cause disruption and win defections" inside the Communist Party U.S.A. (CPUSA). Tactics included anonymous phone calls, IRS audits, and the creation of documents that would divide American communists internally.[16] 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 bycommunists.[17]
REVEREND MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. WAS TARGET OF COINTELPRO
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 blacks in the South.[18] When the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was founded in 1957, the FBI began to monitor and target the group almost immediately, focusing particularly on Bayard Rustin, Stanley Levison, and, eventually, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.[19]
The so-called "suicide letter",[20]mailed anonymously to King by the FBI
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:
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.[21]
Soon after, the FBI was systematically bugging King's home and his hotel rooms.[22]
In the mid-1960s, King began publicly criticizing the Bureau for giving insufficient attention to the use of terrorismby white supremacists. Hoover responded by publicly calling King the most "notorious liar" in the United States.[23] 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.[24] Historian Taylor Branch documents an anonymous November 21, 1964 "suicide package" sent by the FBI that contained audio recordings of King's sexual indiscretions 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."[25]
MALCOLM X ORGANIZATION HEAVILY INFILTRATED BY FBI COINTELPRO
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, it is documented that the Bureau worked to "widen the rift" between Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad that led to Malcolm's assassination.[26][27]
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.[28][29]
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.[30] 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".[31]
A March 1968 memo stated the programs 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;[32] Stokely Carmichael was noted to have "the necessary charisma to be a real threat in this way." [33]
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 theDepartment of Defense.
CIA LAUNCHED OPERATION CHAOS
The CIA launched its own domestic espionage project in 1967 called Operation CHAOS.[34] A particular target was the Poor People's Campaign, a national effort organized by King and the SCLC to occupy Washington, D.C. The FBI monitored and disrupted the campaign on a national level, while using targeted smear tactics locally to undermine support for the march.[35]
COINTELPRO–NEW LEFT was created in April 1968, in the wake of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination in Memphis and mass student protests at Columbia University.[36]
COINTELPRO DISRUPTED AND SABOTAGED ANTI WAR, COMMUNITY AND RELIGIOUS GROUPS
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'sChurch 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 ..."[37]
Official congressional committees and several court cases[38] 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]
COINTELPRO PROGRAM EXPOSED
The building broken into by the Citizen's Commission to Investigate the FBI, at One Veterans Square, Media, Pennsylvania
The COINTELPRO program was successfully kept secret until 1971, when the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI burglarized an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania, took several dossiers, and exposed the program by passing this material to news agencies.[39]
Many news organizations initially refused to publish the information. Within the year, Director J. Edgar Hoover declared that the centralized COINTELPRO was over, and that all future counterintelligence operations would be handled on a case-by-case basis.[40][41]
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" for its chairman, Senator Frank Church of Idaho, launched a major investigation of the FBI and COINTELPRO. Journalists and historians speculate that the government has not released many dossier and documents related to the program. Many released documents have been partly, or entirely, redacted.
Since the conclusion of centralized COINTELPRO operations in 1971, FBI counterintelligence operations have been handled on a "case-by-case basis"; however allegations of improper political repression continue.[42][43]
COMMITTEE REPORT EXPOSED VIGILANTE PROGRAM, WHICH PREVENTED EXERCISE OF FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS OF FREE SPEECH AND ASSOCIATION
The Final Report of the Select Committee castigated 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.[37]
The Church Committee documented a history of the FBI exercising political repression as far back as World War I, through the 1920s, when agents were charged with rounding up "anarchists, communists, socialists, reformists and revolutionaries" for deportation. The domestic operations were increased against political and anti-war groups from 1936 through 1976.
INTENDED EFFECTS OF COINTELPRO
The intended effect of the FBI's COINTELPRO was to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, or otherwise neutralize" groups that the FBI officials believed were "subversive"[44] by instructing FBI field operatives to:[45]
create a negative public image for target groups (e.g. by surveilling activists, and releasing negative personal information to the public)
break down internal organization
create dissension between groups
restrict access to public resources
restrict the ability to organize protests
restrict the ability of individuals to participate in group activities
RANGE OF TARGETS OF COINTELPRO
At its inception, the programs's main target was the Communist Party.[46]
In an interview with the BBC's Andrew Marr, Noam Chomsky—a political activist and MIT professor of linguistics—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.[47]
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, spanning all presidents from FDR to Nixon, both legal and illegal, contained in the Church Committee report:[48]
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.
President Eisenhower received reports on purely political and social contacts with foreign officials by Bernard Baruch, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.
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 wire tap on Martin Luther King, Jr. and an electronic listening device targeting 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.
President Nixon authorized a program of wiretaps which produced for the White House purely political or personal information unrelated to national security, including information about a Supreme Court Justice.
COINTELPRO INTENT WAS TO DISRUPT AND PREVENT ANY PROTESTS AGAINST THE VIETNAM WAR
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.[49]
The FBI claims 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,[50] the American Indian Movement,[4][51] Earth First!,[52] the White Separatist Movement,[53] and the Anti-Globalization Movement.
METHODS
Body of Fred Hampton, national spokesman for the Black Panther Party, who was killed by members of the Chicago Police Department, as part of a COINTELPRO operation.[5][6][7][54]
FOUR MAIN TACTICS EMPLOYED
According to attorney Brian Glick in his book War at Home, the FBI used four main methods during COINTELPRO:
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.
Psychological warfare: The FBI and police used myriad "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. They used bad-jacketing to create suspicion about targeted activists, sometimes with lethal consequences.[55]
Legal harassment: 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.[5][56]
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.[5][6][7][57]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 in the black militancy movement, for example between the Black Panthers, the US Organization, and the Blackstone Rangers. This resulted in numerous deaths, among which were San Diego Black Panther Party members John Huggins, Bunchy Carter and Sylvester Bell.[5]
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 many members of the Black Panther Party, most notably Chicago Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton on December 4, 1969.[5][6][7][58]
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,[59] 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.[60][61]
Some sources claim that the FBI conducted more than 200 "black bag jobs",[62][63] which were warrantless surreptitious entries, against the targeted groups and their members.[64]
J. Edgar Hoover
In 1969 the FBI special agent in San Francisco wrote Hoover that his investigation of the Black Panther Party (BPP) 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 BPP was "a violence-prone organization seeking to overthrow the Government by revolutionary means".[65]
Hoover supported using 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."[66]
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.[67][68]
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.[69][70] FBI records show that J. Edgar Hoover personally communicated these insinuations to President Johnson.[71][72]
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.[67] According to Noam Chomsky, 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 that targeted groups, activists, and leaders involved in the Anti-War Movement, using both intimidation and violent acts.[73][74][75]
Hoover ordered preemptive action "to pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them before they exercise their potential for violence."[11]
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 believes 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.[76][77]
National Security Agency operation Project MINARET targeted the personal communications of leading civil rights leaders, Americans who criticized the Vietnam War, including Senators (e.g., Frank Church and Howard Baker), journalists, and athletes.[78][79]
POST COINTELPRO OPERATIONS
While COINTELPRO was officially terminated in April 1971, critics allege that continuing FBI actions indicate that post-COINTELPRO reforms did not succeed in ending COINTELPRO tactics.[80][81][82] 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.[83][84] In 1978, then-acting FBI Director William H. Webster indicated that, by 1976, most of the program's resources has been rerouted.[85]
"Counterterrorism" guidelines implemented during the Reagan administration have been described as allowing a return to COINTELPRO tactics.[86] Some radical groups accuse factional opponents of being FBI informants or assume the FBI is infiltrating the movement.[87]
According to a report by the Inspector General (IG) of the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI improperly opened investigations of American activist groups, even though they were planning nothing more than peaceful protests and civil disobedience. The review by the inspector general was launched in response to complaints by civil liberties groups and members of Congress.
The FBI improperly monitored groups including the Thomas Merton Center, a Pittsburgh-based peace group; People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA); and Greenpeace USA, an environmental activism organization. Also, activists affiliated with Greenpeace were improperly put on a terrorist watch list, although they were planning no violence or illegal activities.
The IG report found these "troubling" FBI practices between 2001 and 2006. In some cases, the FBI conducted investigations of people affiliated with activist groups for "factually weak" reasons. Also, the FBI extended investigations of some of the groups "without adequate basis" and improperly kept information about activist groups in its files. The IG report also found that FBI Director Robert Mueller III provided inaccurate congressional testimony about one of the investigations.[88]
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 disturbing operations.
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.[4][51][89][90][91]
Others believe COINTELPRO continues and similar actions are being taken against activist groups.[91][92][93] 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."[94] Other authors argue that while some conspiracy theories related to COINTELPRO are unfounded, the issue of ongoing government surveillance and repression is real.[43][95]
INDIVIDUALS TARGED BY COINTELPRO
Ernest Hemingway, targeted by COINTELPRO
At this time, Hemingway was worried about money and about his safety.[139] He worried about his taxes, and that he would never return to Cuba to retrieve the manuscripts he had left there in a bank vault. He became paranoid and thought the FBI was actively monitoring his movements in Ketchum.[142][143] The FBI had opened a file on him during World War II, when he used the Pilar to patrol the waters off Cuba, and J. Edgar Hoover had the agent in Havana watch Hemingway during the 1950s.[144]
Howard Bruce Franklin, targeted by COINTELPRO
After serving three years as a navigator and intelligence officer in the Strategic Air Command, Franklin got his doctorate at Stanford University in 1961 and then became an associate professor of English there. He spent the 1966-1967 school year at Stanford's campus in Paris, France, where he and his wife Jane read Marxist theory, and helped organize the Free University of Paris.[1] On his return to the US he became a prominent activist in the movement against the Vietnam War.
David Halberstam, targeted by COINTELPRO
David Halberstam (April 10, 1934 – April 23, 2007) was an American journalist and historian, known for his early work on the Vietnam War, his work on politics, history, the Civil Rights Movement, business, media, American culture, and his latersports journalism.[1] He won a Pulitzer Prize for journalism in 1964.[2]
Fred Hampton, targeted by COINTELPRO
Jean Seberg, targeted by COINTELPRO
Seberg is also one of the best-known targets of the FBI COINTELPRO project. Her victimization was rendered as a well-documented retaliation for her support of the Black Panther Party in the 1960s. Jean Seberg died at the age of 40 of a barbiturate overdose in Paris. Her death was ruled a suicide.
At the peak of her career, Seberg suddenly stopped acting in Hollywood films. Reportedly, she was not pleased with the roles she had been offered, some of which, she noted, bordered on pornography.[16] Conversely, she was not offered any great Hollywood roles, regardless of their size.[16] Experts in FBI COINTELPRO activities suggest that Seberg was "effectively blacklisted"[17] from Hollywood films, as was Jane Fonda, for a period of time.
FBI inter-office memo: "... cause her embarrassment and cheapen her image"
During the late 1960s, Seberg provided financial support to various groups supporting civil rights, such as the NAACP and Native American school groups such as the Meskwaki Bucks at the Tama settlement near her home town of Marshalltown, for whom she purchased US$500 worth of basketball uniforms. The FBI was upset about several gifts to the Black Panther Party,[18][19] totalling US$10,500 (estimated) in contributions; these were noted among a list of other celebrities in FBI internal documents later declassified and released to the public under FOIA requests. The financial support and alleged interracial love affairs or friendships are thought to have been triggers to a large-scale FBI program deployment in her direction.
The FBI operation against Seberg used COINTELPRO program techniques to harass, intimidate, defame, and discredit Seberg.[20] The FBI's stated goal was an unspecified "neutralization" of Seberg with a subsidiary objective to "cause her embarrassment and serve to cheapen her image with the public", while taking the "usual precautions to avoid identification of the Bureau".[21]FBI strategy and modalities can be found in FBI inter-office memos.[22]
In 1970, the FBI created the false story, from a San Francisco-based informant, that the child Seberg was carrying was not fathered by her husband Romain Gary but by Raymond Hewitt, a member of the Black Panther Party.[23][24] The story was reported by gossip columnist Joyce Haberof The Los Angeles Times.[25] and was also printed by Newsweekmagazine.[26]
Seberg went into premature labor and, on August 23, 1970, gave birth to a 4 lb (1.8 kg) baby girl. The child died two days later.[27] She held a funeral in her hometown with an open casket that allowed reporters to see the infant's white skin which disproved the rumors.[28] Seberg and Gary later sued Newsweek for libel and defamation and asked for US $200,000 in damages.
Seberg contended she became so upset after reading the story, that she went into premature labor, which resulted in the death of her daughter. A Paris court orderedNewsweek to pay the couple US$10,800 in damages and also ordered Newsweek to print the judgment in their publication plus eight other newspapers.[29]
The investigation of Seberg went far beyond the publishing of defamatory articles. According to her friends interviewed after her death, Seberg experienced years of aggressive in-person surveillance (constant stalking), as well as break-ins and other intimidation-oriented activity. These newspaper reports make clear that Seberg was well aware of the surveillance.
FBI files show that she was wiretapped, and in 1980, The Los Angeles Timespublished logs of her Swiss wiretapped phone calls.[22] U.S. surveillance was deployed while she was residing in France and while travelling in Switzerland and Italy. Per FBI files the FBI cross-contacted the "FBI Legat" (legal attachés) in U.S. Embassies in Paris and Rome and provided files on Seberg to the CIA, U.S. Secret Serviceand U.S. Military intelligence to assist monitoring while she was abroad.
FBI records show that J. Edgar Hoover kept U.S. President Richard Nixon informed of FBI activities related to the Jean Seberg case via President Nixon's domestic affairs chief John Ehrlichman. John Mitchell, then Attorney General, and Deputy Attorney General Richard Kleindienst were also kept informed of FBI activities related to Jean Seberg.[22]
SEE ALSO
1971, 2014 documentary film on the break-in that first exposed COINTELPRO
All Power to the People, film documentary by Lee Lew-Lee 1996
H. Rap Brown, targeted by COINTELPRO
William Mark Felt, also known as Deep Throat served as chief inspector of COINTELPRO field operations
Howard Bruce Franklin, targeted by COINTELPRO
David Halberstam, targeted by COINTELPRO
Ernest Hemingway, targeted by COINTELPRO
Fred Hampton, targeted by COINTELPRO
Jean Seberg, targeted by COINTELPRO
Jeff Fort, leader of the Chicago street gang El Rukn, was tried and convicted for conspiring with Libya to perform acts of domestic terrorism by use of COINTELPRO type methods
Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF)
Judi Bari, organizer, Earth First! & IWW Local #1, targeted by COINTELPRO
Viola Liuzzo, murdered by a shot from a car used by four Ku Klux Klansmen, one of whom was a COINTELPRO informant
PROFUNC – a top secret plan of the Government of Canada
Red squad – police intelligence/anti-dissident units, later operated under COINTELPRO
Morris Starsky, early target of COINTELPRO
Source; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
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SUMMARY
Recently, another black church leader, a senator and an activist that was similar to Martin Luther King Jr was killed, by a lone gunman. Was this just a crazed sociopath killer, or was it another assassination of a rising star who was threatening the established order? Did this Senator have to be 'taken out' via assassination?
Staring Into The Endless Abyss Of Senseless Violence And Gun Deaths; Then Doing Nothing About It; Daily Show Unhumor, Charleston Church Shooting
At the very least, this murder of 9 innocent people in a church should start a firestorm of protest and then action. But what kinds of actions should be taken? What kinds of laws should be passed in response to this heinous act? If the American public will stand for this kind of heinous act, then they will also sit still for dictators and despots, or maybe even corporations taking over this nation, while saying and doing nothing.
45 YEARS AFTER COINTELPRO, THE FBI STILL THINKS THAT DISSENT IS THE ENEMY
Credit/Source; Small People Against Big Government
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FBI And Cointelpro; Revealed By Whistle Blowing Activists Who Stole FBI Documents in 1971 Revealing Illegal FBI And CIA Activities, FBI/CIA Still Believes That Dissenting And Truth Telling Makes Informed People The Enemy
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