"COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story



http://www.derechos.net/paulwolf/cointelpropapers/ coinwcar3.htm
>



Compilation by Paul Wolf with contributions from Robert Boyle,
Bob Brown, Tom Burghardt, Noam Chomsky, Ward Churchill, Kathleen
Cleaver, Bruce Ellison, Cynthia McKinney, Nkechi Taifa, Laura
Whitehorn, Nicholas Wilson, and Howard Zinn.



Presented to Mary Robinson at the World Conference Against
Racism in Durban, South Africa by Congresswoman Cynthia
McKinney, September 1, 2001.


We're here to talk about the FBI and U.S. democracy because
here we have this peculiar situation that we live in a
democratic country - everybody knows that, everybody says
it, it's repeated, it's dinned into our ears a thousand
times, you grow up, you pledge allegiance, you salute the
flag, you hail democracy, you look at the totalitarian
states, you read the history of tyrannies, and here is the
beacon light of democracy. And, of course, there's some
truth to that. There are things you can do in the United
States that you can't do many other places without being
put in jail.

Table of Contents



Overview

Victimization

COINTELPRO Techniques

Murder and Assassination

Agents Provocateurs

The Ku Klux Klan

The Secret Army Organization

Snitch Jacketing

The Subversion of the Press

Political Prisoners

Leonard Peltier

Mumia Abu Jamal

Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt

Dhoruba Bin Wahad

Marshall Eddie Conway

Justice Hangs in the Balance

Appendix: The Legacy of COINTELPRO

CISPES

The Judi Bari Bombing

Bibliography

Overview



We're here to talk about the FBI and U.S. democracy because
here we have this peculiar situation that we live in a
democratic country - everybody knows that, everybody says
it, it's repeated, it's dinned into our ears a thousand
times, you grow up, you pledge allegiance, you salute the
flag, you hail democracy, you look at the totalitarian
states, you read the history of tyrannies, and here is the
beacon light of democracy. And, of course, there's some
truth to that. There are things you can do in the United
States that you can't do many other places without being
put in jail.



But the United States is a very complex system. It's very
hard to describe because, yes, there are elements of
democracy; there are things that you're grateful for, that
you're not in front of the death squads in El Salvador. On
the other hand, it's not quite a democracy. And one of the
things that makes it not quite a democracy is the existence
of outfits like the FBI and the CIA. Democracy is based on
openness, and the existence of a secret policy, secret
lists of dissident citizens, violates the spirit of
democracy.



Despite its carefully contrived image as the nation's
premier crime fighting agency, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation has always functioned primarily as America's
political police. This role includes not only the
collection of intelligence on the activities of political
dissidents and groups, but often times, counterintelligence
operations to thwart those activities. The techniques
employed are easily recognized by anyone familiar with
military psychological operations. The FBI, through the use
of the criminal justice system, the postal system, the
telephone system and the Internal Revenue Service, enjoys
an operational capability surpassing even that of the CIA,
which conducts covert actions in foreign countries without
having access to those institutions.



Although covert operations have been employed throughout
FBI history, the formal COunter INTELligence PROgrams
(COINTELPRO's) of the period 1956-1971 were the first to be
both broadly targeted and centrally directed. According to
FBI researcher Brian Glick, "FBI headquarters set policy,
assessed progress, charted new directions, demanded
increased production, and carefully monitored and
controlled day-to-day operations. This arrangement required
that national COINTELPRO supervisors and local FBI field
offices communicate back and forth, at great length,
concerning every operation. They did so quite freely, with
little fear of public exposure. This generated a prolific
trail of bureaucratic paper. The moment that paper trail
began to surface, the FBI discontinued all of its formal
domestic counterintelligence programs. It did not, however,
cease its covert political activity against U.S.
dissidents."



Of roughly 20,000 people investigated by the FBI solely on
the basis of their political views between 1956-1971, about
10 to 15% were the targets of active counterintelligence
measures per se. Taking counterintelligence in its broadest
sense, to include spreading false information, it's
estimated that about two-thirds were COINTELPRO targets.
Most targets were never suspected of committing any crime.



The nineteen sixties were a period of social change and
unrest. Color television brought home images of jungle
combat in Vietnam and protesters and priests burning draft
cards and American flags. In the spring and summer months
of 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967 and 1968, massive black
rebellions swept across almost every major US city in the
Northeast, Midwest and California.



Presidents Johnson and Nixon, and many others feared
violent revolution and denounced the protesters. President
Kennedy had felt the opposite: "Those who make peaceful
revolution impossible will make violent revolution
inevitable."



The counterculture of the sixties, and the FBI's reaction
to it, were in many ways a product of the 1950s, the so-
called "Age of McCarthyism." John Edgar Hoover, longtime
Director of the FBI, was a prominent spokesman of the anti-
communist paranoia of the era:
The forces which are most anxious to weaken our internal
security are not always easy to identify. Communists have
been trained in deceit and secretly work toward the day
when they hope to replace our American way of life with a
Communist dictatorship. They utilize cleverly camouflaged
movements, such as peace groups and civil rights groups to
achieve their sinister purposes. While they as individuals
are difficult to identify, the Communist party line is
clear. Its first concern is the advancement of Soviet
Russia and the godless Communist cause. It is important to
learn to know the enemies of the American way of life.



Throughout the 1960s, Hoover consistently applied this
theory to a wide variety of groups, on occasion
reprimanding agents unable to find "obvious" communist
connections in civil rights and anti-war groups. During the
entire COINTELPRO period, no links to Soviet Russia were
uncovered in any of the social movements disrupted by the
FBI.



The commitment of the FBI to undermine and destroy popular
movements departing from political orthodoxy has been
extensive, and apparently proportional to the strength and
promise of such movements, as one would expect in the case
of the secret police organization of any state, though it
is doubtful that there is anything comparable to this
record among the Western industrial democracies.
In retrospect, the COINTEPRO's of the 1960s were thoroughly
successful in achieving their stated goals, "to expose,
disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the
enemies of the State."