The following paper was presented to the WCAR in Durban, S. Africa
yesterday.
From: Paul Wolf <paulwolf@icdc.com>
COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story
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.
A longer and annotated version of this document is available online:
http://www.house.gov/mckinney/news/index.htm
Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page #
Overview 1
Victimization 4
COINTELPRO Techniques 6
Murder and Assassination 8
Agents Provocateurs 18
The Ku Klux Klan 18
The Secret Army Organization 23
Snitch Jacketing 26
The Subversion of the Press 27
Political Prisoners 32
Leonard Peltier 32
Mumia Abu Jamal 35
Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt 35
Dhoruba Bin Wahad 41
Marshall Eddie Conway 46
Justice Hangs in the Balance 47
Appendix: The Legacy of COINTELPRO 50
CISPES 54
The Judi Bari Bombing 56
Bibliography 64
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.
Victimization
The most serious of the FBI disruption programs were those directed
against "Black Nationalists." Agents were instructed to undertake
actions to discredit these groups both within "the responsible Negro
community" and to "Negro radicals," also "to the white community, both
the responsible community and to `liberals' who have vestiges of sympathy
for militant black nationalists simply because they are Negroes..."
A March 4th, 1968 memo from J Edgar Hoover to FBI field offices laid out
the goals of the COINTELPRO - Black Nationalist Hate Groups program: "to
prevent the coalition of militant black nationalist groups;" "to prevent
the rise of a messiah who could unify and electrify the militant black
nationalist movement;" "to prevent violence on the part of black
nationalist groups;" "to prevent militant black nationalist groups and
leaders from gaining respectability;" and "to prevent the long-range
growth of militant black nationalist organizations, especially among
youth." Included in the program were a broad spectrum of civil rights
and religious groups; targets included Martin Luther King, Malcolm X,
Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, and Elijah Muhammad.
A top secret Special Report for President Nixon, dated June 1970 gives
some insight into the motivation for the actions undertaken by the
government to destroy the Black Panther party. The report describes the
party as "the most active and dangerous black extremist group in the
United States." Its "hard-core members" were estimated at about 800, but
"a recent poll indicates that approximately 25 per cent of the black
population has a great respect for the BPP, incuding 43 per cent of
blacks under 21 years of age." On the basis of such estimates of the
potential of the party, counterintelligence operations were carried out
to ensure that it did not succeed in organizing as a substantial social
or political force.
Another memorandum explains the motivation for the FBI operations against
student protesters: "the movement of rebellious youth known as the 'New
Left,' involving and influencing a substantial number of college
students, is having a serious impact on contemporary society with a
potential for serious domestic strife." The New Left has "revolutionary
aims" and an "identification with Marxism-Leninism." It has attempted
"to infiltrate and radicalize labor," and after failing "to subvert and
control the mass media" has established "a large network of underground
publications which serve the dual purpose of an internal communication
network and an external propaganda organ." Its leaders have "openly
stated their sympathy with the international communist revolutionary
movements in South Vietnam and Cuba; and have directed others into
activities which support these movements."
The effectiveness of the state disruption programs is not easy to
evaluate. Black leaders estimate the significance of the programs as
substantial. Dr. James Turner of Cornell University, former president of
the African Heritage Studies Association, assessed these programs as
having "serious long-term consequences for black Americans," in that they
"had created in blacks a sense of depression and hopelessness."
<<end excerpt
This document is available as a .doc file online at:
http://nativenewsonline.org/archive3_01.coinwcar2.doc
A longer and annotated version of this document is available online:
http://www.house.gov/mckinney/news/index.htm
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