On December 21, 2007, the New York Times reported that a
document was declassified as part of a
collection of cold-war documents concerning intelligence
issues from 1950 to 1955. (See page 18 of 789.) That document
shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI),
had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000
Americans he suspected of disloyalty. This surprised many
Americans. It shouldn't have.
Despite
the public image of the FBI
as the nation's premier law enforcement agency, it 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.
COINTELPRO
Tactics
Although the FBI's covert
operations have been active throughout its history, the formal
COunter INTELligence PROgram, or COINTELPRO, of the second half
of the 20th century was centrally directed and
targeted a range of political dissidents and organizations. The
stated goals of COINTELPRO were to "expose, disrupt,
misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" those
persons or organizations that the FBI decided were "enemies of
the State."
J. Edgar Hoover
Director, FBI
1924-1972
At its most extreme dimension,
political dissidents have been eliminated outright or sent to
prison for the rest of their lives. Many more, however, were "neutralized" by intimidation, harassment, discrediting, and a
whole assortment of authoritarian and illegal tactics.
Neutralization, as
explained on record by the FBI, didn’t necessarily pertain to
the apprehension of parties in the commission of a crime, the
preparation of evidence against them, and securing of a judicial
conviction. Rather, the FBI simply made activists incapable of
engaging in political activity by whatever means.
For those not assessed as being in
themselves a security risk but engaged in what the Bureau viewed
to be politically objectionable activity, those techniques
consisted of disseminating derogatory information to the
target's family, friends and associates, or visiting and
questioning them. False information was planted in the press.
The targets' efforts to speak in public were frustrated, and
employers were contacted to try to get them fired. Anonymous
letters accusing targets of infidelity were sent by the FBI to
their spouses. Other letters contained death threats. These
strategies are well-documented, for example, in the case of Rev.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Records also show that activists in the
1960s were repeatedly arrested "on any excuse" until "they could no longer make bail."
In addition, the FBI made use of
informants, often quite violent and emotionally disturbed
individuals, to present false testimony to the courts and frame
COINTELPRO targets for crimes the FBI knew they did not
commit. In some cases the charges were quite serious, including
murder.
Another option was "snitch
jacketing" where the FBI made the target look like a police
informant or an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency. This
served the dual purposes of isolating and alienating important
leaders, as well as increasing the general level of fear and
factionalism in the group.
Many counterintelligence
techniques involved the use of paid informants. Informants
became "agent provocateurs" by raising
controversial issues at meetings to take advantage of
ideological divisions; promoting enmity with other groups; or
inciting the group to violent acts, even to the point of
providing them with weapons. Over the years, FBI provocateurs
repeatedly urged and initiated violent acts, including forceful
disruptions of meetings and demonstrations, attacks on police,
bombings, etc.
American Indian Movement
In recent years, issues have been raised with regard to AIM's
account of events that occurred in the 1970s—arguably
an attempt on the part of some to rewrite history and hide the
truth from the public. Some revisionists have gone so far as to
suggest that COINTELPRO didn't exist.
However, in 1975, the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to
Intelligence Activities (also known as the Church Committee) investigated the
counterintelligence activities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
over a 25-year period. With regard to its COINTELPRO operations, the Church Committee found the Bureau responsible for:
violating and ignoring the law;
exceeding its powers with regard to domestic
intelligence activity;
using excessively intrusive techniques against United
States citizens;
using covert action to disrupt and discredit domestic groups;
abusing intelligence information for political purposes;
and
having inadequate controls, as well as no accountability.
In truth, the FBI conducted more than 2,000 COINTELPRO operations
before the programs were officially discontinued in April of 1971, after public exposure, in order to "afford additional security to
[its] sensitive techniques and operations." While the programs
themselves were discontinued, the FBI's objectionable practices were not. The FBI's intent was/is to continue
such practices as deemed necessary and completely at its own whim. That
intent was clearly stated by the FBI. It's a matter of
public record.
Excerpts from
the
Church Committee
reports*
Intelligence Activities
and the Rights of Americans, Book II
*
Books II and III of the Final Report of the Select Committee
to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence
Activities of the United States Senate, 94th Congress, 2nd
Session, 1976. Links provided by
www.cointel.org, a site
developed and maintained by attorney Paul
Wolf.
Covert Actions Against American Citizens Living in America
In the following video, members of the Church Committee talk about covert actions
against American citizens living in America—then
and now.
The full story of COINTELPRO may
never be told. The Bureau's files were never seized by Congress
or the courts or sent to the National Archives. Some were
destroyed. In addition, many counterintelligence operations were
never committed to writing as such, or involved open
investigations making ex-operatives legally prohibited from
talking about them. Most operations remained secret until long
after the damage had been done.
There is little doubt, given what is known today about the FBI's
activities vis-a-vis AIM, that all of the COINTELPRO tactics
discussed here were used against AIM members,
including the wholesale jailing of the Movement's leadership.
Virtually every known American Indian Movement leader in the United States was
incarcerated in either state or federal prisons since (or even
before) the organization's formal emergence in 1968. Some AIM
members were jailed
repeatedly. Organization members often languished in jail for
months as the cumulative bail required to free them outstripped
resource capabilities of AIM and supporting groups.
The Church Committee had intended to investigate AIM as another dissident group targeted by the Bureau. Witnesses
had been investigated by congressional staff and called to provide testimony. However, one day after the
firefight at Oglala, the Church Committee
cancelled the
hearings. Consequently, official misconduct against AIM and
regarding Wounded Knee is not part of the Committee's official
findings. The full extent of the FBI's war against AIM has been
obscured and perhaps intentionally so.
Also listen to this
passionate, scholarly, and far reaching analysis of COINTELPRO
by Ward Churchill**. Beginning with the World
War I period, Churchill covers: the Palmer Raids; the defeat of
the Anarchists and of Marcus Garvey; the attacks on the Civil
Rights Movement; the 1964 murders of Goodman, Schwerner, and
Chaney; and the murders of Black Panthers. Churchill also gives
a detailed description of the FBI raid on the Pine Ridge
reservation on June 26, 1975, and of the case against Leonard Peltier.
If you don't have a media
player, click on a link below to Download A Player:
*Text on COINTELPRO is excerpted from "COINTELPRO: The Untold Story," a compilation by Paul Wolf
presented to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary
Robinson at the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South
Africa, by the then members of the Congressional Black
Caucus. Please see
www.cointel.org.
**Ward Churchill, formerly a professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado
(Boulder), is a Vietnam Veteran and survivor of the FBI war
against the American Indian Movement. Among his many books
are "The COINTELPRO Papers," "Indians Are US," and "A Little Matter of Genocide."
