COINTELPRO

COINTELPRO is an acronym ('COunter INTELligence PROgram') for a program of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States. Although covert operations have been employed throughout FBI history, the formal COINTELPRO operations of 1956-1971 were broadly targeted against organizations that were (at the time) considered to have politically radical elements, ranging from those whose stated goal was the violent overthrow of the US government (such as the Weathermen) to Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and racist and segregationist groups like the Ku Klux Klan. The document that launched the COINTELPRO operations against Black groups directed FBI agents to "track, expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities" of these dissident movements and their leaders.

References

• {{note|church}} http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIa.htm, retrieved August 14, 2005.
• {{note|church-castigation}} http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIa.htm, retrieved August 14, 2005.
• {{note|infiltration}} As an example of infiltration of organizations, Bill Wilkinson, the leader of the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was an FBI informant.
• {{note|psychological-warfare}} An example of COINTELPRO's work in the media is a series of articles run in the San Francisco Examiner purporting to be interviews with radical Marxist H. Bruce Franklin. A subsequent libel suit showed that right-wing colunist Ed Montgomery had cooperated closely with the FBI in writing the story, and that J. Edgar Hoover had signed off on the articles before publication. http://www.sfbg.com/39/03/cover_anniversary_intro.html, retrieved August 14, 2005. In another example, the FBI also carried out a smear campaign against civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo after she was murdered by four Ku Klux Klan members, of whom one was a paid FBI informant.http://www.detnews.com/2004/metro/0409/30/c01-289311.htm, retrieved August 14, 2005.
• {{note|black-bag}} http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIf.htm, retrieved August 14, 2005.
• {{note|extralegal-force-and-violence}} Brian Glick, War at Home (South End Press). An example of a burglary is discussed at http://www.sfbg.com/39/03/cover_anniversary_intro.html, retrieved August 14, 2005. An example of involvement in violent acts is the 1965 murder of civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo by four Klansmen, of whom one was FBI informant Gary Rowe. The Church Committee also found that, "while performing duties paid for by the Government, had ... 'beaten people severely, had boarded buses and kicked people, had into restaurants and beaten them with blackjacks, chains, pistols.'" http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIa.htm, retrieved August 14, 2005. Another example noted by the Church Committe was "Sending an anonymous letter to the leader of a Chicago street gang (described as 'violence-prone') stating that the Black Panthers were supposed to have 'a hit out for you'. The letter was suggested because it 'may intensify . . . animosity' and cause the street gang leader to 'take retaliatory action'" http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIa.htm, retrieved August 14, 2005.