COINTELPRO in the 60s
excerpted from the book
WAR AT HOME
by Brian Glick
Government harassment of U.S. political
activists clearly exists today, violating our fundamental democratic
rights and creating a climate of fear and distrust which undermines
our efforts to challenge official policy. Similar attacks on social
justice movements came to light during the 1960s. Only years later
did we learn that these had been merely the visible tip of an
iceberg. Largely hidden at the time was a vast government program
to neutralize domestic political opposition through "covert
action" (political repression carried out secretly or under
the guise of legitimate law enforcement).
The 1960s program, coordinated by the
FBI under the code name "COINTELPRO," was exposed in
the 1970s and supposedly stopped. But covert operations against
domestic dissidents did not end. They have persisted and become
an integral part of government activity. ...
COINTELPRO:
Covert Action Against the Domestic Dissidents
of the 1960s
The first concrete evidence of COINTELPRO
surfaced in March 1971, when a "Citizens Committee to Investigate
the FBI" removed secret files from an FBI office in Media,
Pennsylvania and released them to the press.' That same year,
agents began to resign from the Bureau and to blow the whistle
on its covert operations.' These revelations came at a time of
enormous social unrest and declining public confidence in government.
Publication of the Pentagon Papers in September 1971 exposed years
of systematic official lies about the Vietnam War. Soon it was
learned that a clandestine squad of White House "plumbers"
had broken into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office in an
effort to smear the former Pentagon staffer who had leaked the
top-secret papers to the press
The same "plumbers" were caught
the following year burglarizing the Watergate offices of the Democratic
National Committee. Nationally televised congressional hearings
on Watergate revealed a full-blown program of "dirty tricks"
to subvert the anti-war movement as well as the Democratic Party
by forging letters, leaking false news items to the press, stealing
files, and roughing up demonstrators. Lines of command for these
operations were traced to Attorney General Mitchell and the White
House, with the FBI implicated in a massive cover-up involving
President Nixon and his top staff. By 1971, congressional hearings
had already disclosed U.S. Army infiltration of domestic political
movements. Similar CIA and local police activity soon came to
light, along with ghastly accounts of CIA operations abroad to
destabilize democratically elected governments and assassinate
heads of state.
This crisis was eventually resolved through
what historian Howard Zinn describes as "a complex process
of consolidation," based on "the need to satisfy a disillusioned
public that the system was criticizing and correcting itself."'
In this process, the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOLA) was
amended over President Nixon's veto to provide some degree of
genuine public access to FBI documents. Lawsuits under the FOLA
forced the Bureau to release some COINTELPRO files to major news
media. By 1975, both houses of Congress had launched formal inquiries
into government "intelligence activities."
The agencies under congressional investigation
were allowed to withhold most of their files and to edit the Senate
Committee's reports before publication. The House Committee's
report, including an account of FBI and CIA obstruction of its
inquiry, was suppressed altogether after part was leaked to the
press. Still, pressure to promote the appearance of genuine reform
was so great that the FBI had to divulge an unprecedented, detailed
account of many of its domestic covert operations.
Many important files continue to be withheld,
and others have been destroyed. Former operatives report that
the most heinous and embarrassing actions were never committed
to writing. Officials with broad personal knowledge of COINTELPRO
have been silenced, most notably William C. Sullivan, who created
the program and ran it throughout the 1960s. Sullivan was killed
in an uninvestigated 1977 "hunting accident" shortly
after giving extensive information to a grand jury investigating
the FBI, but before he could testify publicly. Nevertheless, a
great deal has been learned about COINTELPRO.
How COINTELPRO Worked
When congressional investigations, political
trials, and other traditional legal modes of repression failed
to counter the growing movements, and even helped to fuel them,
the FBI and police moved outside the law. They resorted to the
secret and systematic use of fraud and force to sabotage constitutionally
protected political activity. Their methods ranged far beyond
surveillance, amounting to a home front version of the covert
action for which the CIA has become infamous throughout the world.
FBI Headquarters secretly instructed its
field offices to propose schemes to "expose, disrupt, misdirect,
discredit, or otherwise neutralize" specific individuals
and groups. Close coordination with local police and prosecutors
was strongly encouraged. Other recommended collaborators included
friendly news media, business and foundation executives, and university,
church, and trade union officials, as well as such "patriotic"
organizations as the American Legion.
Final authority rested with FBI Headquarters
in Washington, D.C. Top FBI officials pressed local field offices
to step up their activity and demanded regular progress reports.
Agents were directed to maintain full secrecy "such that
under no circumstances should the existence of the program be
made known outside the Bureau and appropriate within-office security
should be afforded to sensitive operations and techniques."
A total of 2,370 officially approved COINTELPRO actions were admitted
to the Senate Intelligence Committee, and thousands more have
since been uncovered. Four main methods have been revealed:
1. 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.
2. Psychological Warfare From the Outside:
The FBI and police used myriad other "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.
3. Harassment through the Legal System
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" inter views, and grand
jury subpoenas in an effort to intimidate activists and silence
their supporters.
4. Extralegal Force and Violence: The
FBI and police threatened, instigated, and themselves conducted
break-ins, vandalism, assaults, and beatings. The object was to
frighten dissidents and disrupt their movements. In the case of
radical Black and Puerto Rican activists (and later Native Americans),
these attacks-including political assassinations-were so extensive,
vicious, and calculated that they can accurately be termed a form
of official "terrorism."
COINTELPRO's Main Targets
Though the name COINTELPRO stands for
"Counterintelligence Program," the government's targets
were not enemy spies. The Senate Intelligence Committee later
found that "Under COINTELPRO certain techniques the Bureau
had used against hostile foreign agents were adopted for use against
perceived domestic threats to the established political and social
order."
The most intense COINTELPRO operations
were directed against the Black movement, particularly the Black
Panther Party. This was to some extent a function of the racism
of the FBI and police, as well as the vulnerability of the Black
community (due to its lack of ties to political and economic elites
and the tendency of the media-and whites in general-to ignore
or tolerate attacks on Black groups). At a deeper level, the choice
of targets reflects government and corporate fear of a militant,
broad-based Black movement. Such a movement is dangerous because
of its historic capacity to galvanize widespread rebellion at
home and its repercussions for the U.S. image abroad. Moreover,
Black people's location in major urban centers and primary industries
gives them the potential to disrupt the base of the U.S. economy.
COINTELPRO's targets were not, however,
limited to Black militants. Many other activists who wanted to
end U.S. intervention abroad or institute racial, gender, and
class justice at home also came under attack. Cesar Chavez, Fathers
Daniel and Phillip Berrigan, Rev. Jesse Jackson, David Dellinger,
officials of the American Friends Service Committee and the National
Council of Churches, and other leading pacifists were high on
the list, as were projects directly protected by the First Amendment,
such as anti-war teach-ins, progressive bookstores, independent
filmmakers, and alternative newspapers and news services. Martin
Luther King, Jr., world-renowned prophet of non violence, was
the object of sustained FBI assault. King was marked, barely a
month before his murder, for elimination as a potential "messiah"
who could "unify and electrify" the Black movement.
Ultimately, FBI documents disclosed six
major official counterintelligence programs (as well as non-COINTELPRO
covert operations against Native American, Asian-American, Arab-American,
Iranian, and other activists):
1) "Communist Party-USA" (1956-71):
This was the first and largest program, which contributed to the
Party's decline in the late 1950s and was used in the early and
mid-1960s mainly against civil rights, civil liberties, and peace
activists. Its targets during the latter period included Martin
Luther King, Jr., the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, the
NAACP, the National Lawyers Guild, the National Committee to Abolish
the House Un-American Activities Committee, Women's Strike for
Peace, the American Friends Service Committee, and the National
Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy.
2) "Groups Seeking Independence for
Puerto Rico" (1960-71): Initially hidden from congressional
investigators, and still one of the least well known, this program
functioned to disrupt, discredit, and factionalize the island's
main centers of anti-colonial resistance, especially the Puerto
Rican Socialist Party (PSP) and Socialist League (LSP). It also
appears to have targeted groups fighting for human rights for
Puerto Ricans living in the United States, such as the Young Lords
Party.
3) "Border Coverage Program"
(1960-71): This program of covert operations against radical Mexican
organizations was similarly concealed from Congress. The few documents
released to date do not indicate how much the FBI used it against
1960s Chicano activists such as the Brown Berets, the Crusade
for Justice (Colorado), La Alianza (New Mexico), and the Chicano
Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam (Los Angeles), which are
known to have been infiltrated and repressed by other government
agencies.
4) "Socialist Workers Party"
(1961-69): In addition to ongoing attacks on the SWP and its youth
group, the Young Socialist Alliance, this program operated against
whomever those groups supported or worked with, especially Malcolm
X and the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam.
5) "Black Nationalist Hate Groups"
(1967-71): This was the vehicle for the Bureau's all-out assault
on Martin Luther King, Jr. (in the late 1960s), the Student Non-Violent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality
(CORE), the Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam ("Black
Muslims"), the National Welfare Rights Organization, the
League of Black Revolutionary Workers, the Dodge Revolutionary
Union Movement (DRUM), the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM),
the Republic of New Afrika (RNA), the Congress of African People,
Black student unions, and many local Black churches and community
organizations struggling for decent living conditions, justice,
equality, and empowerment.
6) "New Left" (1968-71): A program
to destroy Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Peace
and Freedom Party, the Institute for Policy Studies, and a broad
range of anti-war, anti-racist, student, GI, veteran, feminist,
lesbian, gay, environmental, Marxist, and anarchist groups, as
well as the network of food co-ops, health clinics, child care
centers, schools, bookstores, newspapers, community centers, street
theaters, rock groups, and communes that formed the infrastructure
of the counter-culture.
7) "White Hate Groups" (1964-71):
This unique "program" functioned largely as a component
of the FBI's operations against the progressive activists who
were COINTELPRO's main targets. Under the cover of being even-handed
and going after violent right-wing groups, the FBI actually gave
covert aid to the Ku Klux Klan, Minutemen, Nazis, and other racist
vigilantes. These groups received substantial funds, information,
and protection-and suffered only token FBI harassment-so long
as they directed their violence against COINTELPRO targets. They
were not subjected to serious disruption unless they breached
this tacit under standing and attacked established business and
political leaders.
How COINTELPRO Helped Destroy the Movements
of the 1960s
Since COINTELPRO was used mainly against
the progressive movements of the 1960s, its impact can be grasped
only in the context of the momentous social upheaval which shook
the country during those years.
All across the United States, Black communities
came alive with renewed political struggle. Most major cities
experienced sustained, disciplined Black protest and massive ghetto
uprisings. Black activists galvanized multi-racial rebellion among
GIs, welfare mothers, students, and prisoners. College campuses
and high schools erupted in militant protest against the Vietnam
War. A predominantly white New Left, inspired by the Black movement,
fought for an end to U.S. intervention abroad and a more humane
and cooperative way of life at home. By the late 1960s, deep-rooted
resistance had revived among Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Asian Americans,
and Native Americans. A second wave of broad-based struggle for
women's liberation had also emerged, along with significant efforts
by lesbians, gay men, and disabled people.
Millions of people in the United States
began to reject the dominant ideology and culture. Thousands challenged
basic U.S. political and economic institutions. For a brief moment,
"the crucial mixture of people's confidence in the government
and lack of confidence in themselves which allows the government
to govern, the ruling class to rule. . .threatened to break down."
By the mid-1970s, this upheaval had largely
subsided. Important progressive activity persisted, mainly on
a local level, and much continued to be learned and won, but the
massive, militant Black and New Left movements were gone. The
sense of infinite possibility and of our collective power to shape
the future had been lost. Progressive momentum dissipated. Radicals
found themselves on the defensive as right-wing extremists gained
major government positions and defined the contours of accepted
political debate.
Many factors besides COINTELPRO contributed
to this change. Important progress was made toward achieving movement
goals such as Black civil rights, an end to the Vietnam War, and
university reform. The mass media, owned by big business and cowed
by government and right-wing attack, helped to bury radical activism
by ceasing to cover it. Television, popular magazines, and daily
papers stereotyped Blacks as hardened criminals and welfare chiselers
or as the supposedly affluent beneficiaries of reverse "discrimination."
White youth were portrayed first as hedonistic hippies and mindless
terrorists, later as an apolitical, self-indulgent "me generation."
Both were scapegoated as threats to "decent, hard-working
Middle America."
During the severe economic recession of
the early- to mid- 1970s, former student activists began entering
the job market, some taking on responsibility for children. Many
were scared by brutal government and right-wing attacks culminating
in the murder of rank-and-file activists as well as prominent
leaders. Some were strung out on the hard drugs that had become
increasingly available in Black and Latin communities and among
white youth. Others were disillusioned by mistreatment in movements
ravaged by the very social sicknesses they sought to eradicate,
including racism, sexism, homophobia, class bias and competition.
Limited by their upbringing, social position,
and isolation from older radical traditions, 1960s activists were
unable to make the connections and changes required to build movements
strong enough to survive and eventually win structural change
in the United States. Middle-class students did not sufficiently
ally with working and poor people. Too few white activists accepted
third world leadership of multi-racial alliances. Too many men
refused to practice genuine gender equality. Originally motivated
by goals of quick reforms, 1960s activists were ill-prepared for
the long-term struggles in which they found themselves. Overly
dependent on media-oriented superstars and one-shot dramatic actions,
they failed to develop stable organizations, accountable leader
ship, and strategic perspective. Creatures of the culture they
so despised, they often lacked the patience to sustain tedious
grassroots work and painstaking analysis of actual social conditions.
They found it hard to accept the slow, uneven pace of personal
and political change.
This combination of circumstances, however,
did not by itself guarantee political collapse. The achievements
of the 1960s movements could have inspired optimism and provided
a sense of the power to win other important struggles. The rightward
shift of the major media could have enabled alternative newspapers,
magazines, theater, film, and video to attract a broader audience
and stable funding. The economic downtum of the early 1970s could
have united Black militants, New Leftists, and workers in common
struggle. Police brutality and government collusion in drug trafficking
could have been exposed in ways that undermined support for the
authorities and broadened the movements' backing.
By the close of the decade, many of the
movements' internal weaknesses were starting to be addressed.
Black-led multi-racial alliances, such as Martin Luther King,
Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign and the Black Panthers' Rainbow Coalition,
were forming. The movements' class base was broadening through
Black "revolutionary unions" in auto and other industries,
King's increasing focus on economic issues, the New Left's spread
to community colleges, and the return of working-class GIs radicalized
by their experience in Vietnam. At the same time, the women's
movement was confronting the deep sexism which permeated 1960s
activism, along with its corollaries: homophobia, sexual violence,
militarism, competitiveness, and top-down decision-making.
While the problems of the 1960s movements
were enormous, their strengths might have enabled them to overcome
their weaknesses had the upsurge not been stifled before activists
could learn from their mistakes. Much of the movements' inability
to transcend their initial limitations and overcome adversity
can be traced to COINTELPRO.
It was through COINTELPRO that the public
image of Blacks and New Leftists was distorted to legitimize their
arrest and imprisonment and scapegoat them as the cause of working
people's problems. The FBI and police instigated violence and
fabricated movement horrors. Dissidents were deliberately "criminalized"
through false charges, frame-ups, and offensive, bogus leaflets
and other materials published in their name.
COINTELPRO enabled the FBI and police
to exacerbate the movements' internal stresses until beleaguered
activists turned on one another. Whites were pitted against Blacks,
Blacks against Chicanos and Puerto Ricans, students against workers,
workers against people on welfare, men against women, religious
activists against atheists, Christians against Jews, Jews against
Muslims. "Anonymous" accusations of infidelity ripped
couples apart. Backers of women's and gay liberation were attacked
as "dykes" or "faggots." Money was repeatedly
stolen and precious equipment sabotaged to intensify pressure
and sow suspicion and mistrust.
Otherwise manageable disagreements were
inflamed by COINTELPRO until they erupted into hostile splits
that shattered alliances, tore groups apart, and drove dedicated
activists out of the movement. Government documents implicate
the FBI and police in the bitter breakup of such pivotal groups
as the Black Panther Party, SDS, and the Liberation News Service,
and in the collapse of repeated efforts to form long-term coalitions
across racial, class, and regional lines. While genuine political
issues were often involved in these disputes, the outcome could
have been different if government agencies had not covertly intervened
to subvert compromise and fuel hostility and competition.
Finally, it was COINTELPRO that enabled
the FBI and police to eliminate the leaders of mass movements
without undermining the image of the United States as a democracy,
complete with free speech and the rule of law. Charismatic orators
and dynamic organizers were covertly attacked and "neutralized"
before their skills could be transferred to others and stable
structures established to carry on their work. Malcolm X was killed
in a "factional dispute" which the FBI took credit for
having "developed" in the Nation of Islam. Martin Luther
King, Jr. was the target of an elaborate FBI plot to drive him
to suicide and replace him "in his role of the leadership
of the Negro people" with conservative Black lawyer Samuel
Pierce (later named to Reagan's cabinet). Many have come to view
King's eventual assassination (and Malcolm's as well) as itself
a domestic covert operation.
Other prominent radicals faced similar
attack when they began to develop broad followings and express
anti-capitalist ideas. Some were portrayed as crooks, thugs, philanderers,
or government agents, while others were physically threatened
or assaulted until they abandoned their work. Still others were
murdered under phony pretexts, such as "shootouts" in
which the only shots were fired by the police.
To help bring down a major target, the
FBI often combined these approaches in strategic sequence. Take
the case of the "underground press, " a network of some
400 radical weeklies and several national news services, which
once boasted a combined readership of close to 30 million. In
the late 1960s, government agents raided the offices of alternative
newspapers across the country in purported pursuit of drugs and
fugitives. In the process, they destroyed typewriters, cameras,
printing presses, layout equipment, business records, and research
files, and roughed up and jailed staffers on bogus charges. Meanwhile,
the FBI was persuading record companies to withdraw lucrative
advertising and arranging for printers, suppliers, and distributors
to drop underground press accounts. With their already shaky operations
in disarray, the papers and news services were easy targets for
a final phase of COINTELPRO disruption. Forged correspondence,
anonymous accusations, and infiltrators' manipulation provoked
a flurry of wild charges and counter-charges that played a major
role in bringing many of these promising endeavors to a premature
end.
A similar pattern can be discerned from
the history of the Black Panther Party. Brutal government attacks
initially elicited broad support for this new, militant, highly
visible national organization and its popular ten-point socialist
program for Black self-determination. But the FBI's repressive
onslaught severely weakened the Party, making it vulnerable to
sophisticated FBI psychological warfare which so discredited and
shattered it that few people today have any notion of the power
and potential that the Panthers once represented.
What proved most devastating in all of
this was the effective manipulation of the victims of COINTELPRO
into blaming themselves. Since the FBI and police operated covertly,
the horrors they engineered appeared to emanate from within the
movements. Activists' trust in one another and in their collective
power was subverted, and the hopes of a generation died, leaving
a legacy of cynicism and despair which continues to haunt us today.
excerpted from the book
War at Home
by Brian Glick
published by
South End Press
116 Saint Botolph Street, Boston, MA 02115
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