COINTELPRO was the
FBI's
secret program to
undermine the
popular upsurge of
political opposition groups which swept the
country during the
1960s and
1970s.
Though the name stands for "
Counterintelligence Program," the
targets were not
enemy spies. The FBI set out to
eliminate "
radical" political
opposition inside the
United States. The
Bureau used every
dirty trick in the book, including blatant
harassment,
prosecution for
political crimes,
fraud, and
sabotage to
crush constitutionally-protected
political activity, behaving in much the way that we have come to expect from the
CIA.
The FBI's chief COINTELPRO
tools included infiltrating
organizations to
discredit and
disrupt operations, often encouraging members to commit
crimes for which they could be
arrested;
poison pen letters,
fake publications, and
harrassing
phone calls;
false arrests,
frame jobs, and
physical violence, including
assassination;
evictions,
job loss,
vandalism,
grand jury subpoenas, and much more.
Most operations were directed against
the Black Panthers and other black
civil rights leaders, including
Martin Luther King, Jr.. The FBI also targeted
alternative newspapers, the
Communist Party of the USA, groups seeking
independence for
Puerto Rico, and the "
New Left", including
anti-war,
feminist, and
student groups, as well as
Native Americans,
Hispanics, and
Arab-Americans. In fact, the FBI also funnelled
covert aid to groups like the
Ku Klux Klan, with the
stipulation that they limit their activities to COINTELPRO
targets.
The
existence of COINTELPRO was
revealed in the early 1970s, when it was (supposedly) shut down, although the
government rarely completely shuts down a
successful program.