COINTELPRO

In 1956 the Federal Bureau of Investigations began one of its most notorious and covert operations in the history of its existence: the Counter Intelligence Program. Known as COINTELPRO, the program was originally developed to disrupt and interfere with the Communist Party. But as time went on, COINTELPRO began to interrupt, infiltrate, and destroy other movements that challenged the status quo; these include but are not limited to: black nationalists, women's rights advocates, socialists, civil rights activists, and the anti-war crowd. Wishing to maintain the "existing social and political order," F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover ordered his agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" these movements and their leaders.

According to attorney Brian Glick, the federal government used four main methods during COINTELPRO:
1) Infiltration: Federal 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 F.B.I. and police then exploited this fear to make genuine activists appear as agents.
2) Psychological Warfare From the Outside: The F.B.I. and police used a myriad of other "dirty tricks" to undermine progressive movements. The F.B.I. planted false media stories and published bogus leaflets and other publications under the authorship of targeted groups. Federal agents forged correspondence, sent anonymous letters, and made anonymous telephone calls. Additionally, 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 F.B.I. and police used the legal system to harass dissidents and make them out 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" interviews, and grand jury subpoenas in an effort to intimidate activists and silence their supporters.
4) Extralegal Force and Violence: The F.B.I. conspired with local police departments to threaten dissidents; to conduct illegal break-ins in order to search dissident homes; and to commit vandalism, assaults, beatings and assassinations. The object was to frighten, or eliminate, dissidents and disrupt their movements.

COINTELPRO, in its 15 year history, successfully infiltrated and harassed thousands of organizations and individuals, including the NAACP, the Black Panthers, the National Lawyers Guild, the American Indian Movement, Students for a Democratic Society, and Martin Luther King, Jr. In one particularly twisted and forgotten incident, the F.B.I. "targeted" American film actress Jean Seberg.

Mrs. Seberg was pregnant and living in Paris at the time with French husband Romain Gary. Seberg was also a well-known advocate for civil rights and was vocal in her support for groups like the NAACP and the Black Panthers. Having already caught the U.S. government's attention, the F.B.I. peeped into Seberg's banking records and found that she had donated over $10,000 to the Black Panther Party.

Taking advantage of her pregnancy, the feds circulated a false story claiming that a member of the Black Panther Party was actually the father; the government's version of the story was eventually widely circulated in Newsweek. By claiming that Seberg became pregnant by sleeping around with Black Panthers, the F.B.I. engaged in what is known as gray propaganda: half-true information intended to discredit groups and individuals in the eyes of the public.

The false story drove Seberg into an intense depression; her child was born prematurely in August of 1970 and died two days later. Severely depressed over the loss of her child and paranoid that the U.S. government was following her every move, Seberg committed suicide on September 8, 1979.

In 1971 COINTELPRO went public. Radical left-wing activists calling themselves the Citizen's Commission to Investigate the F.B.I. broke into a federal field office in Pennsylvania and stole numerous documents and dossiers; among the information were important files regarding COINTELPRO. After the files went public, J. Edgar Hoover "officially" shut down his COINTELPRO operation and declared that all future counter-intelligence operations would be done on a case-by-case basis.

In 1975 the Church Committee, led by Idaho Congressman Frank Church, investigated the government's counter-intelligence programs. In its Final Report, the Church Committee found that:

"Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that...the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association."