COINTELPRO

Based on Wikipedia: COINTELPRO

On the night of March 8, 1971, while most of America was glued to their televisions watching Muhammad Ali face Joe Frazier in the Fight of the Century, eight ordinary citizens broke into an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania. They weren't looking for money or weapons. They were looking for proof.

What they found would expose one of the most extensive government programs of domestic surveillance and sabotage in American history.

The Program Hidden in Plain Sight

COINTELPRO—a name that sounds like corporate jargon but stands for Counter Intelligence Program—was the FBI's secret war against Americans the government deemed dangerous. Not dangerous because they were planning bombings or assassinations, but dangerous because they were organizing. Thinking. Speaking out.

The program ran from 1956 to 1971, though its roots stretched back further and its tactics continued long after. During those fifteen years, the FBI systematically worked to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" political movements and their leaders. These weren't the words of critics. They were the FBI's own instructions, written in internal memos that were never supposed to see daylight.

The targets read like a who's who of mid-century American activism: the Communist Party USA, the Black Panther Party, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, feminist organizations, anti-Vietnam War protesters, the American Indian Movement, Puerto Rican independence groups, and student organizations like Students for a Democratic Society. Even the Ku Klux Klan made the list—though white supremacist groups received notably less attention than civil rights activists.

The Architecture of Suppression

Understanding COINTELPRO requires understanding that it wasn't just surveillance. The FBI didn't simply watch these groups and report on them. It actively worked to destroy them from within.

The methods were inventive in their cruelty. Anonymous phone calls would spread rumors designed to spark infighting. Forged documents appeared to come from movement leaders, saying inflammatory things they never said. The Internal Revenue Service would suddenly develop intense interest in an activist's tax returns. Employers would receive anonymous tips about their workers' political activities. Marriages fell apart when one spouse received fabricated evidence of the other's infidelity.

The FBI planted informants throughout these organizations—not just to gather intelligence, but to actively sow discord. These agents provocateurs would push groups toward more extreme positions, then the FBI would use that extremism to justify further crackdowns. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy weaponized as policy.

Some tactics crossed lines that most Americans would find unthinkable for a law enforcement agency. The Bureau engaged in what it internally called "neutralization." For some targets, this meant destroying their reputations. For others, it meant something far darker.

The War on Martin Luther King Jr.

If COINTELPRO had a primary target, it was Martin Luther King Jr.

After King's soaring speech at the 1963 March on Washington—the "I Have a Dream" speech that would become one of the most celebrated orations in American history—FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover made a decision. William Sullivan, the Bureau's assistant director overseeing COINTELPRO, wrote a memo that now reads as both chilling and absurd:

In the light of King's powerful demagogic speech... We must mark him now if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national security.

The most dangerous man in America wasn't a general with nuclear codes. He was a Baptist minister who preached nonviolence.

The FBI began systematically bugging King's home and hotel rooms. They recorded his phone calls. They documented his private life in excruciating detail. When King publicly criticized the Bureau for failing to protect civil rights workers from white supremacist terrorism, Hoover retaliated by calling King the most "notorious liar" in the country.

But Hoover's vendetta went further than name-calling.

In November 1964, just days after King learned he would receive the Nobel Peace Prize, the FBI mailed him a package. Inside was an audio tape—recordings from the Bureau's surveillance of King's private life. Accompanying the tape was an anonymous letter, later revealed to have been written by the FBI, containing these words:

There is only one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self is bared to the nation.

The FBI was encouraging Martin Luther King Jr. to kill himself.

When King refused to be intimidated, the Bureau's Associate Director began shopping the surveillance recordings to news organizations, hoping to destroy King's reputation. Newsweek. Newsday. Others. The media, to their credit, largely refused to publish.

King was assassinated in 1968. Even then, the FBI's campaign against him didn't stop. According to the later Church Committee investigation, the Bureau continued efforts to "expose" King, provided "ammunition to opponents that enabled attacks on King's memory," and "tried to block efforts to honor the slain leader."

Malcolm X and the Art of Division

The FBI's approach to Malcolm X was different but equally devastating.

Rather than targeting Malcolm directly with suicide letters, the Bureau worked to amplify existing tensions between Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. Through infiltration, planted rumors, and deliberately "sparking acrimonious debates within the organization," the FBI worked to widen the rift between the two men.

Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965. An FBI spokesman later denied that the Bureau was "directly" involved in the killing—a carefully worded statement that acknowledged indirect involvement without confessing to it. Historian Manning Marable, whose biography of Malcolm X won the Pulitzer Prize, concluded that most of the men who planned the assassination were never caught and that the full extent of the FBI's role may never be known.

What we do know is that the FBI had heavily infiltrated Malcolm's Organization of Afro-American Unity in the final months of his life. Some of his closest associates were reporting everything back to Washington.

Preventing the Rise of a "Messiah"

A 1968 FBI memo laid out the program's goals with startling clarity. The Bureau wanted to:

• Prevent the coalition of militant Black nationalist groups
• Prevent the rise of a "messiah" who could unify the Black nationalist movement
• Pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them before they could exercise their potential for violence against authorities
• Prevent Black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining respectability
• Prevent the long-range growth of militant Black organizations, especially among youth

The word "messiah" appears in the original document, capitalized. The FBI was explicitly working to prevent the emergence of a unifying Black leader. King, the memo noted, had the potential to become that figure if he ever abandoned his commitment to nonviolence and integration. Stokely Carmichael, who popularized the phrase "Black Power," was flagged as having "the necessary charisma to be a real threat."

This wasn't law enforcement. This was political suppression. The FBI wasn't trying to prevent crimes. It was trying to prevent a movement from succeeding.

The Black Panthers in the Crosshairs

Beginning in 1969, the Black Panther Party became a particular focus of COINTELPRO operations. The Bureau's tactics against the Panthers went beyond surveillance and reputation destruction into territory that can only be described as state violence.

Fred Hampton was twenty-one years old and the chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party. He was a gifted organizer who had brokered a nonaggression pact between Chicago's rival gangs—something law enforcement had failed to accomplish. On December 4, 1969, Chicago police officers, working with information provided by an FBI informant, raided Hampton's apartment at 4:30 in the morning.

The police fired between ninety and ninety-nine shots. The Panthers inside fired once—possibly a reflexive shot from a dying man. Hampton was shot twice in the head at close range while lying in his bed. He was likely drugged by the FBI informant, who had slipped secobarbital into his drink earlier that evening. Mark Clark, another Panther, was also killed.

An investigation by a federal grand jury later found that police officers had been lying about the circumstances of the raid. The families of Hampton and Clark eventually received a $1.85 million settlement.

Other Panthers targeted by COINTELPRO include Assata Shakur, who was shot by New Jersey State Police in 1973 under circumstances that remain disputed; Geronimo Pratt, who spent twenty-seven years in prison for a murder the FBI likely knew he didn't commit; and Mumia Abu-Jamal, whose case remains controversial decades later.

The tactics used against Panthers included perjury by FBI informants, harassment and intimidation of witnesses, and deliberate withholding of evidence that might have proven defendants innocent.

Beyond the Civil Rights Movement

COINTELPRO cast a wide net.

The Socialist Workers Party was targeted beginning in 1961. The Ku Klux Klan was added to the list in 1964—though the Bureau's approach to white supremacists was notably less aggressive than its campaigns against civil rights activists. Anti-Vietnam War organizers, environmental groups, women's liberation organizations, the American Indian Movement, Chicano activists, Puerto Rican independence movements—all became targets.

The logic, from the FBI's perspective, was that these movements threatened the existing social order. A later Senate investigation quoted the Bureau's own stated motivation: "protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order." That last phrase is telling. The FBI wasn't just trying to stop terrorism or crime. It was actively working to prevent social change.

The program also connected to broader federal efforts. In 1967, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) launched its own domestic surveillance operation called Operation CHAOS. The CIA, National Security Agency (NSA), and Department of Defense all began increased collaboration with the FBI. The military developed plans for responding to urban unrest with force.

The Burglary That Changed Everything

COINTELPRO was secret. That was essential to its operation—you can't effectively sabotage a movement if the movement knows you're sabotaging it. The American public had no idea the program existed.

That changed because of eight people who decided to break the law to expose it.

The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI was a small activist group that planned something audacious: burglarizing an FBI field office. They chose the office in Media, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, because it seemed less secure than urban offices. They chose March 8, 1971, as the date because the Ali-Frazier fight would keep most of America—including, presumably, FBI agents—distracted.

The burglars took everything they could carry. Among the documents was one that would become infamous: a routing slip with the word "COINTELPRO" on it. The activists began mailing documents to journalists.

Most news organizations refused to publish. The government pressured them not to. But the Washington Post, after verifying the documents' authenticity, ran the story on the front page—despite personal calls from Attorney General John Mitchell asking them not to.

Once the Post published, other outlets followed. The existence of COINTELPRO became public knowledge.

Within the year, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover announced that the centralized program was over. Future counterintelligence operations, he said, would be handled on a case-by-case basis. Hoover died the following year, in May 1972, having led the FBI for nearly half a century.

The Reckoning

The full scope of COINTELPRO wouldn't be understood until Congress investigated.

In 1975, Senator Frank Church of Idaho chaired what became known as the Church Committee—formally the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. The investigation examined not just the FBI but the entire American intelligence community, including the CIA's involvement in assassination plots against foreign leaders.

The Church Committee's findings on COINTELPRO were damning:

The Committee finds that the domestic activities of the intelligence community at times violated specific statutory prohibitions and infringed the constitutional rights of American citizens. The legal questions involved in intelligence programs were often not considered. On other occasions, they were intentionally disregarded in the belief that because the programs served the "national security" the law did not apply.

The Committee was even more pointed about what COINTELPRO represented:

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, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.

That last phrase deserves emphasis: "the propagation of dangerous ideas." The FBI wasn't just trying to prevent violence. It was trying to prevent ideas from spreading.

The Question of Continuation

When Hoover announced the end of COINTELPRO in 1971, did the tactics actually stop?

The Church Committee was skeptical. As the Senate investigation noted: "COINTELPRO existed for years on an ad hoc basis before the formal programs were instituted, and more significantly, COINTELPRO-type activities may continue today under the rubric of 'investigation.'"

The formal program ended. The acronym stopped appearing in memos. But the question of whether similar tactics continued under different names has never been definitively answered. Critics point to subsequent surveillance of activist groups as evidence that the spirit of COINTELPRO never really died—it just learned to hide better.

What COINTELPRO Teaches

The program constituted only about 0.2 percent of the FBI's overall workload during its fifteen-year existence. In bureaucratic terms, it was a minor operation.

But its effects were anything but minor. Leaders were destroyed. Movements were set back by years. People died. The most effective organizers of a generation found themselves fighting not just for their causes but for their freedom, their reputations, and their lives.

COINTELPRO reveals something important about the relationship between power and dissent in America. The groups targeted weren't foreign enemies or terrorist cells. They were Americans exercising their First Amendment rights to speak, to organize, to petition their government. They were civil rights activists trying to end segregation. They were antiwar protesters who believed their country was making a tragic mistake. They were labor organizers, feminists, environmentalists.

The FBI saw them all as threats to be neutralized.

Perhaps most disturbing is how long the program ran in secret. For fifteen years, the government systematically worked to undermine political movements, and the American public had no idea. It took a burglary—a crime—to expose it. The official systems of oversight, the checks and balances that are supposed to prevent abuse of power, failed completely.

The eight burglars who broke into the Media, Pennsylvania, FBI office were never caught. For over forty years, their identities remained secret. Some have since come forward. They were ordinary people—a professor, a daycare worker, a taxi driver—who decided that exposing government wrongdoing was worth the risk of prison.

They were right. But it shouldn't have taken a break-in to find out what our government was doing in our name.