February 21, 2026 • 41 mins
Part two of this 2020 episode looks at some of the specifics of the COINTELPROs that targeted black liberation organizations and the New Left, as well as how these programs were finally exposed to the public.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. This is the second part of our two
part episode on co Intel pro. Part one, which ran
last Saturday, includes lots of background on the FBI and
its counterintelligence programs. Today's installment is focused on co intel
pros that targeted civil rights groups and the vaguely defined
New Left, as well as the raid on the FBI
(00:24):
office in Media, Pennsylvania that brought these programs to light.
At the end of this episode, we mentioned that some
of the people who were part of that raid were
also suspected as being part of the Camden twenty eight,
who broke into the Camden, New Jersey, Draft Board office
and destroyed draft records there in nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
We talked about.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
The Camden twenty eight and other Vietnam War era draft
board raids in a two parter that ran on April
seventh and ninth, twenty twenty five. This episode originally came
out July twenty second, twenty twenty Welcome to Stuff You
Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and
(01:13):
welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm
Holly Frye. Today we are wrapping up our two parter
on co Intel Pro, including its targeting of so called
black nationalist slash hate groups and a targeting of a
very vaguely defined movement known as the New Left. To
briefly recap from part one, which is highly recommended before
(01:37):
listening to this because it includes a lot of context
and overview, but just as a quick recap, we're going
to quote from the Church Report, which followed more than
a year of Senate Committee hearings into all this quote.
The origins of co Intel pro demonstrate that the Bureau
adopted extra legal methods to counter perceived threats to national
(01:57):
security and public order because the ordinary legal processes were
believed to be insufficient to do the job. In essence,
the Bureau took the law into its own hands, conducting
a sophisticated vigilante operation against domestic enemies. Whether those targets
were really enemies, though, that is a different question. The
(02:18):
report went on to say, quote, the choice of individuals
and organizations to be neutralized and disrupted ranged from the
violent elements of the Black Panther Party to Martin Luther
King Junior, who the Bureau concedes was an advocate of nonviolence.
From the Communist Party to the ku Klux Klan, from
the advocates of violent revolutions such as the Weathermen, to
(02:39):
the supporters of peaceful social change, including the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference and the Inter University Committee for Debate on
Foreign Policy. Just a heads up in this episode, there
are going to be some discussions of suicide and also
police violence. In nineteen sixty seven, the FBI started co
Intel pro Black Nationalist hate Groups. For the most part,
(03:01):
targeting of civil rights groups that had been carried out
under Cointel pro CPUSA, which we talked about last time,
rolled up under this newly established program. In the words
of the program supervisor, the targeted groups were selected because
they were believed to be violent or because of their
quote radical or revolutionary rhetoric and actions. On March fourth,
(03:24):
nineteen sixty eight, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent a
memo to be routed through forty one FBI field offices.
This memo was called Counterintelligence Program Black Nationalist Hate Group's
Racial Intelligence. And this is a little bit long, but
it's so illustrative of what the FBI was doing here
and more generally, what Hoover's mindset was across the other
(03:47):
co intel pros. We're going to read a chunk of it.
So it began quote goals for maximum effectiveness of the
counterintelligence program and to prevent wasted effort. Long range goals
are being set. Number one, prevent the coalition of militant
black nationalist groups. In unity, there is strength, a truism
(04:08):
that is no less valid for all its triteness. An
effective coalition of black nationalist groups might be the first
step toward a real mau Mau in America, the beginning
of a true Black revolution. So, for context, mau Mau
is a reference to the Mau Mau movement and uprising
in Kenya, which advocated a violent overthrow of British colonial rule.
(04:29):
This went on too prevent the rise of a messiah
who could unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement.
Malcolm X might have been such a messiah. He is
the martyr of the movement today. Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael,
and Elijah Mohammed all aspire to this position. Elijah Mohammed
is less of a threat because of his age. King
(04:52):
could be a very real contender for this position, should
he abandon his supposed quote obedience to quote white liberal
doctrines in parentheses nonviolence, and embrace black nationalism. Carmichael has
the necessary charisma to be a real threat in this way.
Number three prevent violence on the part of black nationalist groups.
(05:14):
This is of primary importance and is of course a
goal of our investigative activity. It should also be a
goal of the counterintelligence program to pinpoint potential troublemakers and
neutralize them before they exercise their potential for violence. Number
four prevent militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining
(05:34):
respectability by discrediting them to three separate segments of the community.
The goal of discrediting black nationalists must be handled tactically
in three ways. You must discredit those groups and individuals
to first, the responsible Negro community. Second, they must be
discredited to the white community, both the responsible community and
(05:56):
to liberals who have vestiges of sympathy for militant Black
national list simply because they are negroes. Third, these groups
must be discredited in the eyes of Negro radicals, the
followers of the movement. This last area requires entirely different
tactics from the first two. Publicity about violent tendencies and
(06:17):
radical statements merely enhances black nationalists to the last group.
It adds respectability in a different way. Number five. A
final goal should be to prevent the long range growth
of militant black organizations, especially among youth. Specific tactics to
prevent these groups from converting young people must be developed.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
This memo went on.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
To outline the primary targets of this co intel, pro
that everything we just read was going to apply to.
These were the organizations that Hoover described as the quote
most violent and radical. It included the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Revolutionary Action Movement, and the
(07:01):
Nation of Islam.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
This is an.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Incredibly weird list.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Snick has nonviolent write it in the name, like the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Martin Luther King Junior helped found
this represents the whole spectrum of from nonviolent direct action
to revolutionary black nationalism, and the FBI even noted that
in its view, some individual members of the Nation of
(07:28):
Islam had been involved in violence, but the organization itself
was not violent. It was being targeted because of its separatism.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Basically, the FBI grouped a lot of different organizations with
a wide range of objectives and ideologies and tactics under
this co intel Pro that was supposedly about black nationalism
and hate groups. Some, as Tracey just mentioned, were strictly pacifist,
Some advocated gun ownership or violent self defense, Some spoke
(07:58):
in very theoretical terms about the need for a revolution,
and some of them called for an actual armed uprising
or other violence. All very different ideologies, but still under
this one umbrella. The FBI classed them all together as
violent and radical, viewing virtually any organization calling for equal
rights for black people as potentially violent and as a consequence,
(08:20):
as needing to be disrupted. Yeah, Like, the thing that
these all had in common was like black people equality,
equality please, or like demanding equality with very aggressive rhetoric
and sometimes violence. Like that's what it all had in common.
The FBI put intense effort into discrediting and disrupting all
these organizations and other organizations that were not specifically named,
(08:43):
using all the methods that we talked about in Part one.
But about a year after this co intel pro was established,
another different organization rose to national prominence, and that was
the Black Panther Party, and this co intel Pro then
pivoted to shift almost exclusively on that. The Black Panther
part originally called the Black Panther Party for Self Defense,
(09:03):
was founded in Oakland, California in nineteen sixty six by
Huey Newton and Bobby Seal. A lot of the Black
Panthers rhetoric was radical and revolutionary, arguing that the only
way black people could be truly free is if they
were able to govern their own affairs. When they were
establishing the party, Newton and Seal crafted a ten point
(09:24):
program which began, we want freedom, We want power to
determine the destiny of our black community. This ten point
program went on to call for full employment, an end
to quote the robbery by the capitalists of our black community,
decent housing, education, exemption from military service for black men,
(09:44):
an end to police brutality, freedom for black men who
were held in prisons in jails, and it ended, quote
we want land, bred, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace.
The ten point Plan elaborated on each of these points.
The exemption from military service stemmed from the United States
involvement in Vietnam and the idea that black people should
(10:06):
not be forced to serve in the military of a
nation that did not protect them. The idea behind the
release of incarcerated black men was that they had not
been given a fair and impartial trial, so their convictions
were not valid. As part of their work, the Black
Panthers started more than thirty community service programs known as
survival programs. These included things like free breakfast programs for
(10:30):
school children, a tuberculosis screening and treatment program, medical clinics,
ambulance services, legal aid, and education programs. The Black Panthers
also created a screening program for sickle cell disease that
later served as a template for the federal government's own
screening programs. Over time, a lot of these services were
expanded to include anyone who was oppressed, including poor white people.
(10:54):
The Black Panthers also showed up to support other marginalized
groups in their own activism. They are mentioned two different
times in our Six Impossible episodes from sip Ins to
fish Ins, which focused on direct action demonstrations and similar protests.
In that episode, we talked about the Black Panther support
of the fish In movement in the Pacific Northwest, and
(11:16):
they're providing meals to disabled activists who took over the
Department of Health Education and Welfare Office in San Francisco
during the Section five oh four protests. But today, the
first thing a lot of people, especially a lot of
white people, think of when someone says the Black Panthers
is guns and violence. The Black Panthers organized armed patrols
(11:37):
of black neighborhoods to protect residents from police brutality and
from gang violence. At one point, they staged an armed
takeover of the California State Legislature that was in response
to gun control legislation. As other examples outside of the
party's organized activities, Huey Newton was involved in a shootout
with police in nineteen sixty seven in which an officer
(11:57):
was killed. Bobby Seal was charmed urge but not convicted,
with conspiracy to incite riots at the nineteen sixty eight
Democratic National Convention, and of the murder of a nineteen
year old Black Panther who was suspected of being a
police informant. In a memo back to headquarters, a California
field office described the Black Panthers as quote the most
violence prone organization of all the extremist groups now operating
(12:21):
in the United States, and that alleged that they were
performing quote not only verbal attacks, but also physical attacks
on police. Later, J Edgar Hoover called the Black Panthers
quote one of the greatest threats to the nation's internal security.
On November twenty fifth, nineteen sixty eight, several FBI field
offices received a memo ordering them to submit quote imaginative
(12:44):
and hard hitting counter intelligence measures aimed at crippling the BPPS,
of course, the Black Panther Party. This directive was expanded
to additional field offices in January of nineteen sixty nine.
Collen's hel pro black nationalist hat Green soon focused almost
entirely on the Black Panthers, rather than on that collection
of groups that we outlined earlier in that nineteen sixty
(13:07):
eight memo. Of this co intel pros two hundred and
ninety five documented actions, two hundred and thirty three of
them were against the Black Panthers. Using all those various
techniques that we described in Part one as examples, the
FBI intentionally undermined the Black Panthers public service programs, for example,
by sending fake, inflammatory membership materials to food pantries and
(13:31):
other organizations that were donating food for the breakfast programs.
The Bureau used disinformation to try to spark violent conflicts
between the Panthers and area street gangs, and to spark
violent conflicts between the Panthers and police to reinforce the
idea that the Black Panthers were just inherently violent. In
nineteen sixty nine, the FBI became aware of a Black
(13:54):
Panther coloring book. The origins of this book are a
little bit murky, but Akinsanya Cambone, who was then known
as Mark Temer, has taken credit for its creation. In
a twenty sixteen interview, he describes it as a history book.
It depicts slave owners, greedy store owners, and police all
(14:15):
as obese pigs with exaggerated lower tusks. While Cambone has
stressed that these pigs can be any color, which is
why it is a coloring book, they are generally interpreted
as representations of white people, and this book is full
of images of black people, adults and children, men and
women stabbing and shooting the pigs. Black Panther leadership felt
(14:38):
that the coloring book was inappropriate and ordered Cambone to
destroy it, but someone made copies, and after the FBI
obtained one, it made more copies and distributed them, as
though the Black Panther Party had officially created this book
with the intent of distributing it to children. The FBI's
harassment of the Black Panthers also went beyond the organized
(15:00):
membership and its programs. Dean Seberg was an actress who
donated to the Black Panthers in support of their breakfast programs.
During her pregnancy, the FBI sent false tips to news
organizations alleging that the father of her baby was a
Black Panther. This, of course, was a huge scandal. Seberg
tried to take her own life. As a result, she
(15:22):
went into labor prematurely and her baby died. According to
family members, she tried to take her own life every
year around the time of the baby's death, and then
she died in nineteen seventy nine. Her death was ruled
a suicide, although some of her families had suspicions that
there was foul play involved. And perhaps most notoriously, on
December fourth, nineteen sixty nine, the FBI orchestrated a raid
(15:45):
that was carried out by Chicago police, who fired between
eighty two and ninety nine gun shots into an apartment
where several members of the Black Panther Party were sleeping.
Among other involvement, an FBI informant had provided police with
a floor plan of the apartment. Chicago Black Panther leaders
Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were killed and four other
(16:06):
people in the apartment were seriously injured. Police claimed that
this was a violent gunfight, with the Black Panthers being
the first to open fire, but an investigation revealed that
only one shot had been fired from inside the apartment,
most likely by Mark Clark after he had already been
fatally shot by police. According to Hampton's fiance, Deborah Johnson,
(16:29):
who was in bed asleep with him when the shooting started,
an officer who came into the apartment after the shooting
stopped asked if Hampton was still alive. Another officer fired
two shots and said he's good and dead now. The
Black Panther Party dissolved in nineteen eighty two, with co
intel pro being one of the many factors that contributed
to its end. Former members say it is unrelated to
(16:52):
the New Black Panther Party, which was founded in nineteen
eighty nine and is classified as a hate group by
the United States Commission on Civil Rights and the Southern
Poverty Law Center. Let's take a break. The last formal
(17:15):
cointel pro that was described in the Senate investigation reports
we're going to talk about in a little bit was
co intel Pro New Left, and that started in nineteen
sixty eight. And of all the formally named co intel pros,
this was the most loosely focused. And I mean, as
we've discussed, most of them were loosely focused. As we
mentioned in part one, the FBI didn't really even have
(17:37):
a definition for what new Left meant. The New Left supervisor,
who was quoted in the Church Committee report, said quote,
I cannot recall any document that was written defining New
Left as such. It is my impression that the characterization
of New Left groups, rather than being defined at any
specific time by document, it more or less grew. It
(18:00):
has never been strictly defined, as far as I know.
It is more or less an attitude. I would think
that makes it sound almost like an advertiser sound bite
New Left. It's an attitude. The incident that prompted the
FBI to create this co intel pro was a student
uprising at Columbia University in nineteen sixty eight. There was
(18:20):
a lot involved in this protest, but its most direct
precursor was the university's decision to build a new gym
in Morningside Park. Even though the gym was being planned
for public land, its facilities would mostly be for use
only by the university and not by the public. To
add to that frustration, this was part of an ongoing
pattern of the university's expansion into Harlem, which was pushing
(18:44):
the neighborhood's predominantly black residents out of their homes in
order to build facilities that they were not going to
be allowed to access. So the resulting protest was complicated,
like we cannot get all into all of the nuances here,
but generally the university. These student Afro American Society or
SAS started voicing their own and the community's objections to
(19:07):
this gym, and then the school's chapter of the Students
for a Democratic Society or SDS, which was predominantly white,
saw this as an opportunity for a larger protest that
would also focus on the university's involvement with the Vietnam War.
Members of the SAS felt like they were being talked
over and that the SDS was taking the protests in
(19:27):
an entirely different direction. And the end, the Student Afro
American Society took over Hamilton Hall, and the Students for
a Democratic Society took over other buildings on campus and
took the Dean hostage. There were more than a thousand
demonstrators who took part in the campus shutdown that lasted
for a week. At the university's request, the New York
(19:50):
Police Department began clearing the demonstrators. On April thirtieth, nineteen
sixty eight. Black demonstrators who had taken over Hamilton Hall
left peacefully. More more than one thousand police moved into
the other buildings. Some of the other demonstrators verbally and
physically resisted, including by throwing things like shoes, bathroom tiles,
(20:10):
and books at officers. Police forcibly removed people, beating some
of the resisting students and in some cases bystanders with nightsticks.
Others were trampled. In the end, one hundred thirty two students,
four faculty members, and twelve police officers were injured. So
Coinzel pro New Left was motivated by the FBI's frustrations
(20:33):
that the university had not brought in police earlier, and
also by a sense that these types of protests should
not be permitted to happen in the first place. The
directives for coinsal pro New Left were distributed by a
memo in May of nineteen sixty eight, and as described
in the Church Report, agents were to gather information on
this is all quote. One false allegations of police brutality
(20:57):
to quote counter the widespread charges of police brutality that
invariably arise following student police encounters. To immorality depicting the
quote scurrilous and depraved nature of many of the characters, activities, habits,
and living conditions representative of New Left adherents. And three
action by college administrators to quote to show the value
(21:20):
of college administrators and school officials taking a firm stand
and pointing out quote whether and to what extent faculty
members rendered aid and encouragement. Point two sounds like a
lot of the other counterintelligence efforts we've talked about in
cointel pros, but otherwise, in the FBI's view, the use
(21:41):
of force against demonstrators was warranted, and if demonstrators were
injured in the process, they deserved it. In nineteen sixty eight,
both the FBI and the NYPD viewed the amount of
force used at Columbia as appropriate and restrained. No tear
gas was used, no one was shot, and the injury
sustained students and faculty were minor enough that those who
(22:03):
had to go to the hospital were treated and released.
It's just such a weird bar to such a weird
bar of whether the use was appropriate. The use of
forces appropriate was like, well, okay, nobody like died. Was
kind of the right tone of it. However, the FBI
also had a similar interpretation in cases of police brutality
(22:24):
that were far more clearly egregious. For example, after riots
broke out during the nineteen sixty eight Democratic National Convention
in Chicago, a memo from FBI headquarters to the Chicago
Field Office read quote, once again, the liberal press and
the bleeding hearts and the forces on the left are
taking advantage of the situation in Chicago surrounding the Democratic
(22:45):
National Convention to attack the police and organize law enforcement agencies.
We should be mindful of this situation and develop all
possible evidence to expose this activity and to refute these
false allegations. Conversely, the walker of which was prepared for
the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of violence
concluded that there really was police wrongdoing a portion of
(23:08):
it read quote. Demonstrators attacked two and they posed difficult
problems for police as they persisted in marching through the streets,
blocking traffic and intersections. But it was the police who
forced them out of the park and into the neighborhood.
And on the part of the police, there was enough
wild club swinging, enough cries of hatred, enough gratuitous beating
(23:29):
to make the conclusion inescapable that individual policemen, and lots
of them, committed violent acts far in excess of the
requisite force for crowd dispersal or arrests. To read dispassionately
the hundreds of statements describing at first hand the events
of Sunday and Monday nights is to become convinced of
the presence of what can only be called a police riot.
(23:52):
So while coenfelpro knew left was ostensibly about targeting this
very vaguely defined collection of left wing demonstrators as being
a threat to national security, it was also paired up
with this sense of a much needed law enforcement crackdown
that was justified and necessary, and the need to protect
police and other law enforcement from false accusations of brutality.
(24:17):
Aside from that, it is difficult to talk about co
intel Pro New Left in a cohesive way. The counterintelligence
program wound up targeting virtually every anti war group in
the US, as well as student demonstrators who were demonstrating
for just about any reason. In the words of the
Church Report quote, none of the bureau witnesses deposed believes
(24:38):
the New Left co intel Pro was generally effective, in
part because of the imprecise targeting. Also, the tone of
a lot of the FBI memos regarding the New lefts
sound almost baffled. Agents really did not get these young people,
most of them white and affluent, a lot of them
looking like stereotypical hippies agitating against the like police brutality
(25:01):
and the Vietnam War. Memos include kind of perplexed sounding
references to things like yoga and drugs. Participants in the
organizations targeted under cointel Pro New Left also tended to
be simultaneously idealistic and cynical, so the Bureau had a
harder time finding informants or infiltrating organizations. For example, the
(25:25):
main phone at the national headquarters of Students for a
Democratic Society had a sign taped to it for more
than a year that said, in capital letters, this phone
is tapped.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
That is not to suggest that the other targeted organizations
were clueless, like they were just particularly cynical about the
bureau by this point. The people who ultimately got the
ball rolling on exposing co intel pro were members of
anti war and other activist movements that had been targeted
during these programs history, and we'll talk more about that
(25:58):
after a sponsor break. Counterintelligence is still part of the
FBI's work, But in terms of these formally named cohen
Cel pros, those came to an end thanks to the
work of some regular people who pulled off a heist.
(26:21):
When we say regular people, they included a cab driver,
a daycare center director, a social worker, and a professor.
It sounds like one of those walk into a bar jokes.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
I know.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
It's my favorite part of these episodes for the number
of reasons, one of them being it's the most straightforward. Yeah.
Also it being just kind of a David and Goliath story,
so would had become clear to many of these groups
that the FBI was targeting them. Left wing activists viewed
the FBI with increasing suspicion, but nobody had evidence of
(26:53):
what they thought was happening. In nineteen seventy, a group
of anti war activists in the Philadelphia area decided to
do something about it. Anti war activist and college professor
William C. Davidon came up with the idea. John and
Bonnie Raines, a married couple with small children, were also involved.
John had also been a freedom writer. Others included Keith Forsyth,
(27:17):
Robert Williamson, Judy Fine Gold, and two people known by pseudonyms.
One of those is Susan Smith and the other is
Ron Durst. A ninth participant dropped out before the burglary
actually took place.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
There was no way.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
They could break into the Philadelphia FBI office, which had
tight security, so they looked for other FBI field offices,
finding one nearby in Media, Pennsylvania. This office was housed
in an apartment building with a shared lobby space, which
was adjacent to the county courthouse that cased this area.
(27:51):
Bonnie rains posed as a student from Swarthmore College and
arranged a meeting under the guise of researching career opportunities
for women at the bureau. They scheduled their burglary for
March eighth, nineteen seventy one, the night of the Fight
of the Century between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, reasoning
that most people would be watching the fight. After breaking in,
(28:13):
they removed thousands of files which were being stored in
regular file cabinets. After sorting through what they had stolen,
they mailed selections to newspapers and members of Congress, anonymously
calling themselves the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI. Most
of the newspapers returned these documents to the Bureau, but
the Washington Post confirmed their authenticity and ran a front
(28:36):
page story on March twenty fourth, nineteen seventy one. It
was titled Stolen documents describe FBI surveillance activities. The article
described surveillance of black activist organizations and efforts to enhance
existing paranoia. To quote further serve to get the point
across that there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox.
(29:00):
Mail documents and more articles followed. J Edgar Hoover officially
canceled co Intel pro on April twenty seventh, nineteen seventy one,
citing security reasons. Although some co Intel pro activities continued,
just without a specific name attached, but it wasn't yet
clear to anyone outside the bureau what the term co
(29:20):
intel pro meant or what its scope was. Jay Edgar
Hoover died on May second, nineteen seventy two. He had
been the director of the FBI for forty eight years.
In nineteen seventy three and nineteen seventy four, NBC journalist
Carl Stern filed a series of requests under the Freedom
of Information Act. Those requests were repeatedly turned down until
(29:45):
the documents were finally released under a court order, and
that is when people finally started to get a sense
of what co intel pro meant and just how huge
it was. In nineteen seventy four, Seymour Hirsch wrote a
front page article for The New York Times titled huge
CIA operation reported in US against anti war forces. This
(30:07):
article reported that the CIA was engaged in very co
intel pro like operations against peace activists in the US,
but the CIA was not supposed to be operating domestically
at all. These news reports sparked outrage within the government
and among the general public. President Gerald Ford appointed the
(30:28):
Rockefeller Commission to investigate the CIA. The House established the
Pike Committee to investigate illegal activities by the CIA, the FBI,
and the NSA. The Pike Committee's report was never published.
On January twenty first, nineteen seventy five, a resolution was
introduced in the Senate to create a committee to investigate
(30:49):
federal intelligence operations and determine quote the extent, if any,
to which illegal, improper, or unethical activities were engaged in
by any agency of the federal government. Congressional hearings went
on through nineteen seventy five and nineteen seventy six. The
Senate committee was dubbed the Church Committee, was headed by
Senator Frank Church, a Democrat from Ohio. The other committee
(31:13):
members were selected to represent a range of viewpoints and
experience levels, with the final group including six Democrats and
five Republicans. A staff of one hundred and fifty people
went through the thousands and thousands of pages of documents
that were involved in all this. We should take a
moment to talk about the FBI documentation. The FBI under
(31:33):
j Edgar Hoover was intensely bureaucratic, with a relentless focus
on documenting everything. Also, most of cointel Pro's existence took
place before the Freedom of Information Act was passed in
nineteen sixty seven. All of it took place before the
Privacy Act amendments were added in nineteen seventy four, which
gave citizens the right to see the FBI's files about themselves.
(31:58):
In other words, the FBI was right everything down, and
it was not doing so with the thought that anyone
might ever read any of this outside of the Bureau.
Whether the information flow was going out to field offices
and agents or back into headquarters, nobody was disguising their
meeting or intent. Everyone was saying the quiet part loud
(32:19):
and doing it in writing. Also, FBI documents from the
cointel pro era are full of racist slurs and offensive
stereotypes of black people. After the FBI formally started co
intel pro black nationalists slash hate groups, agents talked candidly
about how if they didn't do a good enough job,
the Bureau was going to be forced to hire black agents.
(32:42):
This idea even came with its own slogan that mimicked
the accent of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, a rhyming
couplet that ended with the N word. Also, as a
continuation of that note there were only five black FBI
agents during most of the co Intel pro era. They
had been hired as personal assistants or drivers for J.
(33:02):
Edgar Hoover, and then they had been given the title
special agent during World War II so that they would
not be drafted. So back to the investigations. Most of
the hearings were behind closed doors, both to try to
prevent them from turning into a TV spectacle and also
to protect information about the US methods for conducting intelligence work.
(33:23):
Even so, the hearings were criticized for threatening US intelligence efforts,
and Senator Church was accused of using it to bolster
a presidential bid. While the Church Committee wanted to protect
legitimate US intelligence efforts, it also wanted the public to
have a chance to learn about what was going on,
and to that end, the committee held public hearings in
September and October of nineteen seventy five. These hearings were
(33:47):
focused on specific areas of misconduct. This included information about
a biological agent's program run by the CIA, a domestic
surveillance program from the White House, and the FBI's programs
to disrupt the civil rights movement and the anti Vietnam
war movement. After one hundred twenty six full committee meetings,
forty subcommittee meetings, more than eight hundred witness interviews, and
(34:11):
a review of more than one hundred ten thousand documents,
the Church Committee issued a report that described quote a
pattern of reckless disregard of activities that threatened our constitutional system.
And this was not just unique to the FBI, but
the FBI is our focus here. The report went on
to say, quote The abusive techniques used by the FBI
(34:33):
in co intel pro from nineteen fifty six to nineteen
seventy one included violations of both federal and state statutes
prohibiting mail fraud, wire fraud, and citement to violence, sending
obscene material through the mail, and extortion. More fundamentally, the
harassment of innocent citizens engaged in lawful forms of political
(34:54):
expression did serious injury to the First Amendment guarantee of
freedom of speech and the right of the people to
assemble peaceably and to petition the government for our redress
of grievances. The report also made it clear that the
national security and violence prevention concerns were not the FBI's
only motivation. Quote. The unexpressed major premise of the programs
(35:17):
was that a law enforcement agency has the duty to
do whatever is necessary to combat perceived threats to the
existing social and political order. Eighteen percent of the approved
co intel pro proposals targeted speakers, teachers, writers, or publications, meetings,
and peaceful demonstrations, all of which were just exercising a
(35:39):
constitutional right to free speech. Operations tried to stop lawful
speakers from speaking, teachers from teaching, writers from writing, and
demonstrators from demonstrating. The Senate Committee made ninety six recommendations
to quote place intelligence activities within the Constitutional Scheme for
controlling government power. This included changes to how the FBI
(36:03):
was run that included a ten year term limit for
the Director of the Bureau. It also included recommendations for
additional oversight within the Bureau. Every counterintelligence proposal had to
be approved by headquarters, but outside the Bureau the programs
were almost completely unknown. Specific elements of cointel pro CPUSA
(36:25):
and White Hate were both known to various Attorneys General,
presidential advisors, and Cabinet and committee members. For example, Attorney
General Robert F. Kennedy authorized the bureau's wiretaps of Martin
Luther King junior. The Bureau also notified multiple Attorneys general
of various accomplishments and progress those are their words against
(36:46):
the ku Klux Klan, without describing the breadth of what
had led to that progress. Even with these two programs,
though the full scope wasn't known outside the Bureau, and
it appears that the other co intel pros weren't known
to anyone outside the FBI at all. Efforts to bring
in more oversight of the bureau's activities included the Foreign
(37:06):
Intelligence Surveillance Act of nineteen seventy eight. The exposure of
co Intel Pro and the hearings that followed drastically affected
mainstream American perceptions of the FBI. According to Gallup polls,
the proportion of Americans with a highly favorable view of
the FBI dropped from eighty four percent in nineteen sixty
(37:27):
five to thirty seven percent in nineteen seventy five. At
the same time, no criminal convictions followed the investigations and
the Church report, even though that report detailed numerous instances
of criminal activity. As we said, the FBI is still
engaged in counterintelligence. In the years just after co Intel
(37:48):
Pro was disbanded, the FBI did extensive counter intelligence work
against the American Indian Movement and the Committee in Solidarity
with the People of El Salvador. This included a disinformation
campaign during the nineteen seventy three occupation of Wounded Knee,
both to discredit the American Indian Movement to the general
public and to try to create division within that occupation.
(38:11):
Co Intel pro has also made headlines at numerous points
since the mid seventies, comparing it to policies and programs
that have been introduced during multiple presidential administrations. This includes
comparisons to various aspects of the Patriot Act and the
NSA's warrantless surveillance programs in the two thousands. The general
(38:31):
focus on black liberation as somehow inherently threatening and violent
has also continued to be part of the FBI's rhetoric.
In twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen, leaked documents revealed that
the FBI had targeted black identity extremists as a major threat,
with really similar language about potential violence to what was
used during Cointel pro Quote. The FBI assesses it is
(38:55):
very likely black identity extremist bie perceptions of police brutality
against African Americans spurred an increase in premeditated, retaliatory lethal
violence against law enforcement and will very likely serve as
justification for such violence. This was paired with criticisms that
the FBI and other federal agencies were ignoring credible threats
(39:19):
of white nationalist violence. Yeah, this was basically very similar
protests to what has been going on in the last
few months as we're recording this, which is on July seventh,
twenty twenty, with demonstrators basically saying, please stop shooting unarmed
black people, and the FBI creating this category of black
(39:42):
identity extremist, which led people to go, that's not a
thing though, made that up to circle back around to
the Citizens Commission to investigate the FBI. None of them
were ever prosecuted in connection with this break in in
media Pennsylvania. It is possible that law enforcement believed that
the culprits went on to be involved with a different
(40:04):
group of anti Vietnam War activists who were known as
the Camden twenty eight. This group broke into the Camden,
New Jersey, Draft Board office and they destroyed draft records there.
The Camden twenty eight were acquitted two of the Citizens'
Commission to Investigate the FBI actually were involved in that,
So there's some speculation that law enforcement was like, well,
(40:25):
they've already been tried and acquitted of this other thing.
We probably have no chance. Regardless, though several members of
the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI came forward in
twenty fourteen. Their story is told in the book The
Burglary The Discovery of j Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI by
Betty Metzger, who also wrote that front page Washington Post
(40:46):
story that we mentioned earlier on. I have not read
that book, but I have watched the twenty fourteen documentary
nineteen seventy one, which also tells that story. It's Coen
tel Pro. I know it was a lot. Thanks so
(41:08):
much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like
to send us a note, our email addresses History Podcast
at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to the
show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Happy Saturday. This is the second part of our two
part episode on co Intel pro. Part one, which ran
last Saturday, includes lots of background on the FBI and
its counterintelligence programs. Today's installment is focused on co intel
pros that targeted civil rights groups and the vaguely defined
New Left, as well as the raid on the FBI
(00:24):
office in Media, Pennsylvania that brought these programs to light.
At the end of this episode, we mentioned that some
of the people who were part of that raid were
also suspected as being part of the Camden twenty eight,
who broke into the Camden, New Jersey, Draft Board office
and destroyed draft records there in nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
We talked about.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
The Camden twenty eight and other Vietnam War era draft
board raids in a two parter that ran on April
seventh and ninth, twenty twenty five. This episode originally came
out July twenty second, twenty twenty Welcome to Stuff You
Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and
(01:13):
welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm
Holly Frye. Today we are wrapping up our two parter
on co Intel Pro, including its targeting of so called
black nationalist slash hate groups and a targeting of a
very vaguely defined movement known as the New Left. To
briefly recap from part one, which is highly recommended before
(01:37):
listening to this because it includes a lot of context
and overview, but just as a quick recap, we're going
to quote from the Church Report, which followed more than
a year of Senate Committee hearings into all this quote.
The origins of co Intel pro demonstrate that the Bureau
adopted extra legal methods to counter perceived threats to national
(01:57):
security and public order because the ordinary legal processes were
believed to be insufficient to do the job. In essence,
the Bureau took the law into its own hands, conducting
a sophisticated vigilante operation against domestic enemies. Whether those targets
were really enemies, though, that is a different question. The
(02:18):
report went on to say, quote, the choice of individuals
and organizations to be neutralized and disrupted ranged from the
violent elements of the Black Panther Party to Martin Luther
King Junior, who the Bureau concedes was an advocate of nonviolence.
From the Communist Party to the ku Klux Klan, from
the advocates of violent revolutions such as the Weathermen, to
(02:39):
the supporters of peaceful social change, including the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference and the Inter University Committee for Debate on
Foreign Policy. Just a heads up in this episode, there
are going to be some discussions of suicide and also
police violence. In nineteen sixty seven, the FBI started co
Intel pro Black Nationalist hate Groups. For the most part,
(03:01):
targeting of civil rights groups that had been carried out
under Cointel pro CPUSA, which we talked about last time,
rolled up under this newly established program. In the words
of the program supervisor, the targeted groups were selected because
they were believed to be violent or because of their
quote radical or revolutionary rhetoric and actions. On March fourth,
(03:24):
nineteen sixty eight, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent a
memo to be routed through forty one FBI field offices.
This memo was called Counterintelligence Program Black Nationalist Hate Group's
Racial Intelligence. And this is a little bit long, but
it's so illustrative of what the FBI was doing here
and more generally, what Hoover's mindset was across the other
(03:47):
co intel pros. We're going to read a chunk of it.
So it began quote goals for maximum effectiveness of the
counterintelligence program and to prevent wasted effort. Long range goals
are being set. Number one, prevent the coalition of militant
black nationalist groups. In unity, there is strength, a truism
(04:08):
that is no less valid for all its triteness. An
effective coalition of black nationalist groups might be the first
step toward a real mau Mau in America, the beginning
of a true Black revolution. So, for context, mau Mau
is a reference to the Mau Mau movement and uprising
in Kenya, which advocated a violent overthrow of British colonial rule.
(04:29):
This went on too prevent the rise of a messiah
who could unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement.
Malcolm X might have been such a messiah. He is
the martyr of the movement today. Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael,
and Elijah Mohammed all aspire to this position. Elijah Mohammed
is less of a threat because of his age. King
(04:52):
could be a very real contender for this position, should
he abandon his supposed quote obedience to quote white liberal
doctrines in parentheses nonviolence, and embrace black nationalism. Carmichael has
the necessary charisma to be a real threat in this way.
Number three prevent violence on the part of black nationalist groups.
(05:14):
This is of primary importance and is of course a
goal of our investigative activity. It should also be a
goal of the counterintelligence program to pinpoint potential troublemakers and
neutralize them before they exercise their potential for violence. Number
four prevent militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining
(05:34):
respectability by discrediting them to three separate segments of the community.
The goal of discrediting black nationalists must be handled tactically
in three ways. You must discredit those groups and individuals
to first, the responsible Negro community. Second, they must be
discredited to the white community, both the responsible community and
(05:56):
to liberals who have vestiges of sympathy for militant Black
national list simply because they are negroes. Third, these groups
must be discredited in the eyes of Negro radicals, the
followers of the movement. This last area requires entirely different
tactics from the first two. Publicity about violent tendencies and
(06:17):
radical statements merely enhances black nationalists to the last group.
It adds respectability in a different way. Number five. A
final goal should be to prevent the long range growth
of militant black organizations, especially among youth. Specific tactics to
prevent these groups from converting young people must be developed.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
This memo went on.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
To outline the primary targets of this co intel, pro
that everything we just read was going to apply to.
These were the organizations that Hoover described as the quote
most violent and radical. It included the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Revolutionary Action Movement, and the
(07:01):
Nation of Islam.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
This is an.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Incredibly weird list.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Snick has nonviolent write it in the name, like the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Martin Luther King Junior helped found
this represents the whole spectrum of from nonviolent direct action
to revolutionary black nationalism, and the FBI even noted that
in its view, some individual members of the Nation of
(07:28):
Islam had been involved in violence, but the organization itself
was not violent. It was being targeted because of its separatism.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Basically, the FBI grouped a lot of different organizations with
a wide range of objectives and ideologies and tactics under
this co intel Pro that was supposedly about black nationalism
and hate groups. Some, as Tracey just mentioned, were strictly pacifist,
Some advocated gun ownership or violent self defense, Some spoke
(07:58):
in very theoretical terms about the need for a revolution,
and some of them called for an actual armed uprising
or other violence. All very different ideologies, but still under
this one umbrella. The FBI classed them all together as
violent and radical, viewing virtually any organization calling for equal
rights for black people as potentially violent and as a consequence,
(08:20):
as needing to be disrupted. Yeah, Like, the thing that
these all had in common was like black people equality,
equality please, or like demanding equality with very aggressive rhetoric
and sometimes violence. Like that's what it all had in common.
The FBI put intense effort into discrediting and disrupting all
these organizations and other organizations that were not specifically named,
(08:43):
using all the methods that we talked about in Part one.
But about a year after this co intel pro was established,
another different organization rose to national prominence, and that was
the Black Panther Party, and this co intel Pro then
pivoted to shift almost exclusively on that. The Black Panther
part originally called the Black Panther Party for Self Defense,
(09:03):
was founded in Oakland, California in nineteen sixty six by
Huey Newton and Bobby Seal. A lot of the Black
Panthers rhetoric was radical and revolutionary, arguing that the only
way black people could be truly free is if they
were able to govern their own affairs. When they were
establishing the party, Newton and Seal crafted a ten point
(09:24):
program which began, we want freedom, We want power to
determine the destiny of our black community. This ten point
program went on to call for full employment, an end
to quote the robbery by the capitalists of our black community,
decent housing, education, exemption from military service for black men,
(09:44):
an end to police brutality, freedom for black men who
were held in prisons in jails, and it ended, quote
we want land, bred, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace.
The ten point Plan elaborated on each of these points.
The exemption from military service stemmed from the United States
involvement in Vietnam and the idea that black people should
(10:06):
not be forced to serve in the military of a
nation that did not protect them. The idea behind the
release of incarcerated black men was that they had not
been given a fair and impartial trial, so their convictions
were not valid. As part of their work, the Black
Panthers started more than thirty community service programs known as
survival programs. These included things like free breakfast programs for
(10:30):
school children, a tuberculosis screening and treatment program, medical clinics,
ambulance services, legal aid, and education programs. The Black Panthers
also created a screening program for sickle cell disease that
later served as a template for the federal government's own
screening programs. Over time, a lot of these services were
expanded to include anyone who was oppressed, including poor white people.
(10:54):
The Black Panthers also showed up to support other marginalized
groups in their own activism. They are mentioned two different
times in our Six Impossible episodes from sip Ins to
fish Ins, which focused on direct action demonstrations and similar protests.
In that episode, we talked about the Black Panther support
of the fish In movement in the Pacific Northwest, and
(11:16):
they're providing meals to disabled activists who took over the
Department of Health Education and Welfare Office in San Francisco
during the Section five oh four protests. But today, the
first thing a lot of people, especially a lot of
white people, think of when someone says the Black Panthers
is guns and violence. The Black Panthers organized armed patrols
(11:37):
of black neighborhoods to protect residents from police brutality and
from gang violence. At one point, they staged an armed
takeover of the California State Legislature that was in response
to gun control legislation. As other examples outside of the
party's organized activities, Huey Newton was involved in a shootout
with police in nineteen sixty seven in which an officer
(11:57):
was killed. Bobby Seal was charmed urge but not convicted,
with conspiracy to incite riots at the nineteen sixty eight
Democratic National Convention, and of the murder of a nineteen
year old Black Panther who was suspected of being a
police informant. In a memo back to headquarters, a California
field office described the Black Panthers as quote the most
violence prone organization of all the extremist groups now operating
(12:21):
in the United States, and that alleged that they were
performing quote not only verbal attacks, but also physical attacks
on police. Later, J Edgar Hoover called the Black Panthers
quote one of the greatest threats to the nation's internal security.
On November twenty fifth, nineteen sixty eight, several FBI field
offices received a memo ordering them to submit quote imaginative
(12:44):
and hard hitting counter intelligence measures aimed at crippling the BPPS,
of course, the Black Panther Party. This directive was expanded
to additional field offices in January of nineteen sixty nine.
Collen's hel pro black nationalist hat Green soon focused almost
entirely on the Black Panthers, rather than on that collection
of groups that we outlined earlier in that nineteen sixty
(13:07):
eight memo. Of this co intel pros two hundred and
ninety five documented actions, two hundred and thirty three of
them were against the Black Panthers. Using all those various
techniques that we described in Part one as examples, the
FBI intentionally undermined the Black Panthers public service programs, for example,
by sending fake, inflammatory membership materials to food pantries and
(13:31):
other organizations that were donating food for the breakfast programs.
The Bureau used disinformation to try to spark violent conflicts
between the Panthers and area street gangs, and to spark
violent conflicts between the Panthers and police to reinforce the
idea that the Black Panthers were just inherently violent. In
nineteen sixty nine, the FBI became aware of a Black
(13:54):
Panther coloring book. The origins of this book are a
little bit murky, but Akinsanya Cambone, who was then known
as Mark Temer, has taken credit for its creation. In
a twenty sixteen interview, he describes it as a history book.
It depicts slave owners, greedy store owners, and police all
(14:15):
as obese pigs with exaggerated lower tusks. While Cambone has
stressed that these pigs can be any color, which is
why it is a coloring book, they are generally interpreted
as representations of white people, and this book is full
of images of black people, adults and children, men and
women stabbing and shooting the pigs. Black Panther leadership felt
(14:38):
that the coloring book was inappropriate and ordered Cambone to
destroy it, but someone made copies, and after the FBI
obtained one, it made more copies and distributed them, as
though the Black Panther Party had officially created this book
with the intent of distributing it to children. The FBI's
harassment of the Black Panthers also went beyond the organized
(15:00):
membership and its programs. Dean Seberg was an actress who
donated to the Black Panthers in support of their breakfast programs.
During her pregnancy, the FBI sent false tips to news
organizations alleging that the father of her baby was a
Black Panther. This, of course, was a huge scandal. Seberg
tried to take her own life. As a result, she
(15:22):
went into labor prematurely and her baby died. According to
family members, she tried to take her own life every
year around the time of the baby's death, and then
she died in nineteen seventy nine. Her death was ruled
a suicide, although some of her families had suspicions that
there was foul play involved. And perhaps most notoriously, on
December fourth, nineteen sixty nine, the FBI orchestrated a raid
(15:45):
that was carried out by Chicago police, who fired between
eighty two and ninety nine gun shots into an apartment
where several members of the Black Panther Party were sleeping.
Among other involvement, an FBI informant had provided police with
a floor plan of the apartment. Chicago Black Panther leaders
Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were killed and four other
(16:06):
people in the apartment were seriously injured. Police claimed that
this was a violent gunfight, with the Black Panthers being
the first to open fire, but an investigation revealed that
only one shot had been fired from inside the apartment,
most likely by Mark Clark after he had already been
fatally shot by police. According to Hampton's fiance, Deborah Johnson,
(16:29):
who was in bed asleep with him when the shooting started,
an officer who came into the apartment after the shooting
stopped asked if Hampton was still alive. Another officer fired
two shots and said he's good and dead now. The
Black Panther Party dissolved in nineteen eighty two, with co
intel pro being one of the many factors that contributed
to its end. Former members say it is unrelated to
(16:52):
the New Black Panther Party, which was founded in nineteen
eighty nine and is classified as a hate group by
the United States Commission on Civil Rights and the Southern
Poverty Law Center. Let's take a break. The last formal
(17:15):
cointel pro that was described in the Senate investigation reports
we're going to talk about in a little bit was
co intel Pro New Left, and that started in nineteen
sixty eight. And of all the formally named co intel pros,
this was the most loosely focused. And I mean, as
we've discussed, most of them were loosely focused. As we
mentioned in part one, the FBI didn't really even have
(17:37):
a definition for what new Left meant. The New Left supervisor,
who was quoted in the Church Committee report, said quote,
I cannot recall any document that was written defining New
Left as such. It is my impression that the characterization
of New Left groups, rather than being defined at any
specific time by document, it more or less grew. It
(18:00):
has never been strictly defined, as far as I know.
It is more or less an attitude. I would think
that makes it sound almost like an advertiser sound bite
New Left. It's an attitude. The incident that prompted the
FBI to create this co intel pro was a student
uprising at Columbia University in nineteen sixty eight. There was
(18:20):
a lot involved in this protest, but its most direct
precursor was the university's decision to build a new gym
in Morningside Park. Even though the gym was being planned
for public land, its facilities would mostly be for use
only by the university and not by the public. To
add to that frustration, this was part of an ongoing
pattern of the university's expansion into Harlem, which was pushing
(18:44):
the neighborhood's predominantly black residents out of their homes in
order to build facilities that they were not going to
be allowed to access. So the resulting protest was complicated,
like we cannot get all into all of the nuances here,
but generally the university. These student Afro American Society or
SAS started voicing their own and the community's objections to
(19:07):
this gym, and then the school's chapter of the Students
for a Democratic Society or SDS, which was predominantly white,
saw this as an opportunity for a larger protest that
would also focus on the university's involvement with the Vietnam War.
Members of the SAS felt like they were being talked
over and that the SDS was taking the protests in
(19:27):
an entirely different direction. And the end, the Student Afro
American Society took over Hamilton Hall, and the Students for
a Democratic Society took over other buildings on campus and
took the Dean hostage. There were more than a thousand
demonstrators who took part in the campus shutdown that lasted
for a week. At the university's request, the New York
(19:50):
Police Department began clearing the demonstrators. On April thirtieth, nineteen
sixty eight. Black demonstrators who had taken over Hamilton Hall
left peacefully. More more than one thousand police moved into
the other buildings. Some of the other demonstrators verbally and
physically resisted, including by throwing things like shoes, bathroom tiles,
(20:10):
and books at officers. Police forcibly removed people, beating some
of the resisting students and in some cases bystanders with nightsticks.
Others were trampled. In the end, one hundred thirty two students,
four faculty members, and twelve police officers were injured. So
Coinzel pro New Left was motivated by the FBI's frustrations
(20:33):
that the university had not brought in police earlier, and
also by a sense that these types of protests should
not be permitted to happen in the first place. The
directives for coinsal pro New Left were distributed by a
memo in May of nineteen sixty eight, and as described
in the Church Report, agents were to gather information on
this is all quote. One false allegations of police brutality
(20:57):
to quote counter the widespread charges of police brutality that
invariably arise following student police encounters. To immorality depicting the
quote scurrilous and depraved nature of many of the characters, activities, habits,
and living conditions representative of New Left adherents. And three
action by college administrators to quote to show the value
(21:20):
of college administrators and school officials taking a firm stand
and pointing out quote whether and to what extent faculty
members rendered aid and encouragement. Point two sounds like a
lot of the other counterintelligence efforts we've talked about in
cointel pros, but otherwise, in the FBI's view, the use
(21:41):
of force against demonstrators was warranted, and if demonstrators were
injured in the process, they deserved it. In nineteen sixty eight,
both the FBI and the NYPD viewed the amount of
force used at Columbia as appropriate and restrained. No tear
gas was used, no one was shot, and the injury
sustained students and faculty were minor enough that those who
(22:03):
had to go to the hospital were treated and released.
It's just such a weird bar to such a weird
bar of whether the use was appropriate. The use of
forces appropriate was like, well, okay, nobody like died. Was
kind of the right tone of it. However, the FBI
also had a similar interpretation in cases of police brutality
(22:24):
that were far more clearly egregious. For example, after riots
broke out during the nineteen sixty eight Democratic National Convention
in Chicago, a memo from FBI headquarters to the Chicago
Field Office read quote, once again, the liberal press and
the bleeding hearts and the forces on the left are
taking advantage of the situation in Chicago surrounding the Democratic
(22:45):
National Convention to attack the police and organize law enforcement agencies.
We should be mindful of this situation and develop all
possible evidence to expose this activity and to refute these
false allegations. Conversely, the walker of which was prepared for
the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of violence
concluded that there really was police wrongdoing a portion of
(23:08):
it read quote. Demonstrators attacked two and they posed difficult
problems for police as they persisted in marching through the streets,
blocking traffic and intersections. But it was the police who
forced them out of the park and into the neighborhood.
And on the part of the police, there was enough
wild club swinging, enough cries of hatred, enough gratuitous beating
(23:29):
to make the conclusion inescapable that individual policemen, and lots
of them, committed violent acts far in excess of the
requisite force for crowd dispersal or arrests. To read dispassionately
the hundreds of statements describing at first hand the events
of Sunday and Monday nights is to become convinced of
the presence of what can only be called a police riot.
(23:52):
So while coenfelpro knew left was ostensibly about targeting this
very vaguely defined collection of left wing demonstrators as being
a threat to national security, it was also paired up
with this sense of a much needed law enforcement crackdown
that was justified and necessary, and the need to protect
police and other law enforcement from false accusations of brutality.
(24:17):
Aside from that, it is difficult to talk about co
intel Pro New Left in a cohesive way. The counterintelligence
program wound up targeting virtually every anti war group in
the US, as well as student demonstrators who were demonstrating
for just about any reason. In the words of the
Church Report quote, none of the bureau witnesses deposed believes
(24:38):
the New Left co intel Pro was generally effective, in
part because of the imprecise targeting. Also, the tone of
a lot of the FBI memos regarding the New lefts
sound almost baffled. Agents really did not get these young people,
most of them white and affluent, a lot of them
looking like stereotypical hippies agitating against the like police brutality
(25:01):
and the Vietnam War. Memos include kind of perplexed sounding
references to things like yoga and drugs. Participants in the
organizations targeted under cointel Pro New Left also tended to
be simultaneously idealistic and cynical, so the Bureau had a
harder time finding informants or infiltrating organizations. For example, the
(25:25):
main phone at the national headquarters of Students for a
Democratic Society had a sign taped to it for more
than a year that said, in capital letters, this phone
is tapped.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
That is not to suggest that the other targeted organizations
were clueless, like they were just particularly cynical about the
bureau by this point. The people who ultimately got the
ball rolling on exposing co intel pro were members of
anti war and other activist movements that had been targeted
during these programs history, and we'll talk more about that
(25:58):
after a sponsor break. Counterintelligence is still part of the
FBI's work, But in terms of these formally named cohen
Cel pros, those came to an end thanks to the
work of some regular people who pulled off a heist.
(26:21):
When we say regular people, they included a cab driver,
a daycare center director, a social worker, and a professor.
It sounds like one of those walk into a bar jokes.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
I know.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
It's my favorite part of these episodes for the number
of reasons, one of them being it's the most straightforward. Yeah.
Also it being just kind of a David and Goliath story,
so would had become clear to many of these groups
that the FBI was targeting them. Left wing activists viewed
the FBI with increasing suspicion, but nobody had evidence of
(26:53):
what they thought was happening. In nineteen seventy, a group
of anti war activists in the Philadelphia area decided to
do something about it. Anti war activist and college professor
William C. Davidon came up with the idea. John and
Bonnie Raines, a married couple with small children, were also involved.
John had also been a freedom writer. Others included Keith Forsyth,
(27:17):
Robert Williamson, Judy Fine Gold, and two people known by pseudonyms.
One of those is Susan Smith and the other is
Ron Durst. A ninth participant dropped out before the burglary
actually took place.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
There was no way.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
They could break into the Philadelphia FBI office, which had
tight security, so they looked for other FBI field offices,
finding one nearby in Media, Pennsylvania. This office was housed
in an apartment building with a shared lobby space, which
was adjacent to the county courthouse that cased this area.
(27:51):
Bonnie rains posed as a student from Swarthmore College and
arranged a meeting under the guise of researching career opportunities
for women at the bureau. They scheduled their burglary for
March eighth, nineteen seventy one, the night of the Fight
of the Century between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, reasoning
that most people would be watching the fight. After breaking in,
(28:13):
they removed thousands of files which were being stored in
regular file cabinets. After sorting through what they had stolen,
they mailed selections to newspapers and members of Congress, anonymously
calling themselves the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI. Most
of the newspapers returned these documents to the Bureau, but
the Washington Post confirmed their authenticity and ran a front
(28:36):
page story on March twenty fourth, nineteen seventy one. It
was titled Stolen documents describe FBI surveillance activities. The article
described surveillance of black activist organizations and efforts to enhance
existing paranoia. To quote further serve to get the point
across that there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox.
(29:00):
Mail documents and more articles followed. J Edgar Hoover officially
canceled co Intel pro on April twenty seventh, nineteen seventy one,
citing security reasons. Although some co Intel pro activities continued,
just without a specific name attached, but it wasn't yet
clear to anyone outside the bureau what the term co
(29:20):
intel pro meant or what its scope was. Jay Edgar
Hoover died on May second, nineteen seventy two. He had
been the director of the FBI for forty eight years.
In nineteen seventy three and nineteen seventy four, NBC journalist
Carl Stern filed a series of requests under the Freedom
of Information Act. Those requests were repeatedly turned down until
(29:45):
the documents were finally released under a court order, and
that is when people finally started to get a sense
of what co intel pro meant and just how huge
it was. In nineteen seventy four, Seymour Hirsch wrote a
front page article for The New York Times titled huge
CIA operation reported in US against anti war forces. This
(30:07):
article reported that the CIA was engaged in very co
intel pro like operations against peace activists in the US,
but the CIA was not supposed to be operating domestically
at all. These news reports sparked outrage within the government
and among the general public. President Gerald Ford appointed the
(30:28):
Rockefeller Commission to investigate the CIA. The House established the
Pike Committee to investigate illegal activities by the CIA, the FBI,
and the NSA. The Pike Committee's report was never published.
On January twenty first, nineteen seventy five, a resolution was
introduced in the Senate to create a committee to investigate
(30:49):
federal intelligence operations and determine quote the extent, if any,
to which illegal, improper, or unethical activities were engaged in
by any agency of the federal government. Congressional hearings went
on through nineteen seventy five and nineteen seventy six. The
Senate committee was dubbed the Church Committee, was headed by
Senator Frank Church, a Democrat from Ohio. The other committee
(31:13):
members were selected to represent a range of viewpoints and
experience levels, with the final group including six Democrats and
five Republicans. A staff of one hundred and fifty people
went through the thousands and thousands of pages of documents
that were involved in all this. We should take a
moment to talk about the FBI documentation. The FBI under
(31:33):
j Edgar Hoover was intensely bureaucratic, with a relentless focus
on documenting everything. Also, most of cointel Pro's existence took
place before the Freedom of Information Act was passed in
nineteen sixty seven. All of it took place before the
Privacy Act amendments were added in nineteen seventy four, which
gave citizens the right to see the FBI's files about themselves.
(31:58):
In other words, the FBI was right everything down, and
it was not doing so with the thought that anyone
might ever read any of this outside of the Bureau.
Whether the information flow was going out to field offices
and agents or back into headquarters, nobody was disguising their
meeting or intent. Everyone was saying the quiet part loud
(32:19):
and doing it in writing. Also, FBI documents from the
cointel pro era are full of racist slurs and offensive
stereotypes of black people. After the FBI formally started co
intel pro black nationalists slash hate groups, agents talked candidly
about how if they didn't do a good enough job,
the Bureau was going to be forced to hire black agents.
(32:42):
This idea even came with its own slogan that mimicked
the accent of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, a rhyming
couplet that ended with the N word. Also, as a
continuation of that note there were only five black FBI
agents during most of the co Intel pro era. They
had been hired as personal assistants or drivers for J.
(33:02):
Edgar Hoover, and then they had been given the title
special agent during World War II so that they would
not be drafted. So back to the investigations. Most of
the hearings were behind closed doors, both to try to
prevent them from turning into a TV spectacle and also
to protect information about the US methods for conducting intelligence work.
(33:23):
Even so, the hearings were criticized for threatening US intelligence efforts,
and Senator Church was accused of using it to bolster
a presidential bid. While the Church Committee wanted to protect
legitimate US intelligence efforts, it also wanted the public to
have a chance to learn about what was going on,
and to that end, the committee held public hearings in
September and October of nineteen seventy five. These hearings were
(33:47):
focused on specific areas of misconduct. This included information about
a biological agent's program run by the CIA, a domestic
surveillance program from the White House, and the FBI's programs
to disrupt the civil rights movement and the anti Vietnam
war movement. After one hundred twenty six full committee meetings,
forty subcommittee meetings, more than eight hundred witness interviews, and
(34:11):
a review of more than one hundred ten thousand documents,
the Church Committee issued a report that described quote a
pattern of reckless disregard of activities that threatened our constitutional system.
And this was not just unique to the FBI, but
the FBI is our focus here. The report went on
to say, quote The abusive techniques used by the FBI
(34:33):
in co intel pro from nineteen fifty six to nineteen
seventy one included violations of both federal and state statutes
prohibiting mail fraud, wire fraud, and citement to violence, sending
obscene material through the mail, and extortion. More fundamentally, the
harassment of innocent citizens engaged in lawful forms of political
(34:54):
expression did serious injury to the First Amendment guarantee of
freedom of speech and the right of the people to
assemble peaceably and to petition the government for our redress
of grievances. The report also made it clear that the
national security and violence prevention concerns were not the FBI's
only motivation. Quote. The unexpressed major premise of the programs
(35:17):
was that a law enforcement agency has the duty to
do whatever is necessary to combat perceived threats to the
existing social and political order. Eighteen percent of the approved
co intel pro proposals targeted speakers, teachers, writers, or publications, meetings,
and peaceful demonstrations, all of which were just exercising a
(35:39):
constitutional right to free speech. Operations tried to stop lawful
speakers from speaking, teachers from teaching, writers from writing, and
demonstrators from demonstrating. The Senate Committee made ninety six recommendations
to quote place intelligence activities within the Constitutional Scheme for
controlling government power. This included changes to how the FBI
(36:03):
was run that included a ten year term limit for
the Director of the Bureau. It also included recommendations for
additional oversight within the Bureau. Every counterintelligence proposal had to
be approved by headquarters, but outside the Bureau the programs
were almost completely unknown. Specific elements of cointel pro CPUSA
(36:25):
and White Hate were both known to various Attorneys General,
presidential advisors, and Cabinet and committee members. For example, Attorney
General Robert F. Kennedy authorized the bureau's wiretaps of Martin
Luther King junior. The Bureau also notified multiple Attorneys general
of various accomplishments and progress those are their words against
(36:46):
the ku Klux Klan, without describing the breadth of what
had led to that progress. Even with these two programs,
though the full scope wasn't known outside the Bureau, and
it appears that the other co intel pros weren't known
to anyone outside the FBI at all. Efforts to bring
in more oversight of the bureau's activities included the Foreign
(37:06):
Intelligence Surveillance Act of nineteen seventy eight. The exposure of
co Intel Pro and the hearings that followed drastically affected
mainstream American perceptions of the FBI. According to Gallup polls,
the proportion of Americans with a highly favorable view of
the FBI dropped from eighty four percent in nineteen sixty
(37:27):
five to thirty seven percent in nineteen seventy five. At
the same time, no criminal convictions followed the investigations and
the Church report, even though that report detailed numerous instances
of criminal activity. As we said, the FBI is still
engaged in counterintelligence. In the years just after co Intel
(37:48):
Pro was disbanded, the FBI did extensive counter intelligence work
against the American Indian Movement and the Committee in Solidarity
with the People of El Salvador. This included a disinformation
campaign during the nineteen seventy three occupation of Wounded Knee,
both to discredit the American Indian Movement to the general
public and to try to create division within that occupation.
(38:11):
Co Intel pro has also made headlines at numerous points
since the mid seventies, comparing it to policies and programs
that have been introduced during multiple presidential administrations. This includes
comparisons to various aspects of the Patriot Act and the
NSA's warrantless surveillance programs in the two thousands. The general
(38:31):
focus on black liberation as somehow inherently threatening and violent
has also continued to be part of the FBI's rhetoric.
In twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen, leaked documents revealed that
the FBI had targeted black identity extremists as a major threat,
with really similar language about potential violence to what was
used during Cointel pro Quote. The FBI assesses it is
(38:55):
very likely black identity extremist bie perceptions of police brutality
against African Americans spurred an increase in premeditated, retaliatory lethal
violence against law enforcement and will very likely serve as
justification for such violence. This was paired with criticisms that
the FBI and other federal agencies were ignoring credible threats
(39:19):
of white nationalist violence. Yeah, this was basically very similar
protests to what has been going on in the last
few months as we're recording this, which is on July seventh,
twenty twenty, with demonstrators basically saying, please stop shooting unarmed
black people, and the FBI creating this category of black
(39:42):
identity extremist, which led people to go, that's not a
thing though, made that up to circle back around to
the Citizens Commission to investigate the FBI. None of them
were ever prosecuted in connection with this break in in
media Pennsylvania. It is possible that law enforcement believed that
the culprits went on to be involved with a different
(40:04):
group of anti Vietnam War activists who were known as
the Camden twenty eight. This group broke into the Camden,
New Jersey, Draft Board office and they destroyed draft records there.
The Camden twenty eight were acquitted two of the Citizens'
Commission to Investigate the FBI actually were involved in that,
So there's some speculation that law enforcement was like, well,
(40:25):
they've already been tried and acquitted of this other thing.
We probably have no chance. Regardless, though several members of
the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI came forward in
twenty fourteen. Their story is told in the book The
Burglary The Discovery of j Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI by
Betty Metzger, who also wrote that front page Washington Post
(40:46):
story that we mentioned earlier on. I have not read
that book, but I have watched the twenty fourteen documentary
nineteen seventy one, which also tells that story. It's Coen
tel Pro. I know it was a lot. Thanks so
(41:08):
much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like
to send us a note, our email addresses History Podcast
at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to the
show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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