July 24, 2020 • 13 mins
Tracy and Holly talk about this week's two-parter on COINTELPRO, and how they both think about those initiatives.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class, A production
of I Heart Radio. Happy Friday, Everybody. I'm Tracy Vie Wilson,
and I'm Holly Frying. Uh. This week we talked about
Cohen's helpro, a nice little uplifting, peppy topic. I would say,
(00:23):
at least for me, I don't often go into an
episode thinking from the beginning, this is going to be
two parts, um. Like a lot of times it grows
into two parts while I'm working on it, um. And
this is definitely a case where that happened. A lot
of times when something grows into two parts, UM, I
(00:43):
still have both parts ready to go on the same schedule,
because the thing that really takes the longest is the
research part. Comparatively, the writing part is shorter. So like
writing the second episode a lot of times is like
still doable. This was not the case in this one.
I was like, this is gonna be two parts. That
(01:04):
I also need more time with it because it is
just a tangled mess and like a lot of it requires,
Like there's a lot of stuff that we had talked
about previously on the show before, like we have two parter,
a two parter on the the Palmer raids. We have
a two parter from previous hosts about the McCarthy era.
We have a lot of background on a lot of
(01:27):
the civil rights people and organizations that were targeted, um,
but there's other stuff that we had never really talked
about before that we're all required explaining. And then stuff
like having a whole co intel pro targeting the new
Left when nobody could define what the new Left meant.
I'm like, I'm just like picturing the mentality. I know.
(01:49):
They make me feel weird and uncomfortable, Like, yeah, I
want to shout out to my friend Amy, who was
kind of my sounding board for like how to explain
specifically why communism was so threatening, because like, man, it
was just that just the response was so disproportionate to
(02:11):
the actual amount of threat involved with communism. The response,
all of it, all of it, the entirety of the
all of the co intel pros are like totally different
response than like what was actually warranted, whether it was
grouping every organization that was fighting for equal rights for
(02:34):
Black Americans into the category of black nationalists hate groups,
or really only being concerned about the ku Klux plan
murdering people and not about all their other stuff just
so much, so much. One of the things that was
particularly frustrating to me as I was finishing this up,
because I worked on this leading up to the fourth
of July and wrapped it up after coming back from
(02:58):
like a fourth of July long weekend where I don't
know about everybody else where, we stayed at home and
did nothing. Um. Uh, we have this whole national origin
story that turns people who took up arms against what
they saw as an oppressive government and destroyed property and
(03:23):
waged a literal war. Like we frame that as heroic
in the mainstream discourse. Uh, maybe not quite as much
within the last six weeks or so, but like in general, Um,
and when you have the same kind of language being
used by black people saying we are oppressed and we
(03:44):
would like to not be oppressed anymore like than that,
we become the we being like the white majority become
the bad guys, We become Britain in the story of
American Revolution. And it just it deeply annoyed and frustrated me. Yeah. Um,
(04:06):
it's so interesting. I mean I've been kind of waxing rhapsodic.
I don't know if that's quite the right phrase. I've
been thinking a lot about all of these issues, as
I'm sure almost everyone has, But there were two things
that have been on my mind that this particular episode
really brought, like touched on that I had already been
thinking about. One was it's going to sound slightly random,
(04:30):
um the discussion of the weird attempt at at I
don't know, subterfuge, confusion, etcetera, of bringing the burnt cross
remains to a KKK meeting or having them delivered, because
I remember I grew up in a military family. So
we moved when I was nine from where we were
(04:52):
living outside of Seattle to the Panhandle of Florida, and
not long after we had moved there, three lots down
for our house, there was a huge cross burning, and
like it was one of those things where in this
episode where you talked about how like they then took
it outside and burned it, And there there was this
idea of we will shame them by making the or
(05:14):
you know, scare them by making them aware that people
know where they meet. And I was like, none of
those people in my neighborhood were the least bit concerned
about anyone knowing where they were or who they were,
so it kind of struck me as interesting. And the
other thing that I keep thinking about, because I am
trying to grasp some many of the behaviors that I
(05:35):
see that don't make sense to me, is that old
saying that actors always say when people ask them why
they're so good at playing villains, And it's because villains
don't perceive themselves as the villains. They always think that
they are the hero. And I keep trying to apply that, like,
not in any way to excuse or both sides, is
(05:57):
um anything, but try to figure out really like what
is driving some of the behaviors. And I kept thinking
about that throughout this entire discussion of like did any
of these people ever stop in question that we're involved
in these co intel pro initiatives, like, hey, we've gone
a bit too far here, or are they all like
(06:18):
this is being done for the correct reason. We are
all supporting and keeping safe what is important to us
in this country, Like I I really always have to question,
did anybody go I don't know about this one? So
I feel pretty confident that like j Edgar Hoover thought
(06:39):
he was in the right with all of this, and
of course he died before any of these hearings happened. UM.
A thing that I found is I was researching and
then when I tried to go back to find it
and confirm it to put it in the episode, was
that when UM, the co intel pro black nationalists hate
groups pivoted to focus just on the Black Panthers, But
(07:01):
there was an agent who was like, they're just they're
giving breakfast to kids, Like what why? Why? And then
you know the memo that came back just doubling down
on what a violent threat the Black Panthers were. UM.
So like I feel confident there were individual people within
this whole system who were like, what this does not
(07:22):
make a lot of sense, or we should not be
doing this. UM. But like, as an organization, the Bureau
definitely felt like it was the force that was protecting
the American people from all of these nefarious influences when
the nefarious influences were like literally civil rights groups and
(07:43):
women's rights groups and people saying, hey, maybe we should
not be involved in this war in Vietnam. Like there
were I mean, as we tried to make clear in
the episode, like there definitely were individuals and groups who
did have UM like violent, uh, either violence as part
of the rhetoric or had been directly involved in violence
or whatever. But a lot of people were really just
(08:04):
like the way this country is working is not right
and we need to do something about it. And the
Bureau was like, that's a threat. We're going to bug
your house and fake letters to your wife to try
to get hurt to divorce you. Yeah. I don't. That's
where I'm That's where I have a really hard time
wrapping my head around. It's like, we will destroy you
(08:24):
for questioning and wanting better for everyone. That is really
terrifying to me. Yeah. We also didn't talk as much
about it in the episode, Like we did talk about
laws that variously like pulled back on um the idea
of communism being criminal um, and like court cases, especially
(08:46):
under the Warrnt Court, that were like, no, people have
the right to to talk about revolution being necessary as
like an abstract term like that, the idea that that
a lot of the things that were illegal are still legal,
like at least in terms of the law. In a
lot of cases, it's like now that's protected under the
First Amendment. Now that doesn't mean that that's enforced consistently
(09:08):
across groups, depending on what people are calling for. UM.
When you and I started recording these episodes today, I
mentioned they were being long, and you were like, this
could have been a three parter, And there was a
couple of things. One was that I had gotten to
the point where I was like, I feel like I
have gone where I can go with this UM. And
the other is that like if it could be a
(09:29):
three part or it could be like a twelve partner,
it would be an entire brand new podcast that's just
about coinil pro that's going to run for three years. Uh,
because it's a lot. There's just a lot. Um. There's
a bunch of like Freedom of Information Act stuff that's
on the like in the FBI Vault part of their
website that has you know, the documents. A lot of
(09:50):
them are redacted, but it's pages and pages and pages
stuff that you can read for yourself. UM. The Church Report,
all the stuff we read of it was from the
things that were specifically about the f b I, but
like that was a multiple volume, gigantic report. There's just
a ton of stuff. This is also a case where
if you were part of a community that was targeted
(10:10):
by one of these cotel pros. You probably already knew
a lot about this, and if you were not targeted
and don't know a lot of like FBI history or
counterintelligence history, this might have been all new information to you. Uh. Yeah,
there's part of me that wants to um ask my
(10:31):
father his thoughts on this, because I grew up in
a very conservative, like I said, military households, and I
was born in the midst of all of this. I
was born in n so really is like stuff was
hitting the fan. But I'm also afraid of that conversation. Sure, sure, yeah,
(10:54):
it's um, it's a lot, it's a whole, huge t angle. Also,
I really enjoyed watching the documentary UM, which is available
on various streaming services UM. And it was one of
those things where I had stopped working in quotation marks,
like I had stopped working for the day UM And
(11:15):
I was like, I really want to watch this documentary
and I feel like it's gonna be something that I
can watch at eight PM and not feel like I
have just worked until bedtime, which is something I try
not to do. I try to like have some time
that is just my time. UM. And I turned it
on and Patrick was in the room with me, and
(11:37):
he had not I don't think he had started out
planning to watch it, but he got totally engrossed and
the next day was like, that was so fascinating. Um.
So again I have not read the book that was
also about that same story, but UM, that documentary I
really liked. Um. And a point that probably could have
been made during the episode that we didn't make is
(11:57):
that the activists who were involved in that in that
break in, we're white, and that gave them like some
added cover in terms of like going into this apartment
building on that night to do the break in. So anyway, uh,
intel pro. It's a bunch of thoughts I had about
cointel pro. It common beered my brain more than probably
(12:18):
any other episode I have ever worked on. I would
wake up at the two o'clock in the morning thinking
about FBI counterintelligence operations, right right, Yeah. It's one of
those things where, um, you know, we live in in
in the what's casually called the information age, where there
is often discussion of whether or not people are being
(12:39):
surveilled at all times or sometimes, and whether or not
that's being done by government agencies or private companies, etcetera. Etcetera,
which is always a whole tangle that is difficult. You know,
it's it's difficult for anyone to feel confident in their
position on it because there is always a lot of
stuff that we are not privy to. UM. I will,
(13:01):
as a way to potentially end this in an up place,
just note that I like to include a lot of
absurdity in my day to day life, just in case
or Schmo is having to listen to and short through
the things that I say, like, I don't know how
it's like a twelve minute monologue about kiddies and grito.
I don't I don't know, it's weird. Wow. That seems
(13:28):
like a good place to wrap. If folks would like
send us an email or history podcast that I had
radio dot com. Uh, have a good weekend, folks. Stuff
you missed in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(13:50):
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class, A production
of I Heart Radio. Happy Friday, Everybody. I'm Tracy Vie Wilson,
and I'm Holly Frying. Uh. This week we talked about
Cohen's helpro, a nice little uplifting, peppy topic. I would say,
(00:23):
at least for me, I don't often go into an
episode thinking from the beginning, this is going to be
two parts, um. Like a lot of times it grows
into two parts while I'm working on it, um. And
this is definitely a case where that happened. A lot
of times when something grows into two parts, UM, I
(00:43):
still have both parts ready to go on the same schedule,
because the thing that really takes the longest is the
research part. Comparatively, the writing part is shorter. So like
writing the second episode a lot of times is like
still doable. This was not the case in this one.
I was like, this is gonna be two parts. That
(01:04):
I also need more time with it because it is
just a tangled mess and like a lot of it requires,
Like there's a lot of stuff that we had talked
about previously on the show before, like we have two parter,
a two parter on the the Palmer raids. We have
a two parter from previous hosts about the McCarthy era.
We have a lot of background on a lot of
(01:27):
the civil rights people and organizations that were targeted, um,
but there's other stuff that we had never really talked
about before that we're all required explaining. And then stuff
like having a whole co intel pro targeting the new
Left when nobody could define what the new Left meant.
I'm like, I'm just like picturing the mentality. I know.
(01:49):
They make me feel weird and uncomfortable, Like, yeah, I
want to shout out to my friend Amy, who was
kind of my sounding board for like how to explain
specifically why communism was so threatening, because like, man, it
was just that just the response was so disproportionate to
(02:11):
the actual amount of threat involved with communism. The response,
all of it, all of it, the entirety of the
all of the co intel pros are like totally different
response than like what was actually warranted, whether it was
grouping every organization that was fighting for equal rights for
(02:34):
Black Americans into the category of black nationalists hate groups,
or really only being concerned about the ku Klux plan
murdering people and not about all their other stuff just
so much, so much. One of the things that was
particularly frustrating to me as I was finishing this up,
because I worked on this leading up to the fourth
of July and wrapped it up after coming back from
(02:58):
like a fourth of July long weekend where I don't
know about everybody else where, we stayed at home and
did nothing. Um. Uh, we have this whole national origin
story that turns people who took up arms against what
they saw as an oppressive government and destroyed property and
(03:23):
waged a literal war. Like we frame that as heroic
in the mainstream discourse. Uh, maybe not quite as much
within the last six weeks or so, but like in general, Um,
and when you have the same kind of language being
used by black people saying we are oppressed and we
(03:44):
would like to not be oppressed anymore like than that,
we become the we being like the white majority become
the bad guys, We become Britain in the story of
American Revolution. And it just it deeply annoyed and frustrated me. Yeah. Um,
(04:06):
it's so interesting. I mean I've been kind of waxing rhapsodic.
I don't know if that's quite the right phrase. I've
been thinking a lot about all of these issues, as
I'm sure almost everyone has, But there were two things
that have been on my mind that this particular episode
really brought, like touched on that I had already been
thinking about. One was it's going to sound slightly random,
(04:30):
um the discussion of the weird attempt at at I
don't know, subterfuge, confusion, etcetera, of bringing the burnt cross
remains to a KKK meeting or having them delivered, because
I remember I grew up in a military family. So
we moved when I was nine from where we were
(04:52):
living outside of Seattle to the Panhandle of Florida, and
not long after we had moved there, three lots down
for our house, there was a huge cross burning, and
like it was one of those things where in this
episode where you talked about how like they then took
it outside and burned it, And there there was this
idea of we will shame them by making the or
(05:14):
you know, scare them by making them aware that people
know where they meet. And I was like, none of
those people in my neighborhood were the least bit concerned
about anyone knowing where they were or who they were,
so it kind of struck me as interesting. And the
other thing that I keep thinking about, because I am
trying to grasp some many of the behaviors that I
(05:35):
see that don't make sense to me, is that old
saying that actors always say when people ask them why
they're so good at playing villains, And it's because villains
don't perceive themselves as the villains. They always think that
they are the hero. And I keep trying to apply that, like,
not in any way to excuse or both sides, is
(05:57):
um anything, but try to figure out really like what
is driving some of the behaviors. And I kept thinking
about that throughout this entire discussion of like did any
of these people ever stop in question that we're involved
in these co intel pro initiatives, like, hey, we've gone
a bit too far here, or are they all like
(06:18):
this is being done for the correct reason. We are
all supporting and keeping safe what is important to us
in this country, Like I I really always have to question,
did anybody go I don't know about this one? So
I feel pretty confident that like j Edgar Hoover thought
(06:39):
he was in the right with all of this, and
of course he died before any of these hearings happened. UM.
A thing that I found is I was researching and
then when I tried to go back to find it
and confirm it to put it in the episode, was
that when UM, the co intel pro black nationalists hate
groups pivoted to focus just on the Black Panthers, But
(07:01):
there was an agent who was like, they're just they're
giving breakfast to kids, Like what why? Why? And then
you know the memo that came back just doubling down
on what a violent threat the Black Panthers were. UM.
So like I feel confident there were individual people within
this whole system who were like, what this does not
(07:22):
make a lot of sense, or we should not be
doing this. UM. But like, as an organization, the Bureau
definitely felt like it was the force that was protecting
the American people from all of these nefarious influences when
the nefarious influences were like literally civil rights groups and
(07:43):
women's rights groups and people saying, hey, maybe we should
not be involved in this war in Vietnam. Like there
were I mean, as we tried to make clear in
the episode, like there definitely were individuals and groups who
did have UM like violent, uh, either violence as part
of the rhetoric or had been directly involved in violence
or whatever. But a lot of people were really just
(08:04):
like the way this country is working is not right
and we need to do something about it. And the
Bureau was like, that's a threat. We're going to bug
your house and fake letters to your wife to try
to get hurt to divorce you. Yeah. I don't. That's
where I'm That's where I have a really hard time
wrapping my head around. It's like, we will destroy you
(08:24):
for questioning and wanting better for everyone. That is really
terrifying to me. Yeah. We also didn't talk as much
about it in the episode, Like we did talk about
laws that variously like pulled back on um the idea
of communism being criminal um, and like court cases, especially
(08:46):
under the Warrnt Court, that were like, no, people have
the right to to talk about revolution being necessary as
like an abstract term like that, the idea that that
a lot of the things that were illegal are still legal,
like at least in terms of the law. In a
lot of cases, it's like now that's protected under the
First Amendment. Now that doesn't mean that that's enforced consistently
(09:08):
across groups, depending on what people are calling for. UM.
When you and I started recording these episodes today, I
mentioned they were being long, and you were like, this
could have been a three parter, And there was a
couple of things. One was that I had gotten to
the point where I was like, I feel like I
have gone where I can go with this UM. And
the other is that like if it could be a
(09:29):
three part or it could be like a twelve partner,
it would be an entire brand new podcast that's just
about coinil pro that's going to run for three years. Uh,
because it's a lot. There's just a lot. Um. There's
a bunch of like Freedom of Information Act stuff that's
on the like in the FBI Vault part of their
website that has you know, the documents. A lot of
(09:50):
them are redacted, but it's pages and pages and pages
stuff that you can read for yourself. UM. The Church Report,
all the stuff we read of it was from the
things that were specifically about the f b I, but
like that was a multiple volume, gigantic report. There's just
a ton of stuff. This is also a case where
if you were part of a community that was targeted
(10:10):
by one of these cotel pros. You probably already knew
a lot about this, and if you were not targeted
and don't know a lot of like FBI history or
counterintelligence history, this might have been all new information to you. Uh. Yeah,
there's part of me that wants to um ask my
(10:31):
father his thoughts on this, because I grew up in
a very conservative, like I said, military households, and I
was born in the midst of all of this. I
was born in n so really is like stuff was
hitting the fan. But I'm also afraid of that conversation. Sure, sure, yeah,
(10:54):
it's um, it's a lot, it's a whole, huge t angle. Also,
I really enjoyed watching the documentary UM, which is available
on various streaming services UM. And it was one of
those things where I had stopped working in quotation marks,
like I had stopped working for the day UM And
(11:15):
I was like, I really want to watch this documentary
and I feel like it's gonna be something that I
can watch at eight PM and not feel like I
have just worked until bedtime, which is something I try
not to do. I try to like have some time
that is just my time. UM. And I turned it
on and Patrick was in the room with me, and
(11:37):
he had not I don't think he had started out
planning to watch it, but he got totally engrossed and
the next day was like, that was so fascinating. Um.
So again I have not read the book that was
also about that same story, but UM, that documentary I
really liked. Um. And a point that probably could have
been made during the episode that we didn't make is
(11:57):
that the activists who were involved in that in that
break in, we're white, and that gave them like some
added cover in terms of like going into this apartment
building on that night to do the break in. So anyway, uh,
intel pro. It's a bunch of thoughts I had about
cointel pro. It common beered my brain more than probably
(12:18):
any other episode I have ever worked on. I would
wake up at the two o'clock in the morning thinking
about FBI counterintelligence operations, right right, Yeah. It's one of
those things where, um, you know, we live in in
in the what's casually called the information age, where there
is often discussion of whether or not people are being
(12:39):
surveilled at all times or sometimes, and whether or not
that's being done by government agencies or private companies, etcetera. Etcetera,
which is always a whole tangle that is difficult. You know,
it's it's difficult for anyone to feel confident in their
position on it because there is always a lot of
stuff that we are not privy to. UM. I will,
(13:01):
as a way to potentially end this in an up place,
just note that I like to include a lot of
absurdity in my day to day life, just in case
or Schmo is having to listen to and short through
the things that I say, like, I don't know how
it's like a twelve minute monologue about kiddies and grito.
I don't I don't know, it's weird. Wow. That seems
(13:28):
like a good place to wrap. If folks would like
send us an email or history podcast that I had
radio dot com. Uh, have a good weekend, folks. Stuff
you missed in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(13:50):
listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
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Holly Frey
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