Undercover Fbi Investigation - Cointelpro

Between the years of 1956 and 1971 the Federal Bureau of Investigation performed a series of counterintelligence programs aimed at disrupting the change that was happening with the America public. The FBI sought to disrupt and discredit the leaders and organizations promoting political and social change using a "by any means necessary" approach. When the American public learned of the secret investigations they learned that the FBI had overstepped their jurisdiction and infringed on the constitutional rights of their targets. The result of these counterintelligence programs was a distrust of the FBI by the American people that continues today.

The period of social change and political unrest during the 1960's was marked by massive anti-war protests in many major cities in the United States and many black rebellions calling for equal rights. Many people, including presidents Johnson and Nixon feared that these movements could turn to violent revolution and denounced many of the protestors. The FBI also countered these political and social movements through counterintelligence programs collectively called COINTELPRO. Longtime director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover was an ardent anti-communist and it was his sentiments and beliefs that helped to dictate the tactics and goals used by the FBI during the COINTELPRO period. "The Forces which are most anxious to weaken our internal security are not always easy to identify. Communists have been trained in deceit and secretly work toward the day when they hope to replace our American way of life with a Communist dictatorship. They utilize cleverly camouflaged movements, such as peace groups and civil rights groups to achieve their sinister purposes. While they as individuals are difficult to identify, the Communist part line is clear. Its first concern is the advancement of Soviet Russia and the godless Communist cause. It is important to learn to know the enemies of the American way of life." Although there were no connections made between any of the COINTELPRO targets and Soviet Russia, Hoover and the FBI applied this theory to many social and political activist groups. Because they believed that these groups were linked with Communism, these groups and many of their leaders were deemed "enemies of the State" and it was the goal of COINTELPRO to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize" these groups.

There were six official programs involved with COINTELPRO to investigate certain groups from 1956-1971. These six groups were, the Communist Party USA from 1959-1971, Groups Seeking Independence for Puerto Rico from 1960-1971, the Socialist Workers Party from 1961-1971, White Hate Groups from 1964-1971, Black Nationalist Hate Groups from 1967-1971 and the New Left from 1968-1971. FBI documents also reveal that covert action was taken against Native American, Philippine and Arab-American activist groups without formal counterintelligence programs. Throughout the COINTELPRO period the most intense targets were civil rights groups and groups of the new left.

It is clear that the political movements of the 1960's such as the Students for a Democratic Society and The Weathermen were targeted by the FBI because of Hoover's theory that they were attempting to destroy the American way of life and replace it with communism. The anti-war movement of the 60's was probably a major factor why the FBI tried so hard to discredit the movement and the leaders involved. The SDS, which was one of the most prominent anti-war groups of the 60's started as a group calling for a non-violent protest to promote a more true participatory democracy in the United States. They based their ideas of a participatory democracy on certain fundamental beliefs laid out in the Port Huron Statement, "decision-making of basic social consequence be carried on by public groupings; that politics be seen positively, as the art of collectively creating an acceptable pattern of social relations; that politics has the function of bringing people out of isolation and into community, thus being a necessary, though not sufficient, means of finding meaning in personal life; that the political order should serve to clarify problems in a way instrumental to their solution; it should provide outlets for the expression of personal grievance and aspiration; opposing views should be organized so as to illuminate choices and facilities the attainment of goals; channels should be commonly available to related men to knowledge and to power so that private problems -- from bad recreation facilities to personal alienation -- are formulated as general issues." As the anti-war and student movements grew they also became more radicalized. The Weathermen were a group that grew from the SDS and began to sympathize with the North Vietnamese. They believed that the National Liberation Front deserved to win the war in Vietnam and they began to fly the Vietcong banner at protests for the first time. They also began to question the basic democracy of the United States and whether Communism was the answer to what they saw as a corrupt United States government. The FBI took notice and began the tactics of COINTELPRO to attempt to stop this movement in its tracks. According to Fred Halstead in Out Now: A Participant's account of the Movement in the U.S. Against the Vietnam War authorities attempted to discredit the anti-war movement by performing break-ins, thefts, illegal surveillance, provocations, including violent ones, FBI-fabricated forgeries designed to foment hostility between groups and individuals, arrests, jailings, frame-ups, beatings, kidnappings, shootings, court-martials, bad-conduct discharges, and assorted "dirty tricks." These tactics and "dirty tricks" were the typical practice of the FBI to discredit many anti-war movements during the COINTELPRO era.

The most intense operations of COINTELPRO were directed against the civil rights movement, The Black Panther Party in particular. The civil rights movement turned militant against groups like The Black Panther Party and individuals such as Malcolm X but some people suggest that groups such as The Black Panther Party turned militant because of the work of the FBI and COINTELPRO. They believe that the FBI started their investigations into The Black Panther Party when they were a peaceful organization mostly providing services such as free food, health care and community services. It was the investigations and harassment of the FBI that eventually provoked The Black Panther Party into becoming an armed, more militant movement. It was not only the more violent groups of the civil rights movement that were targeted, it was peaceful civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and peaceful student demonstrators. In once incident, students from South