COINTELPRO, short for Counterintelligence Program, exposed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Targeting Organizations to Discredit them Using Intense Surveillance, Organizational Infiltration, Anonymous Mailings, and Police Harassment.
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COINTELPRO, short for Counterintelligence Program was a counterintelligence program conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 1956 to 1971 to discredit and neutralize organizations the United States government targeted by infiltrating the organization to discredit them. It was covert and often used extralegal means to criminalize various forms of political struggle and derail several social movements, such as those for civil rights.
The COINTELPRO operations were initiated against various organizations and the tactics included intense surveillance, organizational infiltration, anonymous mailings, and police harassment. These programs were exposed in 1971 when the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI burglarized an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, stole confidential files, and then released them to the press. More information regarding COINTELPRO was later obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, lawsuits lodged against the FBI by the BPP and the SWP, and statements by agents who came forward to confess their counterintelligence activities. A major investigation was launched in 1975 by the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, commonly referred to as the “Church Committee,” for its chairman, Senator Frank Church. Although millions of pages of documents remain unreleased, and many released documents are heavily censored. In its final report, the committee sharply criticized COINTELPRO. This link is the actual FBI website where the FBI posts the Freedom of Information Act requests that further revealed targeting to the groups: White Hate Groups, the New Left, Puerto Rican Groups, Black Extremists, Hoodwink, Cuba, Socialist Workers Party, and Espionage Programs, that reveal COINTELPRO. https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro |