COINTELPRO (an acronym for COunter INTELligence PROgram) was a series of covert, and at times illegal,[1][2] projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveying, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.[3] National Security Agency operation Project MINARET targeted the personal communications of leading Americans who criticized the Vietnam War, including Senators (e.g., Frank Church and Howard Baker), civil rights leaders, journalists, and athletes.[4][5] The official COINTELPRO label took place between 1956 and 1971.[6][7] The FBIs stated motivation was protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order.[8] FBI records show that 85% of COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals that the FBI deemed subversive,[9] including communist and socialist organizations; organizations and individuals associated with the Civil Rights Movement, including Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others associated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Congress of Racial Equality and other civil rights organizations; black nationalist groups; the Young Lords; the Rainbow Coalition; the American Indian Movement; a broad range of organizations labeled New Left, including Students for a Democratic Society and the Weathermen; almost all groups protesting the Vietnam War, as well as individual student demonstrators with no group affiliation; the National Lawyers Guild; organizations and individuals associated with the womens rights movement; nationalist groups such as those seeking independence for Puerto Rico, United Ireland, and Cuban exile movements including Orlando Boschs Cuban Power and the Cuban Nationalist Movement; and additional notable Americans (for example, Albert Einstein, who was a socialist and a member of several civil rights groups, came under FBI surveillance during the years just before COINTELPROs official inauguration).[10] The remaining 15% of COINTELPRO resources were expended to marginalize and subvert white supremist hate groups, including the Ku Klux Klan and the National States Rights Party.[11] FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover issued directives governing COINTELPRO, ordering FBI agents to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, neutralize or otherwise eliminate the activities of these movements and their leaders.[12][13] Under Hoover, the agent in charge of COINTELPRO was William C. Sullivan.[14] Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy personally authorized some of these programs.[15] Kennedy would later learn that he also had been a target of FBI surveillance..
Posted on: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 18:16:25 +0000