{"id":17863,"date":"2022-12-27T10:38:37","date_gmt":"2022-12-27T15:38:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=17863"},"modified":"2022-12-27T16:49:33","modified_gmt":"2022-12-27T21:49:33","slug":"fbi-cointelpro-is-back-and-worse-than-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/27\/fbi-cointelpro-is-back-and-worse-than-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"FBI COINTELPRO Is Back, And Worse Than Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>Libertarian Institute, December 27, 2022\"\"<\/a><\/h3>\n

FBI COINTELPRO Is Back, And Worse Than Ever<\/a><\/h1>\n

by Jim Bovard<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Elon Musk has opened the floodgates to expose the FBI\u2019s latest war on Americans\u2019 freedom of speech. The FBI massively intervened to pressure Twitter to suppress accounts and tweets from individuals the FBI disapproved of, including parody accounts. The FBI and other federal agencies also browbeat Facebook, Instagram, and many other social media companies.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thus far, most of the American corporate media has ignored or downplayed the story, known as the Twitter Files. Since many of the individuals who the FBI got squelched were pro-Trump, the violation of their rights is a non-issue (or a cause for quiet celebration). At this point, it is difficult to know whether the scant reaction to the Twitter Files is the result of political bias, collective amnesia, or simply a total ignorance of American history.<\/p>\n

The history of the FBI provides the best guide to the abuses that may be now occurring. From 1956 to 1971, the FBI carried out \u201ca secret war against those citizens it considers threats to the established order<\/span><\/a>,\u201d a 1976 Senate report noted. The FBI\u2019s Operation COINTELPRO involved thousands<\/span><\/a> of covert operations to incite<\/span><\/a> street warfare between violent groups, to get people fired, to portray innocent people as government informants, to destroy activists\u2019 marriages, and to cripple or destroy left-wing, black, communist, white racist, and anti-war organizations. The FBI let no corner of American life escape its vigilance; it even worked to expose and discredit \u201ccommunists who are secretly operating in legitimate organizations and employments, such as the Young Men\u2019s Christian Association and Boy Scouts.\u201d<\/p>\n

While many people are aware of how the FBI hounded Martin Luther King Jr. and pressured him to commit suicide, that was not even the tip of the iceberg of the FBI\u2019s racial persecution. Almost any black organization could be targeted for illegal wiretaps. One black leader was monitored largely because he had \u201crecommended the possession of firearms by members for their self-protection.\u201d At that time, some southern police departments and sheriffs were notorious for attacking blacks who stood up for their civil rights.<\/p>\n

The FBI office in San Diego instigated violence between the local Black Panthers and a rival black organization, US (United Slaves Inc.). Agents sent forged letters making accusations and threats to the groups purportedly from their rivals, along with crude cartoons and drawings meant to enrage the recipients. Three Black Panthers and one member of the US were killed during the time the FBI was fanning the flames. A few days after shootings in which two Panthers were wounded and one was killed, and in which the US headquarters was bombed, the FBI office reported to headquarters: \u201cEfforts are being made to determine how this situation can be capitalized upon for the benefit of the Counterintelligence Program.\u201d The FBI office bragged shortly thereafter: \u201cShootings, beatings, and a high degree of unrest continues to prevail in the ghetto area of southeast San Diego\u2026it is felt that a substantial amount of the unrest is directly attributable to this [FBI] program.\u201d<\/p>\n

The FBI set up a Ghetto Informant Program that continued after COINTELPRO and that had 7,402 informants, including proprietors of candy stores and barbershops, as of September 1972. The informants served as \u201clistening posts\u201d \u201cto identify extremists passing through or locating in the ghetto area, to identify purveyors of extremist literature,\u201d and to keep an eye on \u201cAfro-American type bookstores\u201d (including obtaining the names of the bookstore\u2019s \u201cclientele\u201d). The informants\u2019 reports were stockpiled in the FBI\u2019s Racial Intelligence Unit. The FBI also created a national \u201cRabble Rouser\u201d Index, a \u201cmajor intelligence program\u2026to identify \u2018demagogues.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The FBI targeted the women\u2019s liberation movement, resulting in \u201cintensive reporting on the identities and opinions of women who attended\u201d women\u2019s lib meetings. One FBI informant reported to headquarters of a meeting in New York: \u201cEach woman at this meeting stated why she had come to the meeting and how she felt oppressed, sexually or otherwise\u2026They are mostly against marriage, children, and other states of oppression caused by men.\u201d Women\u2019s lib informants were instructed to \u201cgo to meetings, write up reports\u2026to try to identify the background of every person there\u2026[and] who they were sleeping with.\u201d The Senate report noted that \u201cthe intensive FBI investigation of the Women\u2019s Liberation Movement was predicated on the theory that the activities of women in that Movement might lead to demonstrations and violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The FBI took a shotgun approach toward protesters partly because of its \u201cbelief that dissident speech and association should be prevented because they were incipient steps toward the possible ultimate commission of an act which might be criminal.\u201d<\/strong> Some FBI agents may have viewed dissident speech or protests as a \u201cgateway drug\u201d to blowing up the Washington Monument. The Senate report noted that the clearest FBI COINTELPRO constitutional violations consisted of \u201ctargeting speakers, teachers, writers or publications, and meetings or peaceful demonstrations\u2026The cases include attempts (sometimes successful) to get university and high school teachers fired\u2026to prevent the distribution of books, newspapers, or periodicals; to disrupt peaceful demonstrations, including\u2026most of the large antiwar marches.\u201d<\/p>\n

The FBI especially loathed any opposition to the Vietnam War.<\/strong> The bureau ordered field offices in 1968 to gather information illustrating the \u201cscurrilous and depraved nature of many of the characters, activities, habits, and living conditions representative of New Left adherents.\u201d FBI agents were told: \u201cEvery avenue of possible embarrassment must be vigorously and enthusiastically explored. It cannot be expected that information of this type will be easily obtained, and an imaginative approach by your personnel is imperative to its success.\u201d One FBI internal newsletter encouraged agents to conduct more interviews with antiwar activists \u201cfor plenty of reasons, chief of which are it will enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and will further serve to get the point across that there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox.\u201d<\/p>\n

An FBI memo warned that \u201cthe anarchist activities of a few can paralyze institutions of learning, [conscription] induction centers, cripple traffic, and tie the arms of law enforcement officials, all to the detriment of our society.\u201d The FBI declared: \u201cThe New Left has on many occasions viciously and scurrilously attacked the Director [J. Edgar Hoover] and the Bureau in an attempt to hamper our investigation of it and to drive us off the college campuses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other federal agencies also trampled citizens\u2019 privacy, rights, and lives during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The IRS used COINTELPRO leads to launch audits against thousands of suspected political enemies of the Nixon administration. The U.S. Army set up its own surveillance program, creating files on 100,000 Americans and targeting domestic organizations such as the Young Americans for Freedom, the John Birch Society, and the Anti-Defamation League of B\u2019Nai B\u2019rith. Nixon aide Tom Charles Huston, testifying to Congress in 1973, lamented the FBI\u2019s tendency \u201cto move from the kid with a bomb to the kid with a picket sign, and from the kid with the picket sign to the kid with the bumper sticker of the opposing candidate. And you just keep going down the line.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout the COINTELPRO era, presidents, congressmen, and other high-ranking federal officials assured Americans that the federal government was obeying the law and upholding the Constitution. It took a burglary of an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania to break the biggest scandal in the history of federal law enforcement. After hundreds of pages of confidential records were commandeered, the \u201cCitizen\u2019s Commission to Investigate the FBI\u201d began passing out the incriminating documents to the media. The shocking material sparked congressional and news investigations that eventually (temporarily) shattered the FBI\u2019s legendary ability to control its own image.<\/p>\n

The Senate report on COINTELPRO concluded: \u201cOnly a combination of legislative prohibition and Departmental control can guarantee that COINTELPRO will not happen again.\u201d But the Ford administration derailed legislative reforms by promising an administrative fix. In 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft threw out many of those reforms as part of \u201ca concerted effort to free the [FBI] field agents\u2026from the bureaucratic, organizational, and operational restrictions\u201d imposed after their prior abuses. Ashcroft declared: \u201cIn its 94-year history, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been\u2026the tireless protector of civil rights and civil liberties for all Americans.\u201d The same tripe has been uttered by many Democrats and liberals in the last five years.<\/p>\n

The FBI\u2019s latest war on wrong-thinking Americans took off after the FBI helped fabricate the narrative that the Russian government conspired with the Trump presidential campaign to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.\u00a0The 1976 Senate report noted that COINTELPRO\u2019s origins \u201care rooted in the Bureau\u2019s jurisdiction to investigate hostile foreign intelligence activities on American soil\u201d and that the FBI used the \u201ctechniques of wartime.\u201d William Sullivan, former assistant to the FBI director, declared, \u201cNo holds were barred\u2026We have used [these techniques] against Soviet agents\u2026[The same methods were] brought home against any organization against which we were targeted. We did not differentiate.\u201d Senate investigators warned in 1976 that the \u201cFBI intelligence system developed to a point where no one inside or outside the bureau was willing or able<\/span><\/a> to tell the difference between legitimate national security or law enforcement information and purely political intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n

In our time, FBI officials pressured Twitter to suppress Americans based on false claims of fighting foreign influence. The same pretext was used by the Department of Homeland Security to massively suppress<\/span><\/a> Americans\u2019 criticism of election procedures (especially mail-in ballots) for the 2020 presidential election.<\/p>\n

One of the biggest \u201cmisses\u201d in the media coverage of the Twitter Files is the stunning failure of Congress to expose the abuses that Elon Musk is revealing<\/strong>. A few months ago, FBI director Christopher Wray, facing vigorous questioning from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) and others, walked out of a Senate oversight hearing claiming that he had an urgent appointment he must keep. It was later revealed that Wray\u2019s \u201cappointment\u201d was hopping on an FBI jet for a family vacation. Congress punished the FBI with a $570 million budget increase, plowing $11.3 billion into its coffers in the coming year.<\/p>\n

Is Congress terrified of the FBI nowadays like congressmen were in the COINTELPRO era?<\/strong> In 1971, House Majority Leader Hale Boggs revealed the shameless kowtowing on Capitol Hill: \u201cOur very fear of speaking out [against the FBI]\u2026has watered the roots and hastened the growth of a vine of tyranny\u2026Our society cannot survive a planned and programmed fear of its own government bureaus and agencies.\u201d Boggs vindicated a 1924 American Civil Liberties Union warning that the FBI had become \u201ca secret police system of a political character.\u201d (The Louisiana congressman died a year later in an apparent plane crash.)<\/p>\n

But old quotes provide no protection against new depredations. The Twitter Files prove that G-men have been off the leash for years. We still have no idea how far the FBI and other federal agencies have gone to suppress our freedom of speech. Until federal abuses are fully exposed, Americans would be damn fools to believe their constitutional rights are safe.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Libertarian Institute, December 27, 2022 FBI COINTELPRO Is Back, And Worse Than Ever by Jim Bovard Elon Musk has opened the floodgates to expose the FBI\u2019s latest war on Americans\u2019 freedom of speech. The FBI massively intervened to pressure Twitter to suppress accounts and tweets from individuals the FBI disapproved of, including parody accounts. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17870,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[42,359,1868,602,391,2718,253,15,1291,3486,3227,47,3478,3482,1170,1262,2534,3481,734,1107,3479],"class_list":["post-17863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-afghanistan","tag-antiwar","tag-blacks","tag-boy-scouts","tag-censorship","tag-christopher-wray","tag-cointelpro","tag-congress","tag-dhs","tag-dissidents","tag-elon-musk","tag-fbi","tag-feminists","tag-grassley","tag-hale-boggs","tag-john-ashcroft","tag-martin-luther-king","tag-new-left","tag-twitter","tag-ukraine","tag-ymca"],"yoast_head":"\nFBI COINTELPRO Is Back, And Worse Than Ever - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"FBI's COINTELPRO program ravaged Americans' rights and liberties in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, Twitter Files reveal old FBI is back\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/27\/fbi-cointelpro-is-back-and-worse-than-ever\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"FBI COINTELPRO Is Back, And Worse Than Ever - 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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