By Felicia Mello
Justice, paper
of Socialist Alternative (US-CWI), Issue No. 33 February-March 2003
The FBI's counterintelligence
programs (COINTELPRO) of the 1950's, '60s, and '70s formed one of the most
infamous domestic initiatives in US history, targeting organizations and
individuals whom the FBI saw as threatening the racist, capitalist status quo.
Through surveillance, misinformation, frame-ups, and assassinations of radical
leaders, the FBI sowed mistrust, ruined reputations, turned husbands against
wives, and cost many their jobs or lives.
The Church Committee, a Senate
body that held hearings on COINTELPRO after its exposure in the early 1970's,
estimated that as of 1976 the FBI maintained over 500,000 domestic intelligence
files. Those being spied upon included student activists, the black liberation
movement, the women's liberation movement, and socialist organizations, as well
as more "mainstream" religious organizations and political
candidates. 26,000 individuals were on a list of people to be placed in
concentration camps in the event of a "national emergency."
The FBI did not hesitate to
break the law or violate supposedly Constitutionally protected freedoms of
speech and association. After COINTELPRO director William C. Sullivan concluded
in a 1963 memo that Martin Luther King, Jr. was "the most dangerous Negro
in the future of this nation," he wrote: "it may be unrealistic to
limit [our actions against King] to legalistic proofs that would stand up in
court or before Congressional Committees."
The FBI waged an intense war
against Martin Luther King up until his assassination in 1968, and a civil
trial in 1999 concluded that forces linked to the state were involved in his
murder. They bugged his hotel rooms, tried to provoke IRS investigations
against him, and harassed magazines that published articles about him. The
Bureau sent him a doctored tape which claimed to prove he had participated in
orgies with prostitutes. The accompanying note read: "King, you are done
... There is only one-way out for you," urging him to commit suicide or
else the tape would be leaked to the media.
The official rationale for
COINTELPRO was that the organizations under surveillance were likely to commit
acts of violence. In fact, few arrests were ever made for violent crimes. Most
targeted organizations, such as King's Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, were explicitly non-violent, whereas FBI activities were often
directly or indirectly responsible for violence against activists.
The most brutal attacks were
reserved for the black liberation movement. In 1967, the FBI established the
"Black Nationalist Hate Groups" program to "prevent a coalition
of militant black nationalist groups, ... prevent the rise of a messiah who
could unify and electrify the militant nationalist movement," and
"prevent ... groups and leaders from gaining respectability by
discrediting them." The more organizations succeeded at mobilizing the
community and linking civil rights with demands for deeper economic and
structural change, the more they became FBI targets.
The formation of the Black
Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP) crystallized the growing militancy and
support for socialism in the black community. By 1969, they were the number one
focus of the FBI. BPP chairwoman Elaine Brown wrote: "the FBI used the
full weight of its counterintelligence program to lay waste to the party."
Agents in L.A. stirred up
tensions between the Panthers and an organization called United Slaves (U.S.),
which resulted in at least four BPP members being killed by the U.S. The FBI
had sent derogatory cartoons and threats to Panther members "signed"
by the U.S. After the murders, a local FBI office learned that the two groups
were trying to talk out their differences peacefully. Their response? Send more
cartoons to provoke further violence.
The FBI's utter disdain for the
law was also revealed in the case of Panther leader Geronimo Pratt. Pratt spent
27 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. His conviction was
overturned only after it was revealed that the FBI was spying on a BPP meeting
Pratt attended in Oakland at the same time the murder was being committed in
L.A.
Government persecution of US
citizens involved in legal political activities did not begin with COINTELPRO.
Previous attempts include the campaign against W.E.B. DuBois and the NAACP, and
the anti-communist/anti-labor Palmer raids. But COINTELPRO was the first
large-scale, systematic use of modern intelligence techniques to repress
political opponents of the ruling class.
The US government officially
ended COINTELPRO in 1971 under enormous pressure from popular movements. After
its defeat in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal, the ruling class was forced to
accept a series of reforms that curtailed the repressive powers of the police,
FBI, and other agencies.
These reforms were intended to
restore confidence in the government and included the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA), which distinguished between foreign intelligence
gathering and domestic law enforcement, setting strict standards of judicial
oversight for the latter.
However, as Ward Churchill and
Jim Vander Wall explain in The COINTELPRO Papers: "By discontinuing use of
the term 'COINTELPRO,' the Bureau gave the appearance of acceding to public and
congressional pressure. In reality, it protected its capacity to continue
precisely the same activity under other names." In the late 1980's an FBI
informant admitted he was paid by the FBI to infiltrate and disrupt the Central
American solidarity organization CISPES from 1981 to 1984.
The horrific terrorist attacks
of 9/11 gave the ruling elite an opportunity to reverse the reforms of the
1970's by substantially restricting civil liberties and strengthening the
repressive powers of the state. This process had already begun before 9/11,
using the pretexts of the wars on drugs and crime and earlier anti-terrorist
legislation.
The Patriot Act, passed shortly
after 9/11, is a massive attack on democratic rights. It breaks down the
barrier between foreign and domestic intelligence established in FISA, and
gives law enforcement new powers to conduct surveillance and confiscate
property based solely on suspicion of terrorist activity.
A host of other repressive
measures have accompanied the Patriot Act. Fear of deportation and indefinite
detention without trial have become the norm for Arab and Muslim communities.
Yet another shocking attempt to
restrict civil liberties came to light in February. The Center for Public
Integrity obtained copies of a secret draft bill prepared by the Justice
Department and distributed to the Vice President and House Speaker for review.
The proposed legislation would allow the government to take away a person's
U.S. citizenship if they are a member of, provide support to a group designated
as "terrorist." It would authorize creation of a DNA database of
suspected terrorists and repeal consent decrees passed to limit police spying
in major cities.
The lesson of COINTELPRO is that
when the ruling class's interests are threatened, the Constitution will not
stop them from trying to repress those threats. The Patriot Act and other
"anti-terrorist" legislation gives the government further repressive
powers that can be used to attack the working class and the oppressed.
These laws are inevitably implemented in a racist fashion.
COINTELPRO especially targeted African Americans, while today the Patriot Act
especially targets immigrants and Muslims. Like COINTELPRO, the Patriot Act is
a threat to all anti-war, union, and civil rights activists and anyone else the
government perceives as "dangerous."
We cannot rely on our
"justice system," the Democrats, or the Republicans to protect our
hard-won freedoms. Our democratic rights can only be defended by mass struggles
of the working class and ultimately by abolishing the inherently undemocratic
capitalist system.
COINTELPRO was defeated by the
mass movements of the '60s and '70s. Similarly today, by building a powerful
movement of workers, people of color, and young people, we can defeat these new
racist, undemocratic laws.
We've more articles on American
Labour History, or Labour History generally and an extensive listing of other
pieces from the pages of Socialist Voice, Socialist View, etc. here.