Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Something that
Speaker 1: has come up several times on our show is FBI
Speaker 1: surveillance of people who were associated with the civil rights
Speaker 1: movement in the United States. Most recently, we talked about
Speaker 1: the bureau creating this file on James Baldwin that was
Speaker 1: more than seventeen hundred pages long, and in earlier episodes,
Speaker 1: we've talked about things like the FBI using wire taps
Speaker 1: to spy on Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr.
Speaker 1: A lot of this surveillance was connected to a series
Speaker 1: of counterintelligence programs or Cohen's hell pros that primarily targeted
Speaker 1: left wing organizations and people in the US from nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty six until nineteen seventy one. The FBI framed this
Speaker 1: as work that was necessary to prevent violence and protect
Speaker 1: national purity, But a whole lot of the people and
Speaker 1: organizations that they targeted, we're not violent and we're not
Speaker 1: threatening national security. Mostly they were just threatening the status quo,
Speaker 1: and the FBI pursued the one co intel pro that
Speaker 1: really really was focused on violent organizations with a totally
Speaker 1: different end in mind than what it pursued with the
Speaker 1: other operations. Um, this is one of those topics that
Speaker 1: includes a whole lot of history that is just a
Speaker 1: complicated tangle, So we're gonna tackle it in two parts. Today,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about the history of the FBI, especially as
Speaker 1: it related to communism and perceived subversive threats, because all
Speaker 1: that fed directly into co Intel Pro. We're also going
Speaker 1: to give an overview of the types of tactics that
Speaker 1: the FBI used across these various programs, and we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about the one co intel pro that was
Speaker 1: kind of an outlier in all of this, which was
Speaker 1: co Intel Pro White Hate. Next time, we will get
Speaker 1: into some of the specifics of the co intel pros
Speaker 1: that geted black liberation organizations and the new Left, as
Speaker 1: well as how these programs were finally exposed to the public.
Speaker 1: The investigation team that would become the US Federal Bureau
Speaker 1: of Investigation was established in nineteen o eight, and at
Speaker 1: first this was a small group of newly hired investigators
Speaker 1: who worked for the Department of Justice under the Office
Speaker 1: of the Chief Examiner. Before this point, when the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice needed investigators, it had either hired private investigators
Speaker 1: or borrowed investigators from other departments. In nineteen o nine,
Speaker 1: the Office of the Chief Examiner was renamed the Bureau
Speaker 1: of Investigation. The Bureau's work involved enforcing federal law and
Speaker 1: helping to protect the nation from threats. In nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: just after the US entered World War One, Congress passed
Speaker 1: the Espionage Act, or an Act to punish acts of
Speaker 1: interference with foreign relations, the neutrality of the foreign commerce
Speaker 1: of the United States, to punish espionage and better to
Speaker 1: enforce the criminal laws of the United States, and for
Speaker 1: other purposes. The Bureau of Investigation had become the government's
Speaker 1: largest investigative agency, and it was tasked with enforcing the
Speaker 1: Espionage Act. The Bureau of Investigation also had an assortment
Speaker 1: of other duties, including guarding the US border with Mexico
Speaker 1: during the Mexican Revolution. The same year that the Espionage
Speaker 1: Act was passed, j Edgar Hoover joined the Department of Justice.
Speaker 1: The following year, Congress passed the Sedition Act, which expanded
Speaker 1: the Espionage Act to focus on anti war activists and socialists.
Speaker 1: The Sedition Act made it a federal crime to quote, willfully, utter, print, rite,
Speaker 1: or publish any disloyal, profane, scureless, or abusive language about
Speaker 1: the form of the government of the United States. It
Speaker 1: also outlawed urging, inciting, or advocating any curtailment or reduction
Speaker 1: in the production of war material. Then, in nineteen nineteen
Speaker 1: U s. Attorney General amish Will Palmer his home was bombed.
Speaker 1: This was part of a series of male bombings carried
Speaker 1: out that year, with seven other bombings happening on that
Speaker 1: same night. We have a two part episode on the
Speaker 1: bombings and the massive series of raids and deportations that followed,
Speaker 1: and that two parter originally came out in twenties sixteen.
Speaker 1: J Edgar Hoover led a team to investigate these bombings,
Speaker 1: and the espionage and Sedition Acts were a big part
Speaker 1: of it. The raids, incarcerations, and deportations that followed became
Speaker 1: known as the Palmer Raids and they were part of
Speaker 1: the first Red Scare, which was a widespread fear of Bolshevists, anarchists, socialists,
Speaker 1: and immigrants as a threat to American life and national
Speaker 1: security by Attorney General Palmer's handling of these investigations had
Speaker 1: come under intense scrutiny from both within and outside of
Speaker 1: the US government. On May of that year, a team
Speaker 1: of twelve lawyers issued a report on the raids. Mr
Speaker 1: report detailed cruel and unusual punishments, arrests without warrant, unreasonable
Speaker 1: search as in seizures, compelling persons to witness against themselves,
Speaker 1: propaganda by the Department of Justice, and provocative agents, which
Speaker 1: were basically operatives who entrapped people. Palmer's reputation suffered as
Speaker 1: a result of all this, and he returned to private
Speaker 1: practice after failing to win the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
Speaker 1: William J. Flynn was director of the Bureau of Investigation
Speaker 1: at the time, and soon he was replaced as well.
Speaker 1: The Espionage and Sedition Acts were repealed in nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: and ninety one, but Hoover's reputation wasn't really tarnished by
Speaker 1: his involvement in all this. Soon he was being groomed
Speaker 1: to take over the Bureau. J. Edgar Hoover became the
Speaker 1: Bureau of Investigations director in nineteen twenty four, and the
Speaker 1: Bureau was renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty five. Of course, there is a ton of history
Speaker 1: between when Hoover joined the Department of Justice and when
Speaker 1: the FBI started its co into prose. Hoover was involved
Speaker 1: in modernizing and standardizing the FBI, and the bureau itself
Speaker 1: was involved in investigating organized crime during prohibition. During World
Speaker 1: War Two, the FBI also maintained lists of Japanese, German,
Speaker 1: and Italian nationals believed to be a threat to domestic
Speaker 1: security and kept those people under surveillance. Then, of course,
Speaker 1: Japanese immigrants and their American born descendants were incarcerated under
Speaker 1: Executive Order ninety sixty six. That is also covered any
Speaker 1: previous two parter of the podcast. The Central Intelligence Agency
Speaker 1: was founded in nineteen forty seven to focus on foreign intelligence.
Speaker 1: That left the FBI to focus on domestic intelligence and
Speaker 1: on investigating federal crimes. This creation of the CIA happened
Speaker 1: under the National Security Act of nineteen forty seven, and
Speaker 1: that act also included this definition of counter intelligence quote
Speaker 1: information gathered and activities conducted to protect against espionage, other
Speaker 1: intelligence activities, sabotage or assassinations conducted by or on behalf
Speaker 1: of foreign governments or elements thereof foreign organizations or foreign persons,
Speaker 1: or international terrorist activities. A big part of this same
Speaker 1: time span was the fight against communism. Following a precedent
Speaker 1: that had been set by the Palmer Aids, the First
Speaker 1: Red Scare, and the Espionage and Sedition Acts, in nineteen forty,
Speaker 1: Congress passed the Alien Registration Act, also known as the
Speaker 1: Smith Act, and this act included clauses that made it
Speaker 1: illegal for any citizen or resident of the US to quote, advocate,
Speaker 1: a bet, advise, or teach the duty, necessity, desirability, or
Speaker 1: propriety of overthrowing, or destroying any government in the United
Speaker 1: States by force or violence. Just as the Espionage and
Speaker 1: Sedition Acts had been used to target political dissenters and immigrants,
Speaker 1: the Smith Act became a primary tool for prosecuting calm anists.
Speaker 1: In ninety eight, eleven leaders of the Communist Party USA
Speaker 1: were tried and convicted under the Smith Act. They hadn't
Speaker 1: been directly advocating for the overthrow of the U S government,
Speaker 1: but they had been teaching from works by Karl Marx
Speaker 1: and Vladimir Lenin that described the revolutionary overthrow of governments
Speaker 1: as necessary. The Supreme Court upheld these convictions and Dennis
Speaker 1: versus the United States in nineteen fifty one, and this
Speaker 1: court decision moved the country away from an earlier standard
Speaker 1: that required evidence of a clear and present danger in
Speaker 1: order to justify the government placing limits on free speech.
Speaker 1: The focus on communism escalated during the Cold War. World
Speaker 1: War two had left the US and the USS are
Speaker 1: as the two remaining superpowers, and at first the US
Speaker 1: was the only one with nuclear weapons, but the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union detonated its first to nuclear device in nineteen forty nine,
Speaker 1: and soon it became clear that spies had been at
Speaker 1: work within the US nuclear program. This sparked an increasing
Speaker 1: fixation on the idea that Soviet agents were infiltrating the
Speaker 1: United States, including through the US Communist Party. There was
Speaker 1: also a more general fear of Communist infiltration, regardless of
Speaker 1: whether a particular person or organization had ties back to
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union. The House un American Activities Committee had
Speaker 1: been established in nineteen thirty eight to investigate suspected disloyalty,
Speaker 1: including ties to communism, during the Cold War. The committee's
Speaker 1: activities became notorious under the direction of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Speaker 1: This was all part of the Second Red Scare, which
Speaker 1: was another national panic, this time focused on the idea
Speaker 1: of Communist infiltration. This panic grew out of the tensions
Speaker 1: between the US and the U. S s R, and
Speaker 1: it was further inflamed by other events like the Chinese
Speaker 1: Communist Revolution which started in nineteen forty nine and the
Speaker 1: Korean War which started in nineteen fifty. To be clear,
Speaker 1: some of the people targeted by the House and American
Speaker 1: Activities Committee really were communists or otherwise had ties to
Speaker 1: the Communist Party, and there were some communists who really
Speaker 1: did have ties back to the Soviet Union and its leadership,
Speaker 1: even to the point of spying on the US or
Speaker 1: expressing overt loyalty to the Soviet Union and its leadership.
Speaker 1: But the overall paranoia was disproportionate to the actual level
Speaker 1: of threat or the number of Communists who had ties
Speaker 1: to the U. S s R. That also went way
Speaker 1: beyond communism and started targeting more general political activity and dissent.
Speaker 1: The Communist Party had advocated for things like labor rights,
Speaker 1: civil rights, and women's rights, and that made it really
Speaker 1: easy to brand anyone who fought for these same causes
Speaker 1: as a communist, as McCarthy, Hoover, and other public figures
Speaker 1: stoked existing fear and paranoia, the government and private organizations
Speaker 1: tried to purge themselves of anyone deemed to be disloyal
Speaker 1: or a security threat for any reason, for example, anyone
Speaker 1: who might be susceptible to blackmail, and the national climate
Speaker 1: was one of suspicion, repression, and fear. By early nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four, McCarthy's support was starting to wane because of
Speaker 1: his aggressive tactics with the Committee. I can't remember now
Speaker 1: if we mentioned this already, but they're are also has
Speaker 1: yet another two parter on this back in the archive.
Speaker 1: After he accused several Army officers of having Communist ties,
Speaker 1: his own behavior was investigated, and the Senate voted to
Speaker 1: condemn his conduct on December two of nineteen fifty four.
Speaker 1: Although the House an American Activities Committee still existed, its
Speaker 1: prominence and its reputation declined through the late nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties. In a lot of ways, the FBI's co
Speaker 1: Intel Prose picked up where the House on American Activities
Speaker 1: Committee left off. And we're going to talk more about
Speaker 1: that after we paused for a sponsor break. The FBI
Speaker 1: and the House an American Activities Committee were actively working
Speaker 1: together during the McCarthy era, but the FBI didn't really
Speaker 1: publicize what it was doing or try to promote the
Speaker 1: overall idea that communists had infiltrated a lot of American institutions,
Speaker 1: particularly Hollywood. It left that to the Committee, whose activities
Speaker 1: were publicly known and reported in the press. One of
Speaker 1: the papers that I read while researching all of this
Speaker 1: described the FBI during this time as laundering its intelligence
Speaker 1: and counterintelligence activities through the House an American Activities Committee.
Speaker 1: So when the House an American Activities Committee came under
Speaker 1: scrutiny in nineteen fifty four, its own activities declined, but
Speaker 1: the FBI's related work did not. Instead, J Edgar Hoover
Speaker 1: drew on the Communist Control Act of nineteen fifty four
Speaker 1: or quote, an act to outlaw the Communist Party, to
Speaker 1: prohibit members of communist organizations from serving in certain represented
Speaker 1: of capacities, and for other purposes nice and specific there uh.
Speaker 1: This Act banned the Communist Party of the United States,
Speaker 1: framing it not as a legitimate political party, but as
Speaker 1: a conspiracy to overthrow the government. This law came out
Speaker 1: of the same ongoing fear and suspicion of communism, and
Speaker 1: it also connected specifically to the labor movement. There was
Speaker 1: some overlap between the Communist Party and union organizers, and
Speaker 1: the acts specifically banned members of the Communist Party from
Speaker 1: holding office and labor organizations. This was purportedly to protect
Speaker 1: unsuspecting workers from Communist subversion, but really it granted the
Speaker 1: government a lot of leeway to investigate labor organizations and
Speaker 1: to invalidate their collective bargaining agreements if they were determined
Speaker 1: to be Communist infiltrated. Hoover interpreted the Communist Control Act
Speaker 1: as giving the FBI broad authority to investigate and proactively
Speaker 1: disrupt communist threats in the U S and when the
Speaker 1: Bureau started these counter intelligence programs, at first the focus
Speaker 1: was on communism. The first formal co intel pro built
Speaker 1: on ongoing counter intelligence efforts that targeted communists. It was
Speaker 1: called co Intel Pro Communist Party USA or cp U
Speaker 1: s A, and that was launched in nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 1: This formal co intel pro grew out of a series
Speaker 1: of field conferences that were held that year as suspected
Speaker 1: communists had been brought to trial under the Smith Act.
Speaker 1: The FBI's informants from within the Communist Party had been
Speaker 1: exposed when they were brought in to testify in court.
Speaker 1: These field conferences were held in part to figure out
Speaker 1: how the Bureau could recruit new informants. A counter intelligence
Speaker 1: program was recommended as a way to keep targeting communists
Speaker 1: while recruiting new informants. Shortly after the FBI established co
Speaker 1: intel pro Communist Party USA, the U. S. Supreme Court
Speaker 1: partially reversed its earlier decision in Dennis versus the United States.
Speaker 1: This time the decision was in Yates v. United States.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, ruled that
Speaker 1: radical reactionary speech was protected under the First Amendment. People
Speaker 1: could talk about revolution and overthrowing the government in the abstract,
Speaker 1: and that was protected speech unless it posed a clear
Speaker 1: and present danger. Thus overturned the convictions of fourteen people
Speaker 1: who had been charged with violating the Smith Act. On
Speaker 1: the same day, the Supreme Court also issued two other
Speaker 1: decisions in cases involving communism and members of the Communist Party,
Speaker 1: and both cases protected their rights to things like privacy
Speaker 1: and due process. These Supreme Court decisions were the first
Speaker 1: of a series that overturned or narrowed the focus of
Speaker 1: laws that had been providing the foundation for the FBI's
Speaker 1: activities against suspected communists. The FBI argued that these court
Speaker 1: rulings left them with no other choice but to fight
Speaker 1: communism through covert counter intelligence, so by the time the
Speaker 1: cointl pros were uncovered and investigated, more than half of
Speaker 1: all the proposed operations had been aimed at the Communist
Speaker 1: Party USA. The FBI carried out one thousand, three hight
Speaker 1: eight separate documented efforts against the Communist Party, whose membership
Speaker 1: went from twenty two thousand in the early nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: to three thousand by nineteen fifty seven. But the focus
Speaker 1: expanded out from communism. Co intel pro CPUs A targeted
Speaker 1: communists and suspected communists, and then organizations that had Communists
Speaker 1: among their members, and then organizations that were maybe tangentially
Speaker 1: connected to suspected communists, and then organizations whose purpose and
Speaker 1: goals had some common themes with the Communist Party even
Speaker 1: if there were no Communists involved, And then the definition
Speaker 1: of communism expanded to include pretty much anything that the
Speaker 1: Bureau considered to be subversive. Coencal pro Cpo SA also
Speaker 1: included counterintelligence operations against civil rights activists, initially because of
Speaker 1: known or suspected ties to communism. For example, Stanley David
Speaker 1: Levison was a friend and advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr.
Speaker 1: And he had also been one of the major financiers
Speaker 1: of the communist part of USA. But this targeting of
Speaker 1: civil rights activist was not just about actual connections to communism.
Speaker 1: Was also because the Bureau saw civil rights work in
Speaker 1: the US in general as a subversive threat. So as
Speaker 1: coencal pro Cpo s A expanded, the FBI put intense
Speaker 1: efforts into discrediting and disrupting civil rights organizations. The FBI
Speaker 1: repeatedly broke into civil rights organizations offices to steal documents,
Speaker 1: and got the I r S to start spurious audits
Speaker 1: of civil rights leaders. In nineteen sixty four, the FBI
Speaker 1: sent an anonymous letter to Martin Luther King June year,
Speaker 1: supposedly written by an anonymous black person, calling him quote
Speaker 1: a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that
Speaker 1: This letter was accompanied by an audio recording purportedly documenting
Speaker 1: evidence of King's extramarital affairs. It ended by saying that
Speaker 1: there was quote only one thing left for you to do.
Speaker 1: The implication was that King should take his own life,
Speaker 1: and it said he had thirty four days to do it,
Speaker 1: that deadline being the day he was due to accept
Speaker 1: the Nobel Peace Prize. So those are just examples of
Speaker 1: the targeting of civil rights groups. And as the focus
Speaker 1: of co intel pro CPUSA expanded, the Bureau also started
Speaker 1: establishing other separate counterintelligence programs. When a Senate committee investigated
Speaker 1: the US government's intelligence operations starting in ninety five, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about that in Part two. They found
Speaker 1: five specific named FBI co intel pros, including co intel
Speaker 1: pro Communist Party USA. The next cointell pro Socialist Workers
Speaker 1: Party started in nineteen sixty one. This one was short lived.
Speaker 1: There's a whole bunch of freedom of information acts stuff
Speaker 1: on the FBI website, and this one only has like
Speaker 1: three pages are three lengths of stuff to go through,
Speaker 1: like the other ones have sometimes twenty and thirty and
Speaker 1: multiple pages of links to go through. So we're not
Speaker 1: covering that one in as much detail. But one of
Speaker 1: the things that the Bureau routinely did was to target
Speaker 1: Socialist Workers Party members who were running for public office
Speaker 1: to undermine their political campaigns. In nineteen sixty four, the
Speaker 1: bureau launched co Intel pro White Hate, co Intel pro
Speaker 1: Black Nationalist Slash Hate groups started in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: and co Intel pro New Left started in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1: Other counterintelligence programs were also unearthed later on, with targets
Speaker 1: that included the American Indian Movement and Puerto Rican independence activists. Ostensibly,
Speaker 1: the goals of all these counter intelligence programs were to
Speaker 1: protect national security and to prevent violence, and to do
Speaker 1: that the FBI would quote expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or
Speaker 1: otherwise neutralize its targets. The one exception was coin cell
Speaker 1: pro White Hate, and with that the FBI was focused
Speaker 1: on curbing white nationalist violence rather than neutralizing the targeted
Speaker 1: groups altogether, which was more the focus and the other
Speaker 1: coin cel pros we're going to get to more about
Speaker 1: that in a bit. At the same time, even though
Speaker 1: the FBI was purportedly preventing violence, some of these operations
Speaker 1: incited violence. For example, the FBI tried to start or
Speaker 1: escalate violent disputes between the black Panthers and street gangs
Speaker 1: operating in the same areas. As another example, it's not
Speaker 1: clear whether the FBI played a direct part in the
Speaker 1: assassination of Malcolm X, but the Bureau definitely stoked the
Speaker 1: divisions and disputes within the Nation of Islam that led
Speaker 1: to his assassination. Another Bureau effort that was unearthed later
Speaker 1: was Operation Hoodwink, which was an effort to quote evoke
Speaker 1: a dispute between CPUSA and LaCOSA Nostra, in other words,
Speaker 1: to try to start a war between the Communist Party
Speaker 1: in the Sicilian mafia. And beyond these ideas of national
Speaker 1: security and violence prevention, these programs also worked to maintain
Speaker 1: the existing social and political order in the United States.
Speaker 1: These co intel pros, many of them targeted organizations that
Speaker 1: were not violent and did not threaten national security, but
Speaker 1: they did advocate for changes big and small and how
Speaker 1: the country operated or treated its residents and citizens, especially
Speaker 1: women and people of color. Although there was some variation
Speaker 1: from one to another, which we will get into, the
Speaker 1: Bureau tended to use similar tactics all across all of
Speaker 1: these various counterintelligence programs. Most of these tactics came from
Speaker 1: counterintelligence work that had been carried out in foreign countries
Speaker 1: during wartime with outcomes that the FBI considered to be successful.
Speaker 1: In other words, the United States had honed these techniques
Speaker 1: against its enemies during wartime, and then the FBI started
Speaker 1: using them in the US against its own citizens. To
Speaker 1: quote the Church Committee report, which followed a Senate investigation
Speaker 1: into US intelligence activities. Quote, the techniques were adopted wholesale
Speaker 1: from wartime counter intelligence and ranged from the trivial mailing
Speaker 1: reprints of readers digest articles to college administrators to the
Speaker 1: degrading sending anonymous poison pen letters intending to break up marriages,
Speaker 1: and the dangerous encouraging gang warfare and falsely labeling members
Speaker 1: of violent groups as police informers. So the bureau relied
Speaker 1: on informants, surveillance, and other investigative tools to get information
Speaker 1: about organizations, their activities, and their members. This included everything
Speaker 1: from conducting interviews to opening and photo copying people's mail,
Speaker 1: you breaking into organizations offices to tap phones and copy documents.
Speaker 1: Then it used that information to create division, distrust, and dissent.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the interviews themselves did that work. Interviewing members of
Speaker 1: an organization to make others suspect they were informants, or
Speaker 1: conducting multiple simultaneous interviews to make people think that their
Speaker 1: organization had been infiltrated. One specific tactic used to breed
Speaker 1: distrust was called snitch jacketing, also known as bad jacketing,
Speaker 1: which involved using things like planted evidence and faked communications
Speaker 1: to make it seem like a loyal member of an
Speaker 1: organization was really an FBI informant. In some cases, FBI
Speaker 1: informants planted the suspicion that loyal members were informants to
Speaker 1: shift the focus off of themselves, and the FBI used
Speaker 1: this tactic within organizations that had a reputation for violence,
Speaker 1: as mentioned earlier, even though that carried the real potential
Speaker 1: for the targeted member to be assassinated or otherwise harmed.
Speaker 1: The Bureau all so called people's parents, employers, landlords, and
Speaker 1: universities to inform them of their involvement in targeted organizations
Speaker 1: to try to get them fired, evicted, or expelled. Many
Speaker 1: of the targets of co intel pro New Left were
Speaker 1: college students, and the FBI either contacted their parents to
Speaker 1: tell them about their children's purportedly subversive activities or they
Speaker 1: faked calls from parents to students haranguing them for their
Speaker 1: political activity. The FBI also created and distributed published material
Speaker 1: that was meant to discredit their targets, and they fed
Speaker 1: news stories, sometimes real and sometimes fabricated, to the media.
Speaker 1: FBI informants gave media interviews in which they intentionally tried
Speaker 1: to make the organizations they were purportedly representing look as
Speaker 1: bad as possible, whether it was through using loaded rhetoric
Speaker 1: or emphasizing a group's most controversial viewpoints, or just seeming unhinged.
Speaker 1: The FBI also paid informants to make false state mints,
Speaker 1: for example, paying informants who were part of non violent
Speaker 1: organizations to make public calls for violence. In some cases,
Speaker 1: the bureau even set up local branches of an organization,
Speaker 1: with the branches entire membership being made up completely of informants,
Speaker 1: or they set up new fictitious organizations whose members were
Speaker 1: all informants so that they could work against their actual targets.
Speaker 1: The FBI also outed gay people and spread rumors about
Speaker 1: people's sexual orientations, regardless of what their sexual orientation actually was.
Speaker 1: They made postcards and mailed them to people's homes like
Speaker 1: for example, a card that said quote thank you for
Speaker 1: your successful participation in anti establishment and anti military Industrial
Speaker 1: complex activities, and those were sent to college students parental addresses.
Speaker 1: During co intel pro New Left, the Bureau used postcards
Speaker 1: specifically so that mail carriers, other members of a target's household,
Speaker 1: and others could also see the messaging, and so the
Speaker 1: intended target would wonder who else might have seen it.
Speaker 1: Although most of these tactics were used across all the
Speaker 1: different counterintelligence programs, they weren't used identically or to the
Speaker 1: same extent from one to another. For example, the FBI
Speaker 1: didn't really create a lot of false documents to drive
Speaker 1: negative publicity for the Ku Klux Klan under cointell pro
Speaker 1: White Hate. It didn't really need to, since the Ku
Speaker 1: Klux Klan's activities included openly harassing and murdering civil rights activists.
Speaker 1: As another example, the FBI also used tactics that had
Speaker 1: the potential to cause really serious physical, emotional, or economic
Speaker 1: harm during coin cell pro black nationalists hate groups, but
Speaker 1: really rarely used similar tactics when they were working in
Speaker 1: cointell pro White Hate. Although the FBI was fairly insulated
Speaker 1: from other government departments, which is how it was able
Speaker 1: to carry out these kinds of programs for so long.
Speaker 1: It also pulled in other departments in bureaus. As part
Speaker 1: of this work, the FBI leaked real and false information
Speaker 1: to the i r S, prompting audits of civil rights
Speaker 1: leaders and other targets, essentially using the i r S
Speaker 1: to harass people. It did the same with local police,
Speaker 1: leading to things like police harassment, arrests, false charges, and
Speaker 1: just a selective enforcement of existing laws depending on who
Speaker 1: the FBI thought deserved to be prosecuted. Basically, all these
Speaker 1: efforts combined investigation, disinformation, psychological warfare, and harassment to try
Speaker 1: to destroy organizations that the FBI thought were threatening or,
Speaker 1: in the case of coin cell pro white hate, to
Speaker 1: just try to curb those organizations violence rather than trying
Speaker 1: to neutralize them altogether. And all of this the FBI's
Speaker 1: focus was on whether what it was doing was effective,
Speaker 1: not on whether these tactics were constitutional or otherwise legal.
Speaker 1: According to the FBI, co intel pro operations were a
Speaker 1: tiny proportion of its overall work between nineteen fifty six
Speaker 1: and nineteen seventy one, quote about two tenths of one
Speaker 1: percent of the FBI's workload over a fifteen year period.
Speaker 1: At the same time, more than fifty thousand pages of
Speaker 1: co intel pro documents were released to the public. Starting
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies, a Senate investigation concluded that the
Speaker 1: FBI had carried out two thousand, three hundred seventies separate
Speaker 1: counterintelligence actions, with almost one thousand additional actions being proposed
Speaker 1: but not carried out. More were unearthed. Later on, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about coincal pro white hate, which, as
Speaker 1: we've noted, as kind of an outlier in all of this.
Speaker 1: After a quick sponsor break, the FBI established most of
Speaker 1: its cointal prose because I believe that the people and
Speaker 1: organizations that it was targeting were a threat. Overwhelmingly, these
Speaker 1: targets were on the political left. They were people in
Speaker 1: groups who were advocating for things like civil rights, black liberation,
Speaker 1: women's liberation, pacifism, socialism, communism, nuclear disarmament, and an end
Speaker 1: to the US involvement in the Vietnam War, things like that.
Speaker 1: As we noted at the top of the show, there
Speaker 1: were exceptions, but most of the time the people and
Speaker 1: organizations being targeted weren't violent threats. Even organizations that weren't
Speaker 1: specifically non violent. A lot of the time, we're focused
Speaker 1: on defending themselves with violence if necessary, not on instigating violence,
Speaker 1: or in some cases there were individual members of an
Speaker 1: organization that were involved in violence while the organization itself
Speaker 1: was not. Co Intel Pro White Hate started on July
Speaker 1: four and in many ways it was an outlier when
Speaker 1: compared to the other co intel pros. Most of the
Speaker 1: other programs shifted and expanded over time, and some of
Speaker 1: them were particularly vague. For example, in co Intel pro
Speaker 1: New Left, the FBI did not have a precise definition
Speaker 1: for what New Left and ment, but co Intel pro
Speaker 1: White Hate was focused on white supremacist groups, especially the
Speaker 1: Ku Klux Klan, and it kept that focus throughout its
Speaker 1: whole existence. The Ku Klux Klan has been through a
Speaker 1: few iterations in the United States, and it surged in
Speaker 1: popularity during the Civil Rights movement, with its members fighting
Speaker 1: against integration and terrorizing black people in other communities, using
Speaker 1: everything from cross burnings to murder. Coincil pro White Hate
Speaker 1: targeted seven Team Ku Klux Klan organizations and nine other
Speaker 1: hate groups, including the American Nazi Party. Another big difference
Speaker 1: is that many of the other co intel pros were
Speaker 1: focused on organizations that were challenging the status quo. The
Speaker 1: Ku Klux Klan and other targeted hate groups, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, were maintaining the status quo by upholding segregation, racism,
Speaker 1: and white supremacy. They harassed, threatened, and murdered integrationists and
Speaker 1: civil rights workers, primarily in the Southern United States. In general,
Speaker 1: members of these organizations were also Christian, anti communist, intensely patriotic,
Speaker 1: and supportive of both local and federal law enforcement. So,
Speaker 1: unlike with the other co intel pros, the FBI's goal
Speaker 1: wasn't to totally neutralize these groups. It was just to
Speaker 1: curb their violence and prevent that violence from spreading to
Speaker 1: other groups. The FBI also took the initiative to launch
Speaker 1: its othern coincal pros based on its own assessments of
Speaker 1: what constituted a threat, But coincal pro white hate followed
Speaker 1: intense pressure from outside the bureau, including from President London
Speaker 1: Baines Johnson and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Current and
Speaker 1: former Klansman and other white supremacists had carried out a
Speaker 1: whole series of murders and other acts of violence has
Speaker 1: included the nineteen six Street Baptist church bonding, which killed
Speaker 1: fourteen year olds Addie mccollins, Denise McNair and Carol Robertson
Speaker 1: and eleven year old Cynthia Wesley. Also included the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty three murder of Medgar Evers and the nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: four murders of civil rights activists Michael Schwermer, Andrew Goodman,
Speaker 1: and James Cheney. After coin Cell pro white Hate started,
Speaker 1: members of the clan also murdered Violet Luzo, and one
Speaker 1: of the participants in that murder might have been a
Speaker 1: paid FBI informant. The FBI was criticized for failing to
Speaker 1: prevent or intervene in any of this, something that the
Speaker 1: Bureau had argued was not part of its jurisdiction, but
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four had guaranteed
Speaker 1: black Americans equal protection under the law in a number
Speaker 1: of different contexts, which made it hard for the FBI
Speaker 1: to continue that argument. Coin Cell pro white hate ben
Speaker 1: served several purposes for the FBI. It allowed the bureau
Speaker 1: to demonstrate for the President and the Attorney General that
Speaker 1: it was doing something to investigate these crimes at the
Speaker 1: same time, by using covert counter intelligence, the FBI could
Speaker 1: do most of this work in secret without alienating or
Speaker 1: antagonize things Southern law enforcement, many of whom tacitly allowed
Speaker 1: the Ku Klex Klan and other hate groups to operate
Speaker 1: in their area or actively participated. As a side note,
Speaker 1: when j Edgar Hoover said quote Dr. Martin Loser King
Speaker 1: is the most notorious liar in the country in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four, that was in response to King's criticisms that
Speaker 1: the Bureau was too friendly with Southern segregationists and that
Speaker 1: the Southern FBI agents were not taking threats to Black
Speaker 1: Americans seriously. The FBI used a lot of the types
Speaker 1: of tactics that we discussed earlier in the episode during
Speaker 1: co and cel pro white hate. As we noted earlier,
Speaker 1: the Bureau didn't really need to create materials to try
Speaker 1: to bring bad pr to the clan because the clan
Speaker 1: was doing a lot of that work for them. The
Speaker 1: FBI publicized not only their hate crimes, but also other
Speaker 1: crimes committed by clan leaders and members, including things like
Speaker 1: embezzlement and attempting to arrange marriages between clan members and
Speaker 1: underage girls. The SBI also publicly identified clan leaders, including
Speaker 1: leaking their names to the press who published critical articles
Speaker 1: and satirical editorial cartoons. After the House on American Activities
Speaker 1: Committee held hearings on the clan, something that the committee
Speaker 1: was pressured to take on, the FBI released those findings
Speaker 1: to the press as well. The FBI also worked to
Speaker 1: so distrust within these organizations. They sent thousands of postcards
Speaker 1: to clan members that either implied or a flat out
Speaker 1: said that the government had infiltrated the organization or that
Speaker 1: accused KKK leaders of fraud or other wrongdoing. Postcards said
Speaker 1: things like clansmen, trying to hide your identity behind your sheet?
Speaker 1: You received this, someone knows who you are. Once again,
Speaker 1: these postcards served multiple purposes to make clan members think
Speaker 1: the organization had been infiltrated, to make them wonder how
Speaker 1: many other people had seen that postcard on its way
Speaker 1: to them, and to make it possible for other people
Speaker 1: in including postal workers, to see that the target was
Speaker 1: in the clan. During coin Cell pro White Hate, the
Speaker 1: Bureau created the National Committee for Domestic Tranquility, which sent
Speaker 1: letters and other materials to clan members to stoke dissent
Speaker 1: and spread rumors about informants. They printed accusations that clan
Speaker 1: leaders were the Antichrist and kind of a weird irony.
Speaker 1: The FBI, which because we've talked about, was really focused
Speaker 1: on undermining communism, tried to undermine clan membership by spreading
Speaker 1: rumors that communists had infiltrated the organizations. The organization itself
Speaker 1: was fiercely anti Communist. Some of the operations were almost bizarre.
Speaker 1: In one instance, the FBI collected the charred remnants of
Speaker 1: a cross that the clan had burned and then had
Speaker 1: it delivered by courier to a clan meeting, hoping to
Speaker 1: reinforce the idea that not only had someone known about
Speaker 1: the cross burning and who was behind it, but that
Speaker 1: they also knew when and where the group gathered. Is
Speaker 1: not clear how effective this was. According to the book
Speaker 1: that I was reading about this um, they took it
Speaker 1: outside and tried to light it on fire again. The
Speaker 1: targeted hate groups naturally realized that they had informants in
Speaker 1: their midst Some turned towards requiring lie detector tests and
Speaker 1: questioning people under the effects of sodium pentahal to try
Speaker 1: to determine whether a person was loyal. It is not
Speaker 1: clear whether co Intel pro white hate thwarted white supremacist violence,
Speaker 1: but overall membership in the clan did drop during these years,
Speaker 1: from an estimated fourteen to fifteen thousand members before co
Speaker 1: Intel pro to four thousand, three hundred in nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 1: It does also seem that public perceptions of the clan
Speaker 1: shifted during these same years, with more people, especially more
Speaker 1: white people, seeing the Clan and similar hate groups as
Speaker 1: violent and unstable and mentally connecting the clan to Nazis.
Speaker 1: Some white sub earned leaders who had tacitly or directly
Speaker 1: approved of the clans activities gradually distanced themselves during the
Speaker 1: Bureau's operations. So in the next episode, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk more about some of the other co and Tell pros,
Speaker 1: including intense targeting of the Black Panthers, and we'll also
Speaker 1: talk about, honestly, one of my favorite parts of this
Speaker 1: whole story, which is how these programs were finally exposed.
Speaker 1: That is a very very good story. So good do
Speaker 1: you have in the realm of good stories? I hope
Speaker 1: a listener mail I do I do? This is from uh,
Speaker 1: I think this name is pronounced Leah. I'm very sorry
Speaker 1: if I have said it wrong. Leah says, Hello, Holly
Speaker 1: and Tracy. Thank you for all the great subjects to
Speaker 1: cover in your episodes. I enjoy listening whenever my toddler
Speaker 1: allows me to. I never thought I'd be sending you
Speaker 1: an email, but the episode on the history of beekeeping
Speaker 1: changed my mind. My grandparents lived in Oregon in an
Speaker 1: old depost station building that was converted into a home.
Speaker 1: The building still exists as far as I know, but
Speaker 1: as a child, I visit of this building, which was
Speaker 1: then the home of a real estate business, and what
Speaker 1: was once the kitchen my grandparents had an observation beehive.
Speaker 1: The beehive was still there when I visited as a child,
Speaker 1: but the room was no longer a kitchen. This home
Speaker 1: has some history because, as the story was told in
Speaker 1: my family, my grandfather used some dynamite to remove plaster
Speaker 1: off the walls when doing some home renovation. It did
Speaker 1: just that and split a hole in the corner of
Speaker 1: the house. I don't remember my grandparents very well. They
Speaker 1: died when I was very young. Your episode on beekeeping
Speaker 1: reminded me of them, as a side note, I grew
Speaker 1: up with my father keeping bees in our lot in California.
Speaker 1: We kept them at the very back of the lot
Speaker 1: in the chicken coop. I grew up chewing on the
Speaker 1: honeycomb caps that were sliced off the honeycomb itself with
Speaker 1: a hot knife. We collected so much honey that I
Speaker 1: don't think we ever bought honey for twenty years later, however,
Speaker 1: when my mom passed away and we had to clean
Speaker 1: out and sell her house, we found some honey containers
Speaker 1: that had leaked and left stains on the cement floor
Speaker 1: of the basement. I don't think the new owners will
Speaker 1: ever guess that the stain was cast by honey. Thanks
Speaker 1: again for your great storytelling and unlocking the world beyond
Speaker 1: my home during this time. Leah. Ps, I know you
Speaker 1: like really long titles. I hope the long subject line
Speaker 1: catches your attention. UM, and this subject line, for everyone's delight,
Speaker 1: is observation be hive in the kitchen, dynamite for home
Speaker 1: reno and honey stains on cement floor. So thank you
Speaker 1: so much for this email, Leah. I hope everybody, as
Speaker 1: we've said before, is is just keeping themselves as safe
Speaker 1: as it's possible to do. I know, stuff is still
Speaker 1: really hard for everyone, and you know, particularly hard for
Speaker 1: the people that UM are are facing multiple, multiple crises
Speaker 1: that are unfolding at the same time. UM So, thank
Speaker 1: you everyone for listening, Thank you Leah for this email.
Speaker 1: If you would like to write to us on this
Speaker 1: or any other podcast, or at history Podcasts at i
Speaker 1: heart radio dot com. You can also find us on
Speaker 1: social media as missed in History. That's our our name
Speaker 1: on the sites that we used, and you can subscribe
Speaker 1: to our show in the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: and anywhere else you get your podcast. Stuff you Missed
Speaker 1: in History Class is a production of I heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.