WEBVTT - COINTELPRO, Part 1 0:00:01.280 --> 0:00:04.320 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.760 of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:17.119 I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Something that 0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:20.480 has come up several times on our show is FBI 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:23.600 surveillance of people who were associated with the civil rights 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:27.040 movement in the United States. Most recently, we talked about 0:00:27.080 --> 0:00:29.880 the bureau creating this file on James Baldwin that was 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:33.879 more than seventeen hundred pages long, and in earlier episodes, 0:00:33.920 --> 0:00:36.720 we've talked about things like the FBI using wire taps 0:00:36.800 --> 0:00:39.840 to spy on Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr. 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:43.879 A lot of this surveillance was connected to a series 0:00:43.960 --> 0:00:48.519 of counterintelligence programs or Cohen's hell pros that primarily targeted 0:00:48.600 --> 0:00:51.880 left wing organizations and people in the US from nineteen 0:00:51.920 --> 0:00:55.920 fifty six until nineteen seventy one. The FBI framed this 0:00:56.040 --> 0:00:59.320 as work that was necessary to prevent violence and protect 0:00:59.400 --> 0:01:01.920 national purity, But a whole lot of the people and 0:01:02.080 --> 0:01:05.480 organizations that they targeted, we're not violent and we're not 0:01:05.600 --> 0:01:09.920 threatening national security. Mostly they were just threatening the status quo, 0:01:10.240 --> 0:01:13.679 and the FBI pursued the one co intel pro that 0:01:13.760 --> 0:01:17.880 really really was focused on violent organizations with a totally 0:01:17.920 --> 0:01:20.720 different end in mind than what it pursued with the 0:01:20.760 --> 0:01:24.480 other operations. Um, this is one of those topics that 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:26.720 includes a whole lot of history that is just a 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:30.759 complicated tangle, So we're gonna tackle it in two parts. Today, 0:01:30.760 --> 0:01:33.920 we'll talk about the history of the FBI, especially as 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:39.360 it related to communism and perceived subversive threats, because all 0:01:39.440 --> 0:01:43.240 that fed directly into co Intel Pro. We're also going 0:01:43.240 --> 0:01:45.760 to give an overview of the types of tactics that 0:01:45.840 --> 0:01:48.720 the FBI used across these various programs, and we're going 0:01:48.760 --> 0:01:50.920 to talk about the one co intel pro that was 0:01:51.040 --> 0:01:52.920 kind of an outlier in all of this, which was 0:01:52.960 --> 0:01:56.600 co Intel Pro White Hate. Next time, we will get 0:01:56.640 --> 0:01:59.480 into some of the specifics of the co intel pros 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:03.440 that geted black liberation organizations and the new Left, as 0:02:03.440 --> 0:02:06.720 well as how these programs were finally exposed to the public. 0:02:07.200 --> 0:02:10.440 The investigation team that would become the US Federal Bureau 0:02:10.520 --> 0:02:14.200 of Investigation was established in nineteen o eight, and at 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:17.280 first this was a small group of newly hired investigators 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:20.000 who worked for the Department of Justice under the Office 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:23.440 of the Chief Examiner. Before this point, when the Department 0:02:23.440 --> 0:02:27.919 of Justice needed investigators, it had either hired private investigators 0:02:28.080 --> 0:02:32.160 or borrowed investigators from other departments. In nineteen o nine, 0:02:32.240 --> 0:02:35.160 the Office of the Chief Examiner was renamed the Bureau 0:02:35.160 --> 0:02:40.120 of Investigation. The Bureau's work involved enforcing federal law and 0:02:40.200 --> 0:02:44.200 helping to protect the nation from threats. In nineteen seventeen, 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:47.560 just after the US entered World War One, Congress passed 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:51.120 the Espionage Act, or an Act to punish acts of 0:02:51.200 --> 0:02:55.320 interference with foreign relations, the neutrality of the foreign commerce 0:02:55.360 --> 0:02:58.640 of the United States, to punish espionage and better to 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:01.640 enforce the criminal laws of the United States, and for 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:05.960 other purposes. The Bureau of Investigation had become the government's 0:03:06.080 --> 0:03:09.760 largest investigative agency, and it was tasked with enforcing the 0:03:09.919 --> 0:03:13.960 Espionage Act. The Bureau of Investigation also had an assortment 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:17.440 of other duties, including guarding the US border with Mexico 0:03:17.560 --> 0:03:21.160 during the Mexican Revolution. The same year that the Espionage 0:03:21.240 --> 0:03:25.240 Act was passed, j Edgar Hoover joined the Department of Justice. 0:03:25.919 --> 0:03:29.680 The following year, Congress passed the Sedition Act, which expanded 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:33.880 the Espionage Act to focus on anti war activists and socialists. 0:03:34.600 --> 0:03:39.520 The Sedition Act made it a federal crime to quote, willfully, utter, print, rite, 0:03:39.640 --> 0:03:45.000 or publish any disloyal, profane, scureless, or abusive language about 0:03:45.000 --> 0:03:48.280 the form of the government of the United States. It 0:03:48.360 --> 0:03:53.440 also outlawed urging, inciting, or advocating any curtailment or reduction 0:03:53.560 --> 0:03:57.560 in the production of war material. Then, in nineteen nineteen 0:03:57.880 --> 0:04:01.400 U s. Attorney General amish Will Palmer his home was bombed. 0:04:01.800 --> 0:04:04.400 This was part of a series of male bombings carried 0:04:04.400 --> 0:04:07.400 out that year, with seven other bombings happening on that 0:04:07.560 --> 0:04:10.520 same night. We have a two part episode on the 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:14.480 bombings and the massive series of raids and deportations that followed, 0:04:14.840 --> 0:04:17.640 and that two parter originally came out in twenties sixteen. 0:04:18.279 --> 0:04:21.760 J Edgar Hoover led a team to investigate these bombings, 0:04:21.800 --> 0:04:24.560 and the espionage and Sedition Acts were a big part 0:04:24.560 --> 0:04:29.120 of it. The raids, incarcerations, and deportations that followed became 0:04:29.160 --> 0:04:31.840 known as the Palmer Raids and they were part of 0:04:31.839 --> 0:04:37.680 the first Red Scare, which was a widespread fear of Bolshevists, anarchists, socialists, 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:41.039 and immigrants as a threat to American life and national 0:04:41.080 --> 0:04:46.400 security by Attorney General Palmer's handling of these investigations had 0:04:46.440 --> 0:04:49.800 come under intense scrutiny from both within and outside of 0:04:49.800 --> 0:04:53.240 the US government. On May of that year, a team 0:04:53.240 --> 0:04:56.520 of twelve lawyers issued a report on the raids. Mr 0:04:56.520 --> 0:05:01.760 report detailed cruel and unusual punishments, arrests without warrant, unreasonable 0:05:01.800 --> 0:05:05.800 search as in seizures, compelling persons to witness against themselves, 0:05:06.240 --> 0:05:10.320 propaganda by the Department of Justice, and provocative agents, which 0:05:10.360 --> 0:05:15.240 were basically operatives who entrapped people. Palmer's reputation suffered as 0:05:15.279 --> 0:05:17.920 a result of all this, and he returned to private 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:21.840 practice after failing to win the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. 0:05:22.720 --> 0:05:25.760 William J. Flynn was director of the Bureau of Investigation 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:28.240 at the time, and soon he was replaced as well. 0:05:29.080 --> 0:05:32.760 The Espionage and Sedition Acts were repealed in nineteen twenty 0:05:32.839 --> 0:05:38.240 and ninety one, but Hoover's reputation wasn't really tarnished by 0:05:38.279 --> 0:05:41.600 his involvement in all this. Soon he was being groomed 0:05:41.640 --> 0:05:44.320 to take over the Bureau. J. Edgar Hoover became the 0:05:44.360 --> 0:05:48.000 Bureau of Investigations director in nineteen twenty four, and the 0:05:48.040 --> 0:05:51.560 Bureau was renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation in nineteen 0:05:51.640 --> 0:05:55.000 thirty five. Of course, there is a ton of history 0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:58.279 between when Hoover joined the Department of Justice and when 0:05:58.320 --> 0:06:02.400 the FBI started its co into prose. Hoover was involved 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:06.039 in modernizing and standardizing the FBI, and the bureau itself 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:11.400 was involved in investigating organized crime during prohibition. During World 0:06:11.440 --> 0:06:15.600 War Two, the FBI also maintained lists of Japanese, German, 0:06:15.680 --> 0:06:18.719 and Italian nationals believed to be a threat to domestic 0:06:18.760 --> 0:06:23.200 security and kept those people under surveillance. Then, of course, 0:06:23.320 --> 0:06:27.400 Japanese immigrants and their American born descendants were incarcerated under 0:06:27.400 --> 0:06:31.000 Executive Order ninety sixty six. That is also covered any 0:06:31.120 --> 0:06:35.800 previous two parter of the podcast. The Central Intelligence Agency 0:06:35.960 --> 0:06:39.560 was founded in nineteen forty seven to focus on foreign intelligence. 0:06:40.000 --> 0:06:43.159 That left the FBI to focus on domestic intelligence and 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:47.720 on investigating federal crimes. This creation of the CIA happened 0:06:47.800 --> 0:06:51.080 under the National Security Act of nineteen forty seven, and 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:55.200 that act also included this definition of counter intelligence quote 0:06:55.720 --> 0:07:01.400 information gathered and activities conducted to protect against espionage, other 0:07:01.520 --> 0:07:06.880 intelligence activities, sabotage or assassinations conducted by or on behalf 0:07:06.880 --> 0:07:12.280 of foreign governments or elements thereof foreign organizations or foreign persons, 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:16.720 or international terrorist activities. A big part of this same 0:07:16.760 --> 0:07:20.600 time span was the fight against communism. Following a precedent 0:07:20.640 --> 0:07:23.239 that had been set by the Palmer Aids, the First 0:07:23.280 --> 0:07:27.640 Red Scare, and the Espionage and Sedition Acts, in nineteen forty, 0:07:27.720 --> 0:07:31.040 Congress passed the Alien Registration Act, also known as the 0:07:31.080 --> 0:07:34.440 Smith Act, and this act included clauses that made it 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:39.160 illegal for any citizen or resident of the US to quote, advocate, 0:07:39.240 --> 0:07:43.520 a bet, advise, or teach the duty, necessity, desirability, or 0:07:43.560 --> 0:07:47.880 propriety of overthrowing, or destroying any government in the United 0:07:47.920 --> 0:07:52.000 States by force or violence. Just as the Espionage and 0:07:52.080 --> 0:07:56.200 Sedition Acts had been used to target political dissenters and immigrants, 0:07:56.640 --> 0:08:00.480 the Smith Act became a primary tool for prosecuting calm anists. 0:08:00.880 --> 0:08:04.880 In ninety eight, eleven leaders of the Communist Party USA 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:08.800 were tried and convicted under the Smith Act. They hadn't 0:08:08.840 --> 0:08:12.280 been directly advocating for the overthrow of the U S government, 0:08:12.360 --> 0:08:15.280 but they had been teaching from works by Karl Marx 0:08:15.320 --> 0:08:20.560 and Vladimir Lenin that described the revolutionary overthrow of governments 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:25.360 as necessary. The Supreme Court upheld these convictions and Dennis 0:08:25.440 --> 0:08:28.680 versus the United States in nineteen fifty one, and this 0:08:28.840 --> 0:08:32.559 court decision moved the country away from an earlier standard 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:35.840 that required evidence of a clear and present danger in 0:08:35.920 --> 0:08:39.080 order to justify the government placing limits on free speech. 0:08:39.600 --> 0:08:43.720 The focus on communism escalated during the Cold War. World 0:08:43.760 --> 0:08:46.400 War two had left the US and the USS are 0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:50.040 as the two remaining superpowers, and at first the US 0:08:50.200 --> 0:08:53.520 was the only one with nuclear weapons, but the Soviet 0:08:53.600 --> 0:08:57.240 Union detonated its first to nuclear device in nineteen forty nine, 0:08:57.520 --> 0:09:00.480 and soon it became clear that spies had been at 0:09:00.520 --> 0:09:04.880 work within the US nuclear program. This sparked an increasing 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:08.240 fixation on the idea that Soviet agents were infiltrating the 0:09:08.320 --> 0:09:12.840 United States, including through the US Communist Party. There was 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:16.720 also a more general fear of Communist infiltration, regardless of 0:09:16.760 --> 0:09:20.640 whether a particular person or organization had ties back to 0:09:20.679 --> 0:09:24.920 the Soviet Union. The House un American Activities Committee had 0:09:24.920 --> 0:09:28.800 been established in nineteen thirty eight to investigate suspected disloyalty, 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:33.079 including ties to communism, during the Cold War. The committee's 0:09:33.080 --> 0:09:37.840 activities became notorious under the direction of Senator Joseph McCarthy. 0:09:37.960 --> 0:09:40.560 This was all part of the Second Red Scare, which 0:09:40.600 --> 0:09:43.840 was another national panic, this time focused on the idea 0:09:43.880 --> 0:09:48.520 of Communist infiltration. This panic grew out of the tensions 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:50.880 between the US and the U. S s R, and 0:09:50.960 --> 0:09:53.880 it was further inflamed by other events like the Chinese 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:57.319 Communist Revolution which started in nineteen forty nine and the 0:09:57.400 --> 0:10:00.800 Korean War which started in nineteen fifty. To be clear, 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:03.600 some of the people targeted by the House and American 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:07.960 Activities Committee really were communists or otherwise had ties to 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:11.720 the Communist Party, and there were some communists who really 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:14.680 did have ties back to the Soviet Union and its leadership, 0:10:15.160 --> 0:10:17.640 even to the point of spying on the US or 0:10:17.679 --> 0:10:21.640 expressing overt loyalty to the Soviet Union and its leadership. 0:10:22.280 --> 0:10:26.080 But the overall paranoia was disproportionate to the actual level 0:10:26.120 --> 0:10:28.840 of threat or the number of Communists who had ties 0:10:28.880 --> 0:10:31.760 to the U. S s R. That also went way 0:10:31.800 --> 0:10:37.080 beyond communism and started targeting more general political activity and dissent. 0:10:37.760 --> 0:10:41.120 The Communist Party had advocated for things like labor rights, 0:10:41.240 --> 0:10:43.760 civil rights, and women's rights, and that made it really 0:10:43.760 --> 0:10:47.040 easy to brand anyone who fought for these same causes 0:10:47.160 --> 0:10:51.160 as a communist, as McCarthy, Hoover, and other public figures 0:10:51.160 --> 0:10:55.840 stoked existing fear and paranoia, the government and private organizations 0:10:55.880 --> 0:10:59.319 tried to purge themselves of anyone deemed to be disloyal 0:10:59.840 --> 0:11:04.040 or a security threat for any reason, for example, anyone 0:11:04.160 --> 0:11:07.959 who might be susceptible to blackmail, and the national climate 0:11:08.240 --> 0:11:12.240 was one of suspicion, repression, and fear. By early nineteen 0:11:12.280 --> 0:11:15.520 fifty four, McCarthy's support was starting to wane because of 0:11:15.640 --> 0:11:19.200 his aggressive tactics with the Committee. I can't remember now 0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:21.560 if we mentioned this already, but they're are also has 0:11:21.640 --> 0:11:24.120 yet another two parter on this back in the archive. 0:11:25.080 --> 0:11:28.280 After he accused several Army officers of having Communist ties, 0:11:28.440 --> 0:11:31.560 his own behavior was investigated, and the Senate voted to 0:11:31.600 --> 0:11:34.600 condemn his conduct on December two of nineteen fifty four. 0:11:35.320 --> 0:11:39.200 Although the House an American Activities Committee still existed, its 0:11:39.280 --> 0:11:42.640 prominence and its reputation declined through the late nineteen fifties 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:45.960 and sixties. In a lot of ways, the FBI's co 0:11:46.080 --> 0:11:49.000 Intel Prose picked up where the House on American Activities 0:11:49.000 --> 0:11:51.600 Committee left off. And we're going to talk more about 0:11:51.640 --> 0:12:01.880 that after we paused for a sponsor break. The FBI 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:05.120 and the House an American Activities Committee were actively working 0:12:05.160 --> 0:12:08.240 together during the McCarthy era, but the FBI didn't really 0:12:08.280 --> 0:12:10.559 publicize what it was doing or try to promote the 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:15.000 overall idea that communists had infiltrated a lot of American institutions, 0:12:15.480 --> 0:12:19.560 particularly Hollywood. It left that to the Committee, whose activities 0:12:19.600 --> 0:12:22.520 were publicly known and reported in the press. One of 0:12:22.559 --> 0:12:25.240 the papers that I read while researching all of this 0:12:25.440 --> 0:12:31.320 described the FBI during this time as laundering its intelligence 0:12:31.400 --> 0:12:35.720 and counterintelligence activities through the House an American Activities Committee. 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:39.800 So when the House an American Activities Committee came under 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:44.520 scrutiny in nineteen fifty four, its own activities declined, but 0:12:44.600 --> 0:12:48.600 the FBI's related work did not. Instead, J Edgar Hoover 0:12:48.760 --> 0:12:52.120 drew on the Communist Control Act of nineteen fifty four 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:55.760 or quote, an act to outlaw the Communist Party, to 0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:59.960 prohibit members of communist organizations from serving in certain represented 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:05.440 of capacities, and for other purposes nice and specific there uh. 0:13:05.480 --> 0:13:08.320 This Act banned the Communist Party of the United States, 0:13:08.440 --> 0:13:11.480 framing it not as a legitimate political party, but as 0:13:11.480 --> 0:13:15.440 a conspiracy to overthrow the government. This law came out 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:19.000 of the same ongoing fear and suspicion of communism, and 0:13:19.000 --> 0:13:22.720 it also connected specifically to the labor movement. There was 0:13:22.840 --> 0:13:27.199 some overlap between the Communist Party and union organizers, and 0:13:27.240 --> 0:13:30.600 the acts specifically banned members of the Communist Party from 0:13:30.640 --> 0:13:35.520 holding office and labor organizations. This was purportedly to protect 0:13:35.640 --> 0:13:40.360 unsuspecting workers from Communist subversion, but really it granted the 0:13:40.360 --> 0:13:44.880 government a lot of leeway to investigate labor organizations and 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:48.520 to invalidate their collective bargaining agreements if they were determined 0:13:48.559 --> 0:13:53.480 to be Communist infiltrated. Hoover interpreted the Communist Control Act 0:13:53.559 --> 0:13:57.880 as giving the FBI broad authority to investigate and proactively 0:13:57.960 --> 0:14:01.320 disrupt communist threats in the U S and when the 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:05.080 Bureau started these counter intelligence programs, at first the focus 0:14:05.280 --> 0:14:10.320 was on communism. The first formal co intel pro built 0:14:10.400 --> 0:14:14.880 on ongoing counter intelligence efforts that targeted communists. It was 0:14:14.920 --> 0:14:19.080 called co Intel Pro Communist Party USA or cp U 0:14:19.280 --> 0:14:21.840 s A, and that was launched in nineteen fifty six. 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:25.840 This formal co intel pro grew out of a series 0:14:25.960 --> 0:14:29.760 of field conferences that were held that year as suspected 0:14:29.840 --> 0:14:32.880 communists had been brought to trial under the Smith Act. 0:14:33.000 --> 0:14:36.880 The FBI's informants from within the Communist Party had been 0:14:36.920 --> 0:14:39.880 exposed when they were brought in to testify in court. 0:14:40.600 --> 0:14:43.320 These field conferences were held in part to figure out 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:48.000 how the Bureau could recruit new informants. A counter intelligence 0:14:48.000 --> 0:14:51.560 program was recommended as a way to keep targeting communists 0:14:51.600 --> 0:14:55.960 while recruiting new informants. Shortly after the FBI established co 0:14:56.080 --> 0:14:59.920 intel pro Communist Party USA, the U. S. Supreme Court 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:04.160 partially reversed its earlier decision in Dennis versus the United States. 0:15:04.800 --> 0:15:07.560 This time the decision was in Yates v. United States. 0:15:08.160 --> 0:15:11.400 The Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, ruled that 0:15:11.560 --> 0:15:16.120 radical reactionary speech was protected under the First Amendment. People 0:15:16.160 --> 0:15:20.040 could talk about revolution and overthrowing the government in the abstract, 0:15:20.360 --> 0:15:23.520 and that was protected speech unless it posed a clear 0:15:23.520 --> 0:15:28.040 and present danger. Thus overturned the convictions of fourteen people 0:15:28.120 --> 0:15:31.400 who had been charged with violating the Smith Act. On 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:34.360 the same day, the Supreme Court also issued two other 0:15:34.480 --> 0:15:38.480 decisions in cases involving communism and members of the Communist Party, 0:15:38.680 --> 0:15:42.000 and both cases protected their rights to things like privacy 0:15:42.120 --> 0:15:45.880 and due process. These Supreme Court decisions were the first 0:15:45.920 --> 0:15:49.320 of a series that overturned or narrowed the focus of 0:15:49.400 --> 0:15:52.720 laws that had been providing the foundation for the FBI's 0:15:52.760 --> 0:15:57.680 activities against suspected communists. The FBI argued that these court 0:15:57.760 --> 0:16:00.320 rulings left them with no other choice but to fight 0:16:00.320 --> 0:16:04.280 communism through covert counter intelligence, so by the time the 0:16:04.360 --> 0:16:08.320 cointl pros were uncovered and investigated, more than half of 0:16:08.360 --> 0:16:11.440 all the proposed operations had been aimed at the Communist 0:16:11.480 --> 0:16:16.440 Party USA. The FBI carried out one thousand, three hight 0:16:16.600 --> 0:16:21.080 eight separate documented efforts against the Communist Party, whose membership 0:16:21.120 --> 0:16:24.240 went from twenty two thousand in the early nineteen fifties 0:16:24.520 --> 0:16:28.480 to three thousand by nineteen fifty seven. But the focus 0:16:28.520 --> 0:16:33.120 expanded out from communism. Co intel pro CPUs A targeted 0:16:33.160 --> 0:16:37.920 communists and suspected communists, and then organizations that had Communists 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:42.640 among their members, and then organizations that were maybe tangentially 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:47.480 connected to suspected communists, and then organizations whose purpose and 0:16:47.560 --> 0:16:51.200 goals had some common themes with the Communist Party even 0:16:51.240 --> 0:16:54.960 if there were no Communists involved, And then the definition 0:16:55.000 --> 0:16:59.000 of communism expanded to include pretty much anything that the 0:16:59.040 --> 0:17:03.640 Bureau considered to be subversive. Coencal pro Cpo SA also 0:17:03.760 --> 0:17:09.200 included counterintelligence operations against civil rights activists, initially because of 0:17:09.359 --> 0:17:14.080 known or suspected ties to communism. For example, Stanley David 0:17:14.200 --> 0:17:17.439 Levison was a friend and advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr. 0:17:17.560 --> 0:17:20.600 And he had also been one of the major financiers 0:17:20.680 --> 0:17:24.280 of the communist part of USA. But this targeting of 0:17:24.440 --> 0:17:28.920 civil rights activist was not just about actual connections to communism. 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:32.639 Was also because the Bureau saw civil rights work in 0:17:32.720 --> 0:17:37.040 the US in general as a subversive threat. So as 0:17:37.119 --> 0:17:41.080 coencal pro Cpo s A expanded, the FBI put intense 0:17:41.160 --> 0:17:46.000 efforts into discrediting and disrupting civil rights organizations. The FBI 0:17:46.160 --> 0:17:50.440 repeatedly broke into civil rights organizations offices to steal documents, 0:17:50.840 --> 0:17:53.520 and got the I r S to start spurious audits 0:17:53.560 --> 0:17:57.159 of civil rights leaders. In nineteen sixty four, the FBI 0:17:57.320 --> 0:18:00.200 sent an anonymous letter to Martin Luther King June year, 0:18:00.560 --> 0:18:04.919 supposedly written by an anonymous black person, calling him quote 0:18:05.000 --> 0:18:08.119 a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that 0:18:09.320 --> 0:18:13.359 This letter was accompanied by an audio recording purportedly documenting 0:18:13.440 --> 0:18:17.760 evidence of King's extramarital affairs. It ended by saying that 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:20.680 there was quote only one thing left for you to do. 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:23.920 The implication was that King should take his own life, 0:18:24.600 --> 0:18:26.840 and it said he had thirty four days to do it, 0:18:27.400 --> 0:18:29.959 that deadline being the day he was due to accept 0:18:30.000 --> 0:18:33.399 the Nobel Peace Prize. So those are just examples of 0:18:33.640 --> 0:18:36.240 the targeting of civil rights groups. And as the focus 0:18:36.440 --> 0:18:40.439 of co intel pro CPUSA expanded, the Bureau also started 0:18:40.600 --> 0:18:46.400 establishing other separate counterintelligence programs. When a Senate committee investigated 0:18:46.440 --> 0:18:50.320 the US government's intelligence operations starting in ninety five, we're 0:18:50.320 --> 0:18:53.040 going to talk about that in Part two. They found 0:18:53.160 --> 0:18:57.680 five specific named FBI co intel pros, including co intel 0:18:57.720 --> 0:19:02.640 pro Communist Party USA. The next cointell pro Socialist Workers 0:19:02.840 --> 0:19:06.480 Party started in nineteen sixty one. This one was short lived. 0:19:07.240 --> 0:19:10.480 There's a whole bunch of freedom of information acts stuff 0:19:10.560 --> 0:19:12.520 on the FBI website, and this one only has like 0:19:13.160 --> 0:19:16.960 three pages are three lengths of stuff to go through, 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:19.240 like the other ones have sometimes twenty and thirty and 0:19:19.560 --> 0:19:22.320 multiple pages of links to go through. So we're not 0:19:22.400 --> 0:19:24.680 covering that one in as much detail. But one of 0:19:24.720 --> 0:19:27.760 the things that the Bureau routinely did was to target 0:19:27.840 --> 0:19:31.520 Socialist Workers Party members who were running for public office 0:19:31.880 --> 0:19:35.760 to undermine their political campaigns. In nineteen sixty four, the 0:19:35.840 --> 0:19:39.080 bureau launched co Intel pro White Hate, co Intel pro 0:19:39.320 --> 0:19:42.840 Black Nationalist Slash Hate groups started in nineteen sixty seven, 0:19:43.400 --> 0:19:47.080 and co Intel pro New Left started in nineteen sixty eight. 0:19:47.920 --> 0:19:52.160 Other counterintelligence programs were also unearthed later on, with targets 0:19:52.240 --> 0:19:58.280 that included the American Indian Movement and Puerto Rican independence activists. Ostensibly, 0:19:58.560 --> 0:20:01.359 the goals of all these counter intelligence programs were to 0:20:01.520 --> 0:20:05.080 protect national security and to prevent violence, and to do 0:20:05.240 --> 0:20:10.280 that the FBI would quote expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or 0:20:10.400 --> 0:20:14.960 otherwise neutralize its targets. The one exception was coin cell 0:20:15.000 --> 0:20:17.960 pro White Hate, and with that the FBI was focused 0:20:18.040 --> 0:20:23.400 on curbing white nationalist violence rather than neutralizing the targeted 0:20:23.440 --> 0:20:26.600 groups altogether, which was more the focus and the other 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:29.440 coin cel pros we're going to get to more about 0:20:29.480 --> 0:20:32.160 that in a bit. At the same time, even though 0:20:32.240 --> 0:20:36.359 the FBI was purportedly preventing violence, some of these operations 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:41.000 incited violence. For example, the FBI tried to start or 0:20:41.200 --> 0:20:44.840 escalate violent disputes between the black Panthers and street gangs 0:20:44.880 --> 0:20:48.720 operating in the same areas. As another example, it's not 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:51.800 clear whether the FBI played a direct part in the 0:20:51.880 --> 0:20:55.879 assassination of Malcolm X, but the Bureau definitely stoked the 0:20:55.960 --> 0:20:59.360 divisions and disputes within the Nation of Islam that led 0:20:59.400 --> 0:21:03.600 to his assassination. Another Bureau effort that was unearthed later 0:21:03.800 --> 0:21:07.159 was Operation Hoodwink, which was an effort to quote evoke 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:12.000 a dispute between CPUSA and LaCOSA Nostra, in other words, 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:14.639 to try to start a war between the Communist Party 0:21:15.000 --> 0:21:18.760 in the Sicilian mafia. And beyond these ideas of national 0:21:18.840 --> 0:21:22.840 security and violence prevention, these programs also worked to maintain 0:21:23.320 --> 0:21:26.800 the existing social and political order in the United States. 0:21:27.400 --> 0:21:30.320 These co intel pros, many of them targeted organizations that 0:21:30.440 --> 0:21:33.760 were not violent and did not threaten national security, but 0:21:33.920 --> 0:21:37.200 they did advocate for changes big and small and how 0:21:37.320 --> 0:21:41.440 the country operated or treated its residents and citizens, especially 0:21:41.520 --> 0:21:44.680 women and people of color. Although there was some variation 0:21:44.880 --> 0:21:47.520 from one to another, which we will get into, the 0:21:47.640 --> 0:21:51.119 Bureau tended to use similar tactics all across all of 0:21:51.200 --> 0:21:55.520 these various counterintelligence programs. Most of these tactics came from 0:21:55.600 --> 0:21:58.720 counterintelligence work that had been carried out in foreign countries 0:21:58.840 --> 0:22:03.200 during wartime with outcomes that the FBI considered to be successful. 0:22:03.960 --> 0:22:07.000 In other words, the United States had honed these techniques 0:22:07.040 --> 0:22:10.600 against its enemies during wartime, and then the FBI started 0:22:10.720 --> 0:22:14.080 using them in the US against its own citizens. To 0:22:14.280 --> 0:22:17.920 quote the Church Committee report, which followed a Senate investigation 0:22:18.080 --> 0:22:22.919 into US intelligence activities. Quote, the techniques were adopted wholesale 0:22:23.040 --> 0:22:27.200 from wartime counter intelligence and ranged from the trivial mailing 0:22:27.280 --> 0:22:31.040 reprints of readers digest articles to college administrators to the 0:22:31.119 --> 0:22:35.720 degrading sending anonymous poison pen letters intending to break up marriages, 0:22:36.400 --> 0:22:41.479 and the dangerous encouraging gang warfare and falsely labeling members 0:22:41.560 --> 0:22:45.719 of violent groups as police informers. So the bureau relied 0:22:45.800 --> 0:22:50.000 on informants, surveillance, and other investigative tools to get information 0:22:50.080 --> 0:22:55.200 about organizations, their activities, and their members. This included everything 0:22:55.359 --> 0:22:59.400 from conducting interviews to opening and photo copying people's mail, 0:23:00.000 --> 0:23:04.280 you breaking into organizations offices to tap phones and copy documents. 0:23:05.200 --> 0:23:08.919 Then it used that information to create division, distrust, and dissent. 0:23:10.040 --> 0:23:14.159 Sometimes the interviews themselves did that work. Interviewing members of 0:23:14.200 --> 0:23:17.359 an organization to make others suspect they were informants, or 0:23:17.840 --> 0:23:21.400 conducting multiple simultaneous interviews to make people think that their 0:23:21.480 --> 0:23:26.040 organization had been infiltrated. One specific tactic used to breed 0:23:26.240 --> 0:23:30.160 distrust was called snitch jacketing, also known as bad jacketing, 0:23:30.560 --> 0:23:34.359 which involved using things like planted evidence and faked communications 0:23:34.480 --> 0:23:36.560 to make it seem like a loyal member of an 0:23:36.680 --> 0:23:41.200 organization was really an FBI informant. In some cases, FBI 0:23:41.320 --> 0:23:44.920 informants planted the suspicion that loyal members were informants to 0:23:45.000 --> 0:23:48.560 shift the focus off of themselves, and the FBI used 0:23:48.600 --> 0:23:51.960 this tactic within organizations that had a reputation for violence, 0:23:52.040 --> 0:23:55.120 as mentioned earlier, even though that carried the real potential 0:23:55.240 --> 0:23:58.560 for the targeted member to be assassinated or otherwise harmed. 0:23:59.119 --> 0:24:03.639 The Bureau all so called people's parents, employers, landlords, and 0:24:03.800 --> 0:24:08.000 universities to inform them of their involvement in targeted organizations 0:24:08.400 --> 0:24:12.160 to try to get them fired, evicted, or expelled. Many 0:24:12.280 --> 0:24:14.800 of the targets of co intel pro New Left were 0:24:14.880 --> 0:24:18.560 college students, and the FBI either contacted their parents to 0:24:18.640 --> 0:24:22.840 tell them about their children's purportedly subversive activities or they 0:24:23.000 --> 0:24:26.840 faked calls from parents to students haranguing them for their 0:24:26.880 --> 0:24:32.080 political activity. The FBI also created and distributed published material 0:24:32.200 --> 0:24:34.960 that was meant to discredit their targets, and they fed 0:24:35.080 --> 0:24:39.200 news stories, sometimes real and sometimes fabricated, to the media. 0:24:39.880 --> 0:24:44.000 FBI informants gave media interviews in which they intentionally tried 0:24:44.080 --> 0:24:47.280 to make the organizations they were purportedly representing look as 0:24:47.400 --> 0:24:51.120 bad as possible, whether it was through using loaded rhetoric 0:24:51.680 --> 0:24:56.159 or emphasizing a group's most controversial viewpoints, or just seeming unhinged. 0:24:56.840 --> 0:25:00.280 The FBI also paid informants to make false state mints, 0:25:00.440 --> 0:25:03.560 for example, paying informants who were part of non violent 0:25:03.680 --> 0:25:07.719 organizations to make public calls for violence. In some cases, 0:25:07.760 --> 0:25:11.280 the bureau even set up local branches of an organization, 0:25:11.520 --> 0:25:16.560 with the branches entire membership being made up completely of informants, 0:25:17.119 --> 0:25:20.560 or they set up new fictitious organizations whose members were 0:25:20.640 --> 0:25:23.920 all informants so that they could work against their actual targets. 0:25:24.400 --> 0:25:28.440 The FBI also outed gay people and spread rumors about 0:25:28.480 --> 0:25:33.399 people's sexual orientations, regardless of what their sexual orientation actually was. 0:25:34.359 --> 0:25:37.399 They made postcards and mailed them to people's homes like 0:25:37.920 --> 0:25:40.720 for example, a card that said quote thank you for 0:25:40.840 --> 0:25:45.680 your successful participation in anti establishment and anti military Industrial 0:25:45.800 --> 0:25:50.399 complex activities, and those were sent to college students parental addresses. 0:25:50.520 --> 0:25:54.600 During co intel pro New Left, the Bureau used postcards 0:25:54.680 --> 0:25:59.040 specifically so that mail carriers, other members of a target's household, 0:25:59.400 --> 0:26:02.920 and others could also see the messaging, and so the 0:26:03.000 --> 0:26:06.000