Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. This is the second part of our two
Speaker 1: part episode on co Intel pro. Part one, which ran
Speaker 1: last Saturday, includes lots of background on the FBI and
Speaker 1: its counterintelligence programs. Today's installment is focused on co intel
Speaker 1: pros that targeted civil rights groups and the vaguely defined
Speaker 1: New Left, as well as the raid on the FBI
Speaker 1: office in Media, Pennsylvania that brought these programs to light.
Speaker 1: At the end of this episode, we mentioned that some
Speaker 1: of the people who were part of that raid were
Speaker 1: also suspected as being part of the Camden twenty eight,
Speaker 1: who broke into the Camden, New Jersey, Draft Board office
Speaker 1: and destroyed draft records there in nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 2: We talked about.
Speaker 1: The Camden twenty eight and other Vietnam War era draft
Speaker 1: board raids in a two parter that ran on April
Speaker 1: seventh and ninth, twenty twenty five. This episode originally came
Speaker 1: out July twenty second, twenty twenty Welcome to Stuff You
Speaker 1: Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm
Speaker 1: Holly Frye. Today we are wrapping up our two parter
Speaker 1: on co Intel Pro, including its targeting of so called
Speaker 1: black nationalist slash hate groups and a targeting of a
Speaker 1: very vaguely defined movement known as the New Left. To
Speaker 1: briefly recap from part one, which is highly recommended before
Speaker 1: listening to this because it includes a lot of context
Speaker 1: and overview, but just as a quick recap, we're going
Speaker 1: to quote from the Church Report, which followed more than
Speaker 1: a year of Senate Committee hearings into all this quote.
Speaker 1: The origins of co Intel pro demonstrate that the Bureau
Speaker 1: adopted extra legal methods to counter perceived threats to national
Speaker 1: security and public order because the ordinary legal processes were
Speaker 1: believed to be insufficient to do the job. In essence,
Speaker 1: the Bureau took the law into its own hands, conducting
Speaker 1: a sophisticated vigilante operation against domestic enemies. Whether those targets
Speaker 1: were really enemies, though, that is a different question. The
Speaker 1: report went on to say, quote, the choice of individuals
Speaker 1: and organizations to be neutralized and disrupted ranged from the
Speaker 1: violent elements of the Black Panther Party to Martin Luther
Speaker 1: King Junior, who the Bureau concedes was an advocate of nonviolence.
Speaker 1: From the Communist Party to the ku Klux Klan, from
Speaker 1: the advocates of violent revolutions such as the Weathermen, to
Speaker 1: the supporters of peaceful social change, including the Southern Christian
Speaker 1: Leadership Conference and the Inter University Committee for Debate on
Speaker 1: Foreign Policy. Just a heads up in this episode, there
Speaker 1: are going to be some discussions of suicide and also
Speaker 1: police violence. In nineteen sixty seven, the FBI started co
Speaker 1: Intel pro Black Nationalist hate Groups. For the most part,
Speaker 1: targeting of civil rights groups that had been carried out
Speaker 1: under Cointel pro CPUSA, which we talked about last time,
Speaker 1: rolled up under this newly established program. In the words
Speaker 1: of the program supervisor, the targeted groups were selected because
Speaker 1: they were believed to be violent or because of their
Speaker 1: quote radical or revolutionary rhetoric and actions. On March fourth,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent a
Speaker 1: memo to be routed through forty one FBI field offices.
Speaker 1: This memo was called Counterintelligence Program Black Nationalist Hate Group's
Speaker 1: Racial Intelligence. And this is a little bit long, but
Speaker 1: it's so illustrative of what the FBI was doing here
Speaker 1: and more generally, what Hoover's mindset was across the other
Speaker 1: co intel pros. We're going to read a chunk of it.
Speaker 1: So it began quote goals for maximum effectiveness of the
Speaker 1: counterintelligence program and to prevent wasted effort. Long range goals
Speaker 1: are being set. Number one, prevent the coalition of militant
Speaker 1: black nationalist groups. In unity, there is strength, a truism
Speaker 1: that is no less valid for all its triteness. An
Speaker 1: effective coalition of black nationalist groups might be the first
Speaker 1: step toward a real mau Mau in America, the beginning
Speaker 1: of a true Black revolution. So, for context, mau Mau
Speaker 1: is a reference to the Mau Mau movement and uprising
Speaker 1: in Kenya, which advocated a violent overthrow of British colonial rule.
Speaker 1: This went on too prevent the rise of a messiah
Speaker 1: who could unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement.
Speaker 1: Malcolm X might have been such a messiah. He is
Speaker 1: the martyr of the movement today. Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael,
Speaker 1: and Elijah Mohammed all aspire to this position. Elijah Mohammed
Speaker 1: is less of a threat because of his age. King
Speaker 1: could be a very real contender for this position, should
Speaker 1: he abandon his supposed quote obedience to quote white liberal
Speaker 1: doctrines in parentheses nonviolence, and embrace black nationalism. Carmichael has
Speaker 1: the necessary charisma to be a real threat in this way.
Speaker 1: Number three prevent violence on the part of black nationalist groups.
Speaker 1: This is of primary importance and is of course a
Speaker 1: goal of our investigative activity. It should also be a
Speaker 1: goal of the counterintelligence program to pinpoint potential troublemakers and
Speaker 1: neutralize them before they exercise their potential for violence. Number
Speaker 1: four prevent militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining
Speaker 1: respectability by discrediting them to three separate segments of the community.
Speaker 1: The goal of discrediting black nationalists must be handled tactically
Speaker 1: in three ways. You must discredit those groups and individuals
Speaker 1: to first, the responsible Negro community. Second, they must be
Speaker 1: discredited to the white community, both the responsible community and
Speaker 1: to liberals who have vestiges of sympathy for militant Black
Speaker 1: national list simply because they are negroes. Third, these groups
Speaker 1: must be discredited in the eyes of Negro radicals, the
Speaker 1: followers of the movement. This last area requires entirely different
Speaker 1: tactics from the first two. Publicity about violent tendencies and
Speaker 1: radical statements merely enhances black nationalists to the last group.
Speaker 1: It adds respectability in a different way. Number five. A
Speaker 1: final goal should be to prevent the long range growth
Speaker 1: of militant black organizations, especially among youth. Specific tactics to
Speaker 1: prevent these groups from converting young people must be developed.
Speaker 2: This memo went on.
Speaker 1: To outline the primary targets of this co intel, pro
Speaker 1: that everything we just read was going to apply to.
Speaker 1: These were the organizations that Hoover described as the quote
Speaker 1: most violent and radical. It included the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,
Speaker 1: the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Revolutionary Action Movement, and the
Speaker 1: Nation of Islam.
Speaker 2: This is an.
Speaker 1: Incredibly weird list.
Speaker 2: Snick has nonviolent write it in the name, like the
Speaker 2: Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Martin Luther King Junior helped found
Speaker 2: this represents the whole spectrum of from nonviolent direct action
Speaker 2: to revolutionary black nationalism, and the FBI even noted that
Speaker 2: in its view, some individual members of the Nation of
Speaker 2: Islam had been involved in violence, but the organization itself
Speaker 2: was not violent. It was being targeted because of its separatism.
Speaker 1: Basically, the FBI grouped a lot of different organizations with
Speaker 1: a wide range of objectives and ideologies and tactics under
Speaker 1: this co intel Pro that was supposedly about black nationalism
Speaker 1: and hate groups. Some, as Tracey just mentioned, were strictly pacifist,
Speaker 1: Some advocated gun ownership or violent self defense, Some spoke
Speaker 1: in very theoretical terms about the need for a revolution,
Speaker 1: and some of them called for an actual armed uprising
Speaker 1: or other violence. All very different ideologies, but still under
Speaker 1: this one umbrella. The FBI classed them all together as
Speaker 1: violent and radical, viewing virtually any organization calling for equal
Speaker 1: rights for black people as potentially violent and as a consequence,
Speaker 1: as needing to be disrupted. Yeah, Like, the thing that
Speaker 1: these all had in common was like black people equality,
Speaker 1: equality please, or like demanding equality with very aggressive rhetoric
Speaker 1: and sometimes violence. Like that's what it all had in common.
Speaker 1: The FBI put intense effort into discrediting and disrupting all
Speaker 1: these organizations and other organizations that were not specifically named,
Speaker 1: using all the methods that we talked about in Part one.
Speaker 1: But about a year after this co intel pro was established,
Speaker 1: another different organization rose to national prominence, and that was
Speaker 1: the Black Panther Party, and this co intel Pro then
Speaker 1: pivoted to shift almost exclusively on that. The Black Panther
Speaker 1: part originally called the Black Panther Party for Self Defense,
Speaker 1: was founded in Oakland, California in nineteen sixty six by
Speaker 1: Huey Newton and Bobby Seal. A lot of the Black
Speaker 1: Panthers rhetoric was radical and revolutionary, arguing that the only
Speaker 1: way black people could be truly free is if they
Speaker 1: were able to govern their own affairs. When they were
Speaker 1: establishing the party, Newton and Seal crafted a ten point
Speaker 1: program which began, we want freedom, We want power to
Speaker 1: determine the destiny of our black community. This ten point
Speaker 1: program went on to call for full employment, an end
Speaker 1: to quote the robbery by the capitalists of our black community,
Speaker 1: decent housing, education, exemption from military service for black men,
Speaker 1: an end to police brutality, freedom for black men who
Speaker 1: were held in prisons in jails, and it ended, quote
Speaker 1: we want land, bred, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace.
Speaker 1: The ten point Plan elaborated on each of these points.
Speaker 1: The exemption from military service stemmed from the United States
Speaker 1: involvement in Vietnam and the idea that black people should
Speaker 1: not be forced to serve in the military of a
Speaker 1: nation that did not protect them. The idea behind the
Speaker 1: release of incarcerated black men was that they had not
Speaker 1: been given a fair and impartial trial, so their convictions
Speaker 1: were not valid. As part of their work, the Black
Speaker 1: Panthers started more than thirty community service programs known as
Speaker 1: survival programs. These included things like free breakfast programs for
Speaker 1: school children, a tuberculosis screening and treatment program, medical clinics,
Speaker 1: ambulance services, legal aid, and education programs. The Black Panthers
Speaker 1: also created a screening program for sickle cell disease that
Speaker 1: later served as a template for the federal government's own
Speaker 1: screening programs. Over time, a lot of these services were
Speaker 1: expanded to include anyone who was oppressed, including poor white people.
Speaker 1: The Black Panthers also showed up to support other marginalized
Speaker 1: groups in their own activism. They are mentioned two different
Speaker 1: times in our Six Impossible episodes from sip Ins to
Speaker 1: fish Ins, which focused on direct action demonstrations and similar protests.
Speaker 1: In that episode, we talked about the Black Panther support
Speaker 1: of the fish In movement in the Pacific Northwest, and
Speaker 1: they're providing meals to disabled activists who took over the
Speaker 1: Department of Health Education and Welfare Office in San Francisco
Speaker 1: during the Section five oh four protests. But today, the
Speaker 1: first thing a lot of people, especially a lot of
Speaker 1: white people, think of when someone says the Black Panthers
Speaker 1: is guns and violence. The Black Panthers organized armed patrols
Speaker 1: of black neighborhoods to protect residents from police brutality and
Speaker 1: from gang violence. At one point, they staged an armed
Speaker 1: takeover of the California State Legislature that was in response
Speaker 1: to gun control legislation. As other examples outside of the
Speaker 1: party's organized activities, Huey Newton was involved in a shootout
Speaker 1: with police in nineteen sixty seven in which an officer
Speaker 1: was killed. Bobby Seal was charmed urge but not convicted,
Speaker 1: with conspiracy to incite riots at the nineteen sixty eight
Speaker 1: Democratic National Convention, and of the murder of a nineteen
Speaker 1: year old Black Panther who was suspected of being a
Speaker 1: police informant. In a memo back to headquarters, a California
Speaker 1: field office described the Black Panthers as quote the most
Speaker 1: violence prone organization of all the extremist groups now operating
Speaker 1: in the United States, and that alleged that they were
Speaker 1: performing quote not only verbal attacks, but also physical attacks
Speaker 1: on police. Later, J Edgar Hoover called the Black Panthers
Speaker 1: quote one of the greatest threats to the nation's internal security.
Speaker 1: On November twenty fifth, nineteen sixty eight, several FBI field
Speaker 1: offices received a memo ordering them to submit quote imaginative
Speaker 1: and hard hitting counter intelligence measures aimed at crippling the BPPS,
Speaker 1: of course, the Black Panther Party. This directive was expanded
Speaker 1: to additional field offices in January of nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: Collen's hel pro black nationalist hat Green soon focused almost
Speaker 1: entirely on the Black Panthers, rather than on that collection
Speaker 1: of groups that we outlined earlier in that nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: eight memo. Of this co intel pros two hundred and
Speaker 1: ninety five documented actions, two hundred and thirty three of
Speaker 1: them were against the Black Panthers. Using all those various
Speaker 1: techniques that we described in Part one as examples, the
Speaker 1: FBI intentionally undermined the Black Panthers public service programs, for example,
Speaker 1: by sending fake, inflammatory membership materials to food pantries and
Speaker 1: other organizations that were donating food for the breakfast programs.
Speaker 1: The Bureau used disinformation to try to spark violent conflicts
Speaker 1: between the Panthers and area street gangs, and to spark
Speaker 1: violent conflicts between the Panthers and police to reinforce the
Speaker 1: idea that the Black Panthers were just inherently violent. In
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, the FBI became aware of a Black
Speaker 1: Panther coloring book. The origins of this book are a
Speaker 1: little bit murky, but Akinsanya Cambone, who was then known
Speaker 1: as Mark Temer, has taken credit for its creation. In
Speaker 1: a twenty sixteen interview, he describes it as a history book.
Speaker 1: It depicts slave owners, greedy store owners, and police all
Speaker 1: as obese pigs with exaggerated lower tusks. While Cambone has
Speaker 1: stressed that these pigs can be any color, which is
Speaker 1: why it is a coloring book, they are generally interpreted
Speaker 1: as representations of white people, and this book is full
Speaker 1: of images of black people, adults and children, men and
Speaker 1: women stabbing and shooting the pigs. Black Panther leadership felt
Speaker 1: that the coloring book was inappropriate and ordered Cambone to
Speaker 1: destroy it, but someone made copies, and after the FBI
Speaker 1: obtained one, it made more copies and distributed them, as
Speaker 1: though the Black Panther Party had officially created this book
Speaker 1: with the intent of distributing it to children. The FBI's
Speaker 1: harassment of the Black Panthers also went beyond the organized
Speaker 1: membership and its programs. Dean Seberg was an actress who
Speaker 1: donated to the Black Panthers in support of their breakfast programs.
Speaker 1: During her pregnancy, the FBI sent false tips to news
Speaker 1: organizations alleging that the father of her baby was a
Speaker 1: Black Panther. This, of course, was a huge scandal. Seberg
Speaker 1: tried to take her own life. As a result, she
Speaker 1: went into labor prematurely and her baby died. According to
Speaker 1: family members, she tried to take her own life every
Speaker 1: year around the time of the baby's death, and then
Speaker 1: she died in nineteen seventy nine. Her death was ruled
Speaker 1: a suicide, although some of her families had suspicions that
Speaker 1: there was foul play involved. And perhaps most notoriously, on
Speaker 1: December fourth, nineteen sixty nine, the FBI orchestrated a raid
Speaker 1: that was carried out by Chicago police, who fired between
Speaker 1: eighty two and ninety nine gun shots into an apartment
Speaker 1: where several members of the Black Panther Party were sleeping.
Speaker 1: Among other involvement, an FBI informant had provided police with
Speaker 1: a floor plan of the apartment. Chicago Black Panther leaders
Speaker 1: Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were killed and four other
Speaker 1: people in the apartment were seriously injured. Police claimed that
Speaker 1: this was a violent gunfight, with the Black Panthers being
Speaker 1: the first to open fire, but an investigation revealed that
Speaker 1: only one shot had been fired from inside the apartment,
Speaker 1: most likely by Mark Clark after he had already been
Speaker 1: fatally shot by police. According to Hampton's fiance, Deborah Johnson,
Speaker 1: who was in bed asleep with him when the shooting started,
Speaker 1: an officer who came into the apartment after the shooting
Speaker 1: stopped asked if Hampton was still alive. Another officer fired
Speaker 1: two shots and said he's good and dead now. The
Speaker 1: Black Panther Party dissolved in nineteen eighty two, with co
Speaker 1: intel pro being one of the many factors that contributed
Speaker 1: to its end. Former members say it is unrelated to
Speaker 1: the New Black Panther Party, which was founded in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine and is classified as a hate group by
Speaker 1: the United States Commission on Civil Rights and the Southern
Speaker 1: Poverty Law Center. Let's take a break. The last formal
Speaker 1: cointel pro that was described in the Senate investigation reports
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about in a little bit was
Speaker 1: co intel Pro New Left, and that started in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight. And of all the formally named co intel pros,
Speaker 1: this was the most loosely focused. And I mean, as
Speaker 1: we've discussed, most of them were loosely focused. As we
Speaker 1: mentioned in part one, the FBI didn't really even have
Speaker 1: a definition for what new Left meant. The New Left supervisor,
Speaker 1: who was quoted in the Church Committee report, said quote,
Speaker 1: I cannot recall any document that was written defining New
Speaker 1: Left as such. It is my impression that the characterization
Speaker 1: of New Left groups, rather than being defined at any
Speaker 1: specific time by document, it more or less grew. It
Speaker 1: has never been strictly defined, as far as I know.
Speaker 1: It is more or less an attitude. I would think
Speaker 1: that makes it sound almost like an advertiser sound bite
Speaker 1: New Left. It's an attitude. The incident that prompted the
Speaker 1: FBI to create this co intel pro was a student
Speaker 1: uprising at Columbia University in nineteen sixty eight. There was
Speaker 1: a lot involved in this protest, but its most direct
Speaker 1: precursor was the university's decision to build a new gym
Speaker 1: in Morningside Park. Even though the gym was being planned
Speaker 1: for public land, its facilities would mostly be for use
Speaker 1: only by the university and not by the public. To
Speaker 1: add to that frustration, this was part of an ongoing
Speaker 1: pattern of the university's expansion into Harlem, which was pushing
Speaker 1: the neighborhood's predominantly black residents out of their homes in
Speaker 1: order to build facilities that they were not going to
Speaker 1: be allowed to access. So the resulting protest was complicated,
Speaker 1: like we cannot get all into all of the nuances here,
Speaker 1: but generally the university. These student Afro American Society or
Speaker 1: SAS started voicing their own and the community's objections to
Speaker 1: this gym, and then the school's chapter of the Students
Speaker 1: for a Democratic Society or SDS, which was predominantly white,
Speaker 1: saw this as an opportunity for a larger protest that
Speaker 1: would also focus on the university's involvement with the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1: Members of the SAS felt like they were being talked
Speaker 1: over and that the SDS was taking the protests in
Speaker 1: an entirely different direction. And the end, the Student Afro
Speaker 1: American Society took over Hamilton Hall, and the Students for
Speaker 1: a Democratic Society took over other buildings on campus and
Speaker 1: took the Dean hostage. There were more than a thousand
Speaker 1: demonstrators who took part in the campus shutdown that lasted
Speaker 1: for a week. At the university's request, the New York
Speaker 1: Police Department began clearing the demonstrators. On April thirtieth, nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight. Black demonstrators who had taken over Hamilton Hall
Speaker 1: left peacefully. More more than one thousand police moved into
Speaker 1: the other buildings. Some of the other demonstrators verbally and
Speaker 1: physically resisted, including by throwing things like shoes, bathroom tiles,
Speaker 1: and books at officers. Police forcibly removed people, beating some
Speaker 1: of the resisting students and in some cases bystanders with nightsticks.
Speaker 1: Others were trampled. In the end, one hundred thirty two students,
Speaker 1: four faculty members, and twelve police officers were injured. So
Speaker 1: Coinzel pro New Left was motivated by the FBI's frustrations
Speaker 1: that the university had not brought in police earlier, and
Speaker 1: also by a sense that these types of protests should
Speaker 1: not be permitted to happen in the first place. The
Speaker 1: directives for coinsal pro New Left were distributed by a
Speaker 1: memo in May of nineteen sixty eight, and as described
Speaker 1: in the Church Report, agents were to gather information on
Speaker 1: this is all quote. One false allegations of police brutality
Speaker 1: to quote counter the widespread charges of police brutality that
Speaker 1: invariably arise following student police encounters. To immorality depicting the
Speaker 1: quote scurrilous and depraved nature of many of the characters, activities, habits,
Speaker 1: and living conditions representative of New Left adherents. And three
Speaker 1: action by college administrators to quote to show the value
Speaker 1: of college administrators and school officials taking a firm stand
Speaker 1: and pointing out quote whether and to what extent faculty
Speaker 1: members rendered aid and encouragement. Point two sounds like a
Speaker 1: lot of the other counterintelligence efforts we've talked about in
Speaker 1: cointel pros, but otherwise, in the FBI's view, the use
Speaker 1: of force against demonstrators was warranted, and if demonstrators were
Speaker 1: injured in the process, they deserved it. In nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: both the FBI and the NYPD viewed the amount of
Speaker 1: force used at Columbia as appropriate and restrained. No tear
Speaker 1: gas was used, no one was shot, and the injury
Speaker 1: sustained students and faculty were minor enough that those who
Speaker 1: had to go to the hospital were treated and released.
Speaker 1: It's just such a weird bar to such a weird
Speaker 1: bar of whether the use was appropriate. The use of
Speaker 1: forces appropriate was like, well, okay, nobody like died. Was
Speaker 1: kind of the right tone of it. However, the FBI
Speaker 1: also had a similar interpretation in cases of police brutality
Speaker 1: that were far more clearly egregious. For example, after riots
Speaker 1: broke out during the nineteen sixty eight Democratic National Convention
Speaker 1: in Chicago, a memo from FBI headquarters to the Chicago
Speaker 1: Field Office read quote, once again, the liberal press and
Speaker 1: the bleeding hearts and the forces on the left are
Speaker 1: taking advantage of the situation in Chicago surrounding the Democratic
Speaker 1: National Convention to attack the police and organize law enforcement agencies.
Speaker 1: We should be mindful of this situation and develop all
Speaker 1: possible evidence to expose this activity and to refute these
Speaker 1: false allegations. Conversely, the walker of which was prepared for
Speaker 1: the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of violence
Speaker 1: concluded that there really was police wrongdoing a portion of
Speaker 1: it read quote. Demonstrators attacked two and they posed difficult
Speaker 1: problems for police as they persisted in marching through the streets,
Speaker 1: blocking traffic and intersections. But it was the police who
Speaker 1: forced them out of the park and into the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: And on the part of the police, there was enough
Speaker 1: wild club swinging, enough cries of hatred, enough gratuitous beating
Speaker 1: to make the conclusion inescapable that individual policemen, and lots
Speaker 1: of them, committed violent acts far in excess of the
Speaker 1: requisite force for crowd dispersal or arrests. To read dispassionately
Speaker 1: the hundreds of statements describing at first hand the events
Speaker 1: of Sunday and Monday nights is to become convinced of
Speaker 1: the presence of what can only be called a police riot.
Speaker 1: So while coenfelpro knew left was ostensibly about targeting this
Speaker 1: very vaguely defined collection of left wing demonstrators as being
Speaker 1: a threat to national security, it was also paired up
Speaker 1: with this sense of a much needed law enforcement crackdown
Speaker 1: that was justified and necessary, and the need to protect
Speaker 1: police and other law enforcement from false accusations of brutality.
Speaker 1: Aside from that, it is difficult to talk about co
Speaker 1: intel Pro New Left in a cohesive way. The counterintelligence
Speaker 1: program wound up targeting virtually every anti war group in
Speaker 1: the US, as well as student demonstrators who were demonstrating
Speaker 1: for just about any reason. In the words of the
Speaker 1: Church Report quote, none of the bureau witnesses deposed believes
Speaker 1: the New Left co intel Pro was generally effective, in
Speaker 1: part because of the imprecise targeting. Also, the tone of
Speaker 1: a lot of the FBI memos regarding the New lefts
Speaker 1: sound almost baffled. Agents really did not get these young people,
Speaker 1: most of them white and affluent, a lot of them
Speaker 1: looking like stereotypical hippies agitating against the like police brutality
Speaker 1: and the Vietnam War. Memos include kind of perplexed sounding
Speaker 1: references to things like yoga and drugs. Participants in the
Speaker 1: organizations targeted under cointel Pro New Left also tended to
Speaker 1: be simultaneously idealistic and cynical, so the Bureau had a
Speaker 1: harder time finding informants or infiltrating organizations. For example, the
Speaker 1: main phone at the national headquarters of Students for a
Speaker 1: Democratic Society had a sign taped to it for more
Speaker 1: than a year that said, in capital letters, this phone
Speaker 1: is tapped.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: That is not to suggest that the other targeted organizations
Speaker 1: were clueless, like they were just particularly cynical about the
Speaker 1: bureau by this point. The people who ultimately got the
Speaker 1: ball rolling on exposing co intel pro were members of
Speaker 1: anti war and other activist movements that had been targeted
Speaker 1: during these programs history, and we'll talk more about that
Speaker 1: after a sponsor break. Counterintelligence is still part of the
Speaker 1: FBI's work, But in terms of these formally named cohen
Speaker 1: Cel pros, those came to an end thanks to the
Speaker 1: work of some regular people who pulled off a heist.
Speaker 1: When we say regular people, they included a cab driver,
Speaker 1: a daycare center director, a social worker, and a professor.
Speaker 1: It sounds like one of those walk into a bar jokes.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: It's my favorite part of these episodes for the number
Speaker 1: of reasons, one of them being it's the most straightforward. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also it being just kind of a David and Goliath story,
Speaker 1: so would had become clear to many of these groups
Speaker 1: that the FBI was targeting them. Left wing activists viewed
Speaker 1: the FBI with increasing suspicion, but nobody had evidence of
Speaker 1: what they thought was happening. In nineteen seventy, a group
Speaker 1: of anti war activists in the Philadelphia area decided to
Speaker 1: do something about it. Anti war activist and college professor
Speaker 1: William C. Davidon came up with the idea. John and
Speaker 1: Bonnie Raines, a married couple with small children, were also involved.
Speaker 1: John had also been a freedom writer. Others included Keith Forsyth,
Speaker 1: Robert Williamson, Judy Fine Gold, and two people known by pseudonyms.
Speaker 1: One of those is Susan Smith and the other is
Speaker 1: Ron Durst. A ninth participant dropped out before the burglary
Speaker 1: actually took place.
Speaker 2: There was no way.
Speaker 1: They could break into the Philadelphia FBI office, which had
Speaker 1: tight security, so they looked for other FBI field offices,
Speaker 1: finding one nearby in Media, Pennsylvania. This office was housed
Speaker 1: in an apartment building with a shared lobby space, which
Speaker 1: was adjacent to the county courthouse that cased this area.
Speaker 1: Bonnie rains posed as a student from Swarthmore College and
Speaker 1: arranged a meeting under the guise of researching career opportunities
Speaker 1: for women at the bureau. They scheduled their burglary for
Speaker 1: March eighth, nineteen seventy one, the night of the Fight
Speaker 1: of the Century between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, reasoning
Speaker 1: that most people would be watching the fight. After breaking in,
Speaker 1: they removed thousands of files which were being stored in
Speaker 1: regular file cabinets. After sorting through what they had stolen,
Speaker 1: they mailed selections to newspapers and members of Congress, anonymously
Speaker 1: calling themselves the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI. Most
Speaker 1: of the newspapers returned these documents to the Bureau, but
Speaker 1: the Washington Post confirmed their authenticity and ran a front
Speaker 1: page story on March twenty fourth, nineteen seventy one. It
Speaker 1: was titled Stolen documents describe FBI surveillance activities. The article
Speaker 1: described surveillance of black activist organizations and efforts to enhance
Speaker 1: existing paranoia. To quote further serve to get the point
Speaker 1: across that there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox.
Speaker 1: Mail documents and more articles followed. J Edgar Hoover officially
Speaker 1: canceled co Intel pro on April twenty seventh, nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: citing security reasons. Although some co Intel pro activities continued,
Speaker 1: just without a specific name attached, but it wasn't yet
Speaker 1: clear to anyone outside the bureau what the term co
Speaker 1: intel pro meant or what its scope was. Jay Edgar
Speaker 1: Hoover died on May second, nineteen seventy two. He had
Speaker 1: been the director of the FBI for forty eight years.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy three and nineteen seventy four, NBC journalist
Speaker 1: Carl Stern filed a series of requests under the Freedom
Speaker 1: of Information Act. Those requests were repeatedly turned down until
Speaker 1: the documents were finally released under a court order, and
Speaker 1: that is when people finally started to get a sense
Speaker 1: of what co intel pro meant and just how huge
Speaker 1: it was. In nineteen seventy four, Seymour Hirsch wrote a
Speaker 1: front page article for The New York Times titled huge
Speaker 1: CIA operation reported in US against anti war forces. This
Speaker 1: article reported that the CIA was engaged in very co
Speaker 1: intel pro like operations against peace activists in the US,
Speaker 1: but the CIA was not supposed to be operating domestically
Speaker 1: at all. These news reports sparked outrage within the government
Speaker 1: and among the general public. President Gerald Ford appointed the
Speaker 1: Rockefeller Commission to investigate the CIA. The House established the
Speaker 1: Pike Committee to investigate illegal activities by the CIA, the FBI,
Speaker 1: and the NSA. The Pike Committee's report was never published.
Speaker 1: On January twenty first, nineteen seventy five, a resolution was
Speaker 1: introduced in the Senate to create a committee to investigate
Speaker 1: federal intelligence operations and determine quote the extent, if any,
Speaker 1: to which illegal, improper, or unethical activities were engaged in
Speaker 1: by any agency of the federal government. Congressional hearings went
Speaker 1: on through nineteen seventy five and nineteen seventy six. The
Speaker 1: Senate committee was dubbed the Church Committee, was headed by
Speaker 1: Senator Frank Church, a Democrat from Ohio. The other committee
Speaker 1: members were selected to represent a range of viewpoints and
Speaker 1: experience levels, with the final group including six Democrats and
Speaker 1: five Republicans. A staff of one hundred and fifty people
Speaker 1: went through the thousands and thousands of pages of documents
Speaker 1: that were involved in all this. We should take a
Speaker 1: moment to talk about the FBI documentation. The FBI under
Speaker 1: j Edgar Hoover was intensely bureaucratic, with a relentless focus
Speaker 1: on documenting everything. Also, most of cointel Pro's existence took
Speaker 1: place before the Freedom of Information Act was passed in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven. All of it took place before the
Speaker 1: Privacy Act amendments were added in nineteen seventy four, which
Speaker 1: gave citizens the right to see the FBI's files about themselves.
Speaker 1: In other words, the FBI was right everything down, and
Speaker 1: it was not doing so with the thought that anyone
Speaker 1: might ever read any of this outside of the Bureau.
Speaker 1: Whether the information flow was going out to field offices
Speaker 1: and agents or back into headquarters, nobody was disguising their
Speaker 1: meeting or intent. Everyone was saying the quiet part loud
Speaker 1: and doing it in writing. Also, FBI documents from the
Speaker 1: cointel pro era are full of racist slurs and offensive
Speaker 1: stereotypes of black people. After the FBI formally started co
Speaker 1: intel pro black nationalists slash hate groups, agents talked candidly
Speaker 1: about how if they didn't do a good enough job,
Speaker 1: the Bureau was going to be forced to hire black agents.
Speaker 1: This idea even came with its own slogan that mimicked
Speaker 1: the accent of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, a rhyming
Speaker 1: couplet that ended with the N word. Also, as a
Speaker 1: continuation of that note there were only five black FBI
Speaker 1: agents during most of the co Intel pro era. They
Speaker 1: had been hired as personal assistants or drivers for J.
Speaker 1: Edgar Hoover, and then they had been given the title
Speaker 1: special agent during World War II so that they would
Speaker 1: not be drafted. So back to the investigations. Most of
Speaker 1: the hearings were behind closed doors, both to try to
Speaker 1: prevent them from turning into a TV spectacle and also
Speaker 1: to protect information about the US methods for conducting intelligence work.
Speaker 1: Even so, the hearings were criticized for threatening US intelligence efforts,
Speaker 1: and Senator Church was accused of using it to bolster
Speaker 1: a presidential bid. While the Church Committee wanted to protect
Speaker 1: legitimate US intelligence efforts, it also wanted the public to
Speaker 1: have a chance to learn about what was going on,
Speaker 1: and to that end, the committee held public hearings in
Speaker 1: September and October of nineteen seventy five. These hearings were
Speaker 1: focused on specific areas of misconduct. This included information about
Speaker 1: a biological agent's program run by the CIA, a domestic
Speaker 1: surveillance program from the White House, and the FBI's programs
Speaker 1: to disrupt the civil rights movement and the anti Vietnam
Speaker 1: war movement. After one hundred twenty six full committee meetings,
Speaker 1: forty subcommittee meetings, more than eight hundred witness interviews, and
Speaker 1: a review of more than one hundred ten thousand documents,
Speaker 1: the Church Committee issued a report that described quote a
Speaker 1: pattern of reckless disregard of activities that threatened our constitutional system.
Speaker 1: And this was not just unique to the FBI, but
Speaker 1: the FBI is our focus here. The report went on
Speaker 1: to say, quote The abusive techniques used by the FBI
Speaker 1: in co intel pro from nineteen fifty six to nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one included violations of both federal and state statutes
Speaker 1: prohibiting mail fraud, wire fraud, and citement to violence, sending
Speaker 1: obscene material through the mail, and extortion. More fundamentally, the
Speaker 1: harassment of innocent citizens engaged in lawful forms of political
Speaker 1: expression did serious injury to the First Amendment guarantee of
Speaker 1: freedom of speech and the right of the people to
Speaker 1: assemble peaceably and to petition the government for our redress
Speaker 1: of grievances. The report also made it clear that the
Speaker 1: national security and violence prevention concerns were not the FBI's
Speaker 1: only motivation. Quote. The unexpressed major premise of the programs
Speaker 1: was that a law enforcement agency has the duty to
Speaker 1: do whatever is necessary to combat perceived threats to the
Speaker 1: existing social and political order. Eighteen percent of the approved
Speaker 1: co intel pro proposals targeted speakers, teachers, writers, or publications, meetings,
Speaker 1: and peaceful demonstrations, all of which were just exercising a
Speaker 1: constitutional right to free speech. Operations tried to stop lawful
Speaker 1: speakers from speaking, teachers from teaching, writers from writing, and
Speaker 1: demonstrators from demonstrating. The Senate Committee made ninety six recommendations
Speaker 1: to quote place intelligence activities within the Constitutional Scheme for
Speaker 1: controlling government power. This included changes to how the FBI
Speaker 1: was run that included a ten year term limit for
Speaker 1: the Director of the Bureau. It also included recommendations for
Speaker 1: additional oversight within the Bureau. Every counterintelligence proposal had to
Speaker 1: be approved by headquarters, but outside the Bureau the programs
Speaker 1: were almost completely unknown. Specific elements of cointel pro CPUSA
Speaker 1: and White Hate were both known to various Attorneys General,
Speaker 1: presidential advisors, and Cabinet and committee members. For example, Attorney
Speaker 1: General Robert F. Kennedy authorized the bureau's wiretaps of Martin
Speaker 1: Luther King junior. The Bureau also notified multiple Attorneys general
Speaker 1: of various accomplishments and progress those are their words against
Speaker 1: the ku Klux Klan, without describing the breadth of what
Speaker 1: had led to that progress. Even with these two programs,
Speaker 1: though the full scope wasn't known outside the Bureau, and
Speaker 1: it appears that the other co intel pros weren't known
Speaker 1: to anyone outside the FBI at all. Efforts to bring
Speaker 1: in more oversight of the bureau's activities included the Foreign
Speaker 1: Intelligence Surveillance Act of nineteen seventy eight. The exposure of
Speaker 1: co Intel Pro and the hearings that followed drastically affected
Speaker 1: mainstream American perceptions of the FBI. According to Gallup polls,
Speaker 1: the proportion of Americans with a highly favorable view of
Speaker 1: the FBI dropped from eighty four percent in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: five to thirty seven percent in nineteen seventy five. At
Speaker 1: the same time, no criminal convictions followed the investigations and
Speaker 1: the Church report, even though that report detailed numerous instances
Speaker 1: of criminal activity. As we said, the FBI is still
Speaker 1: engaged in counterintelligence. In the years just after co Intel
Speaker 1: Pro was disbanded, the FBI did extensive counter intelligence work
Speaker 1: against the American Indian Movement and the Committee in Solidarity
Speaker 1: with the People of El Salvador. This included a disinformation
Speaker 1: campaign during the nineteen seventy three occupation of Wounded Knee,
Speaker 1: both to discredit the American Indian Movement to the general
Speaker 1: public and to try to create division within that occupation.
Speaker 1: Co Intel pro has also made headlines at numerous points
Speaker 1: since the mid seventies, comparing it to policies and programs
Speaker 1: that have been introduced during multiple presidential administrations. This includes
Speaker 1: comparisons to various aspects of the Patriot Act and the
Speaker 1: NSA's warrantless surveillance programs in the two thousands. The general
Speaker 1: focus on black liberation as somehow inherently threatening and violent
Speaker 1: has also continued to be part of the FBI's rhetoric.
Speaker 1: In twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen, leaked documents revealed that
Speaker 1: the FBI had targeted black identity extremists as a major threat,
Speaker 1: with really similar language about potential violence to what was
Speaker 1: used during Cointel pro Quote. The FBI assesses it is
Speaker 1: very likely black identity extremist bie perceptions of police brutality
Speaker 1: against African Americans spurred an increase in premeditated, retaliatory lethal
Speaker 1: violence against law enforcement and will very likely serve as
Speaker 1: justification for such violence. This was paired with criticisms that
Speaker 1: the FBI and other federal agencies were ignoring credible threats
Speaker 1: of white nationalist violence. Yeah, this was basically very similar
Speaker 1: protests to what has been going on in the last
Speaker 1: few months as we're recording this, which is on July seventh,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, with demonstrators basically saying, please stop shooting unarmed
Speaker 1: black people, and the FBI creating this category of black
Speaker 1: identity extremist, which led people to go, that's not a
Speaker 1: thing though, made that up to circle back around to
Speaker 1: the Citizens Commission to investigate the FBI. None of them
Speaker 1: were ever prosecuted in connection with this break in in
Speaker 1: media Pennsylvania. It is possible that law enforcement believed that
Speaker 1: the culprits went on to be involved with a different
Speaker 1: group of anti Vietnam War activists who were known as
Speaker 1: the Camden twenty eight. This group broke into the Camden,
Speaker 1: New Jersey, Draft Board office and they destroyed draft records there.
Speaker 1: The Camden twenty eight were acquitted two of the Citizens'
Speaker 1: Commission to Investigate the FBI actually were involved in that,
Speaker 1: So there's some speculation that law enforcement was like, well,
Speaker 1: they've already been tried and acquitted of this other thing.
Speaker 1: We probably have no chance. Regardless, though several members of
Speaker 1: the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI came forward in
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen. Their story is told in the book The
Speaker 1: Burglary The Discovery of j Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI by
Speaker 1: Betty Metzger, who also wrote that front page Washington Post
Speaker 1: story that we mentioned earlier on. I have not read
Speaker 1: that book, but I have watched the twenty fourteen documentary
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, which also tells that story. It's Coen
Speaker 1: tel Pro. I know it was a lot. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to send us a note, our email addresses History Podcast
Speaker 1: at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to the
Speaker 1: show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.