Speaker 1: Hello and Happy Saturday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm
Speaker 1: Holly Frye. Our next two Saturday Classics are a listener
Speaker 1: request from a friend who is also a history teacher,
Speaker 1: who noticed that she's been seeing a lot of references
Speaker 1: to co Intel Pro on social media lately. We don't
Speaker 1: often run two partners as Saturday Classics, but our episodes
Speaker 1: on co Intel Pro are not one continuous narrative. Part
Speaker 1: ones today we will talk about some background on the
Speaker 1: FBI and the origins of its counterintelligence programs, as well
Speaker 1: as one specific operation, which was called co Intel Pro
Speaker 1: White Hate. Then next week, Part two will cover two
Speaker 1: other co Intel pros and how the public learned about
Speaker 1: these programs. These episodes are also an example of something
Speaker 1: we said in this week's Behind the Scenes about not
Speaker 1: needing to go back very far in history to find
Speaker 1: precedence and things that resonate with things that are happening now.
Speaker 1: We recorded our episodes on co Intel Pro in July
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty, during international protests over the murder of
Speaker 1: George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin. This originally came
Speaker 1: out July twentieth, twenty twenty Welcome to Stuff You Missed
Speaker 1: in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 1: Something that has come up several times on our show
Speaker 1: is FBI surveillance of people who were associated with the
Speaker 1: civil rights movement in the United States. Most recently, we
Speaker 1: talked about the bureau creating this file on James Baldwin
Speaker 1: that was more than seventeen hundred pages long, and in
Speaker 1: earlier episodes we've talked about things like the FBI using
Speaker 1: wiretaps to spy on Byerd Rustin and Martin Luther King Junior.
Speaker 1: A lot of this surveillance was connected to a series
Speaker 1: of counterintelligence programs, or co intel 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 security, but a whole lot of the people and
Speaker 1: organizations that they targeted were not violent and were 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. This is one of those topics that includes
Speaker 1: a whole lot of history that is just a complicated tangle,
Speaker 1: So we're going to 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 o review of the types of tactics
Speaker 1: that the FBI used across these various programs, and we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the one co intel pro that
Speaker 1: was kind of an outlier in all of this, which
Speaker 1: was cointel Pro White Hate. Next time, we will get
Speaker 1: into some of the specifics of the co intel pros
Speaker 1: that targeted 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 oh 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 oh 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 seven,
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,
Speaker 1: utter print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurreless, or
Speaker 1: abusive life language about the form of the government of
Speaker 1: the United States. It also outlawed urging, inciting, or advocating
Speaker 1: any curtailment or reduction in the production of war material. Then,
Speaker 1: in nineteen nineteen, US Attorney General A. Mischel Palmer's home
Speaker 1: was bombed. This was part of a series of male
Speaker 1: bombings carried out that year, with seven other bombings happening
Speaker 1: on that same night. We have a two part episode
Speaker 1: on the bombings and the massive series of raids and
Speaker 1: deportations that followed, and that two parter originally came out
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen. J Edgar Hoover led a team to
Speaker 1: investigate these bombings, and the espionage and sedition acts were
Speaker 1: a big part of it. The raids, incarcerations, and deportations
Speaker 1: that followed became known as the Palmer Raids and they
Speaker 1: were part of the first Red Scare, which was a
Speaker 1: widespread fear of Bolshevists, anarchists, socialists, and immigrants as a
Speaker 1: threat to American life and national security. By nineteen twenty,
Speaker 1: Attorney General Arl Palmer's handling of these investigations had come
Speaker 1: under intense scrutiny from both within and outside of the
Speaker 1: US government. On May twenty eighth of that year, a
Speaker 1: team of twelve lawyers issued a report on the raids
Speaker 1: Mister port detailed cruel and unusual punishments, arrests without warrant,
Speaker 1: unreasonable searches and 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 nineteen twenty one, but Hoover's reputation wasn't really tarnished
Speaker 1: by his involvement in all this. Soon he was being
Speaker 1: groomed to take over the Bureau. Jay Edgar Hoover became
Speaker 1: the Bureau of Investigations director in nineteen twenty four, and
Speaker 1: the bureau was renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty five. Of course, there is a ton of
Speaker 1: history between when Hoover joined the Department of Justice and
Speaker 1: when the FBI started its co intel pros. Hoover was
Speaker 1: involved in modernizing and standardizing the FBI, and the bureau
Speaker 1: itself was involved in investigating organized crime during Prohibition. During
Speaker 1: World War II, 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 in
Speaker 1: a previous two parter of the podcast. The Central Intelligence
Speaker 1: Agency was founded in nineteen forty seven to focus on
Speaker 1: foreign intelligence. That left the FBI to focus on domestic
Speaker 1: intelligence and on investigationading federal crimes. This creation of the
Speaker 1: CIA happened under the National Security Act of nineteen forty seven,
Speaker 1: and that act also included this definition of counterintelligence 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 Raids, the First
Speaker 1: Red Scare, and the Espionage and Sedition Acts, in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty Congress passed the Alien Registration Act, also known as
Speaker 1: the Smith Act. In this act included clauses that made
Speaker 1: it illegal for any citizen or resident of the US
Speaker 1: to quote, advocate, a bet, advise, or teach the duty, necessity, desirability,
Speaker 1: or propriety of overthrowing, or destroying any government in the
Speaker 1: United States by force or violence. Just as the Espionage
Speaker 1: and Sedition Acts had been used to target political dissenters
Speaker 1: and immigrants, the Smith Act became a primary tool for
Speaker 1: prosecuting communists. In nineteen forty eight, eleven leaders of the
Speaker 1: Communist Party USA were tried and convicted under the Smith Act.
Speaker 1: They hadn't been directly advocating for the overthrow of the
Speaker 1: US government, but they had been teaching from works by
Speaker 1: Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin that described the revolutionary overthrow
Speaker 1: of governments as necessary. The Supreme Court upheld these convictions
Speaker 1: in Dennis versus the United States in nineteen fifty one,
Speaker 1: and this Court decision moved the country away from an
Speaker 1: earlier standard that required evidence of a clear and present
Speaker 1: danger in order to justify the government placing limits on
Speaker 1: free speech. The focus on communism escalated during the Cold War.
Speaker 1: W OR two had left the US and the USSR
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 on 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 USSR, and it was further
Speaker 1: inflamed by other events like the Chinese Communist Revolution which
Speaker 1: started in nineteen forty nine and the Korean War which
Speaker 1: started in nineteen fifty. To be clear, some of the
Speaker 1: people targeted by the House and American Activities Committee really
Speaker 1: were communists or otherwise had ties to the Communist Party,
Speaker 1: and there were some Communists who really did have ties
Speaker 1: back to the Soviet Union and its leadership, even to
Speaker 1: the point of spying on the US or expressing overt
Speaker 1: loyalty to the Soviet Union and its leadership. But the
Speaker 1: overall paranoia was disproportionate to the actual level of threat
Speaker 1: or the number of Communists who had ties to the USSR.
Speaker 1: That also went way beyond communism and started targeting more
Speaker 1: general political activity and dissent. The Communist Party had advocated
Speaker 1: for things like labor rights, civil rights, and women's rights,
Speaker 1: and that made it really ease to brand anyone who
Speaker 1: fought for these same causes as a communist, as McCarthy, Hoover,
Speaker 1: and other public figures stoked existing fear and paranoia. The
Speaker 1: government and private organizations tried to purge themselves of anyone
Speaker 1: deemed to be disloyal or a security threat for any reason,
Speaker 1: for example, anyone who might be susceptible to blackmail, and
Speaker 1: the national climate was one of suspicion, repression, and fear.
Speaker 1: By early nineteen fifty four, McCarthy's support was starting to
Speaker 1: wane because of his aggressive tactics with the Committee. I
Speaker 1: can't remember now if we mentioned this already, but there
Speaker 1: are also is yet another two parter on this back
Speaker 1: in the archive. After he accused several Army officers of
Speaker 1: having Communist ties, his own behavior was investigated, and the
Speaker 1: Senate voted to condemn his conduct on December second of
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four. Although the House on American Activities Committee
Speaker 1: still existed, its prominence and its reputation declined through the
Speaker 1: late nineteen fifties and sixties. In a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: the FBI's co intel pros picked up where the House
Speaker 1: on American Activities Committee left off, and we're going to
Speaker 1: talk more about that after we paused for a sponsor break.
Speaker 1: The FBI and the House on American Activities Committee were
Speaker 1: actively working together during the McCarthy era, but the FBI
Speaker 1: didn't really publicize what it was doing or try to
Speaker 1: promote the overall idea that communists had infiltrated a lot
Speaker 1: of American institutions, particularly Hollywood. It left that to the Committee,
Speaker 1: whose activities were publicly known and reported in the press.
Speaker 1: One of the papers that I read while researching all
Speaker 1: of this described the FBI during this time as laundering
Speaker 1: its intelligence and counterintelligence activities through the House on American
Speaker 1: Activities Committee. So when the House and American Activities Committee
Speaker 1: came under scrutiny in nineteen fifty four or its own
Speaker 1: activities declined, but the FBI's related work did not. Instead,
Speaker 1: Jay Edgar Hoover drew on the Communist Control Act of
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four or quote, an act to outlaw the
Speaker 1: Communist Party, to prohibit members of communist organizations from serving
Speaker 1: in certain representative capacities, and for other purposes nice and
Speaker 1: specific there this Act banned the Communist Party of the
Speaker 1: United States, framing it not as a legitimate political party.
Speaker 1: But as a conspiracy to overthrow the government. This law
Speaker 1: came out of this same ongoing fear and suspicion of communism,
Speaker 1: and it also connected specifically to the labor movement. There
Speaker 1: was some overlap between the Communist Party and union organizers,
Speaker 1: and the act specifically banned members of the Communist Party
Speaker 1: from holding office and labor organizations. This was purportedly to
Speaker 1: protect unsuspecting workers from Communist subversion, but really it granted
Speaker 1: the government a lot of of leeway to investigate labor
Speaker 1: organizations and to invalidate their collective bargaining agreements if they
Speaker 1: were determined to be communists infiltrated. Hoover interpreted the Communist
Speaker 1: Control Act as giving the FBI brought authority to investigate
Speaker 1: and proactively disrupt communist threats in the US, and when
Speaker 1: the Bureau started these counterintelligence programs, at first the focus
Speaker 1: was on communism. The first formal co intel pro built
Speaker 1: on ongoing counterintelligence efforts that targeted communists. It was called
Speaker 1: co Intel pro Communist Party USA or CPUSA, and that
Speaker 1: was launched in nineteen fifty six. This formal co Intel
Speaker 1: pro grew out of a series of field conferences that
Speaker 1: were held that year as suspected communists had been brought
Speaker 1: to trial under the Smith Act. The FBI's informants from
Speaker 1: within the Communist Party had been exposed when they were
Speaker 1: brought in to testify in court. These field conference were
Speaker 1: held in part to figure out how the Bureau could
Speaker 1: recruit new informants. A counterintelligence program was recommended as a
Speaker 1: way to keep targeting communists while recruiting new informants. Shortly
Speaker 1: after the FBI established cointel pro Communist Party USA. The
Speaker 1: US Supreme Court partially reversed its earlier decision in Dennis
Speaker 1: versus the United States. This time the decision was in
Speaker 1: Yates v. United States. The Supreme Court, under Chief Justice
Speaker 1: Earl Warren, ruled that radical reactionary speech was protected under
Speaker 1: the First Amendment. People could talk about revolution and overthrowing
Speaker 1: the government in the abstract, and that was protected speech
Speaker 1: unless it posed a clear and present danger. This overturned
Speaker 1: the convictions of fourteen people who had been charged with
Speaker 1: violating the Smith Act. On the same day, the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court also issued to other decisions in cases involving communism
Speaker 1: and members of the Communist Party, and both cases protected
Speaker 1: their rights to things like price to see and due process.
Speaker 1: These Supreme Court decisions were the first of a series
Speaker 1: that overturned or narrowed the focus of laws that had
Speaker 1: been providing the foundation for the FBI's activities against suspected communists.
Speaker 1: The FBI argued that these court rulings left them with
Speaker 1: no other choice but to fight communism through covert counterintelligence,
Speaker 1: so by the time the cointel pros were uncovered and investigated,
Speaker 1: more than half of all the proposed operations had been
Speaker 1: aimed at the Communist Party USA. The FBI carried out
Speaker 1: one thousand, three hundred eighty eight separate documented efforts against
Speaker 1: the Communist Party, whose membership went from twenty two thousand
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen fifties to three thousand by nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty seven. But the focus expanded out from communism. Co
Speaker 1: intel pro CPUSA targeted communists and suspected communists, and then
Speaker 1: organizations that had Communists among their members, and then organizations
Speaker 1: that were made be tangentially connected to suspected communists, and
Speaker 1: then organizations whose purpose and goals had some common themes
Speaker 1: with the Communist Party even if there were no Communists involved,
Speaker 1: and then the definition of communism expanded to include pretty
Speaker 1: much anything that the Bureau considered to be subversive. Co
Speaker 1: Intel pro Cposa also included counterintelligence operations against civil rights activists,
Speaker 1: initially because of known or suspected ties to communism. For example,
Speaker 1: Stanley David Levison was a friend and advisor to Martin
Speaker 1: Luther King Junior, and he had also been one of
Speaker 1: the major financiers of the Communist Party USA. But this
Speaker 1: targeting of civil rights activists was not just about actual
Speaker 1: connections to communism. It was also because the Bureau saw
Speaker 1: civil rights work in the US in general as a
Speaker 1: subversive threat. So as cointel pro Cposa expanded, the FBI
Speaker 1: put intense efforts into discrediting and disrupting civil rights organizations.
Speaker 1: The FBI repeatedly broke into civil rights organization's offices to
Speaker 1: steal documents, and got the IRS 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 Junior, supposedly
Speaker 1: written by an anonymous black person, calling him quote a
Speaker 1: colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that This
Speaker 1: letter was accompanied by an audio recording purportedly documenting evidence
Speaker 1: of King's extramarital affairs. It ended by saying that there
Speaker 1: 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 nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about that in Part two. They
Speaker 1: found five specific named FBI co intel pros, including co
Speaker 1: intel pro Communist Party USA. The next co intel pro
Speaker 1: Socialist Workers Party started in nineteen sixty one. This one
Speaker 1: was short lived. There's a whole bunch of freedom of
Speaker 1: information acts stuff on the FBI website, and this one
Speaker 1: only has like three pages or three lengths of stuff
Speaker 1: to go through, like the other ones have sometimes twenty
Speaker 1: and thirty and multiple pages of links to go through.
Speaker 1: So we're not covering that one in as much detail.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that the Bureau routinely did
Speaker 1: was to target Socialist Workers Party members who were running
Speaker 1: for public office to undermine their political campaigns. In nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four, the bureau launched co Intel pro White Hate,
Speaker 1: co Intel pro Black Nationalist Slash Hate groups started in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, and co Intel pro New Left started
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty eight. Other counterintelligence programs were also unearthed
Speaker 1: later on, with targets that included the American Indian Movement
Speaker 1: and Puerto Rican independence activists. Ostensibly, the goals of all
Speaker 1: these counterintelligence programs were to protect national security and to
Speaker 1: prevent violence, and to do that the FBI would quote expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit,
Speaker 1: or otherwise neutralize its targets. The one exception was co
Speaker 1: Intel pro White Hate, and with that the FBI was
Speaker 1: focused on curbing white nationalist violence rather than neutralizing the
Speaker 1: targeted groups altogether, which was more the focus and the
Speaker 1: other coin cel pros we're going to get to more
Speaker 1: about that in a bit. At the same time, even
Speaker 1: though the FBI was purportedly preventing violence, some of these
Speaker 1: operations incited violence. For example, the FBI tried to start
Speaker 1: or escalate violent disputes between the black Panthers and street
Speaker 1: gangs operating in the same areas. As another example, it's
Speaker 1: not clear whether the FBI played a direct part in
Speaker 1: the assassination of Malcolm X, but the Bureau definitely stoked
Speaker 1: the divisions and disputes within the Nation of Islam that
Speaker 1: led to his assassination. Another Bureau effort that was unearthed
Speaker 1: later was Operation Hoodwink, which was an effort to quote
Speaker 1: evoke a dispute between CPUSA and Lekosa Nostra, in other words,
Speaker 1: to try to start a war between the Communist Party
Speaker 1: and 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 intail 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 in how
Speaker 1: the country operated or treated its residents and citizens, especially
Speaker 1: with 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 works 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 reader's 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 photocopying people's mail, to
Speaker 1: breaking into organization's 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: informed 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 also called people's parents, employers, landlords, and universities
Speaker 1: to inform them of their involvement in targeted organizations to
Speaker 1: try to get them fired, evicted, or expelled. Many of
Speaker 1: the targets of cointel pro New Left were college students,
Speaker 1: and the FBI either contacted their parents to tell them
Speaker 1: about their children's purportedly subversive activities or they faked calls
Speaker 1: from parents to students haranguing them for their political activity.
Speaker 1: The FBI also created and distributed published material that was
Speaker 1: meant to discredit their targets, and they fed news stories,
Speaker 1: sometimes real and sometimes fabricated, to the media. FBI informants
Speaker 1: gave media interviews in which they intentionally tried to make
Speaker 1: the organizations they were purportedly representing look as bad as possible,
Speaker 1: whether it was through using loaded rhetoric or emphasizing a
Speaker 1: group's most controversial viewpoints, or just seeming unhinged. The FBI
Speaker 1: also paid informants to make false statements, for example, paying
Speaker 1: informants who were part of nonviolent organizations to make public
Speaker 1: calls for violence. In some cases, the bureau even set
Speaker 1: up local branches of an organization, with the branch's entire
Speaker 1: membership being made up completely of informants, or they set
Speaker 1: up new fictitious organizations whose members were all informants so
Speaker 1: that they could work against their actual targets. The FBI
Speaker 1: also outed gay people and spread rumors about people's sexual orientations,
Speaker 1: regardless of what their sexual orientation actually was. They made
Speaker 1: postcards and mailed them to people's homes like for example,
Speaker 1: a card that said quote thank you for your successful
Speaker 1: anticipation in anti establishment and anti military Industrial complex activities,
Speaker 1: and those were sent to college students' parental addresses. During
Speaker 1: co Intel pro New Left, the Bureau used postcards specifically
Speaker 1: 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 Cointel 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 co Intel prob Bloe nationalist hate groups, but
Speaker 1: really rarely used similar tactics when they were working in
Speaker 1: co Intel pro White Hate. Although the FBI was fairly
Speaker 1: insulated from other government departments, which is how it was
Speaker 1: able to carry out these kinds of programs for so long.
Speaker 1: It also pulled in other departments and bureaus. As part
Speaker 1: of this work. The FBI leaked real and false information
Speaker 1: to the IRS, prompting audits of civil rights leaders and
Speaker 1: other targets, essentially using the IRS to harass people. It
Speaker 1: did the same with local police, leading to things like
Speaker 1: police harassment, arrests, false charges, and just a selective enforcement
Speaker 1: of existing laws depending on who the FBI thought deserved
Speaker 1: to be prosecuted. Basically, all these efforts combined investigation, disinformation,
Speaker 1: psychological warfare, and harassment to try to destroy organizations that
Speaker 1: the FBI thought were threatening, or, in the case of
Speaker 1: cointel pro white hate, to just try to curb those
Speaker 1: organizations violence rather than trying to neutralize them altogether. In
Speaker 1: all of this, the FBI's focus was on whether what
Speaker 1: it was doing was effective, not on whether these tactics
Speaker 1: were constitutional or otherwise legal. According to the FBI, co
Speaker 1: intel pro operations were a tiny proportion of its overall
Speaker 1: work between nineteen fifty six and nineteen seventy one, quote
Speaker 1: about two tenths of one percent of the FBI's workload
Speaker 1: over a fifteen year period. At the same time, more
Speaker 1: than fifty thousand pages of co intel pro documents were
Speaker 1: released to the public. Starting in the nineteen seventies, a
Speaker 1: Senate investigation concluded that the FBI had carried out two thousand,
Speaker 1: three hundred seventy separate counterintelligence actions, with almost one thousand
Speaker 1: additional actions being proposed but not carried out. More were unearthed.
Speaker 1: Later on, we're going to talk about coin cell pro
Speaker 1: white hate, which, as we've noted, is kind of an
Speaker 1: outlier in all of this. After a quick sponsor break,
Speaker 1: the FBI established most of its co intel pros because
Speaker 1: it believed that the people and organizations that it was
Speaker 1: targeting were a threat. Overwhelmingly, these targets were on the
Speaker 1: political left. They were people and groups who were advocating
Speaker 1: for things like civil rights, black liberation, women's liberation, pacifism, socialism, communism,
Speaker 1: nuclear disarmament, and an end to the US involvement in
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War. Things like that. As we noted at
Speaker 1: the top of the show, there were exceptions, but most
Speaker 1: of the time the people and organizations being targeted weren't
Speaker 1: violent threats. Even organizations that weren't specifically nonviolent. A lot
Speaker 1: of the time were focused on defending themselves with violence
Speaker 1: if necessary, not on instigating violence, or in some cases,
Speaker 1: there were individual members of an organization that were involved
Speaker 1: in violence while the organization itself was not. Co Intel
Speaker 1: pro White Hate started on July thirtieth, nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: and in many ways it was an outlier when compared
Speaker 1: to the other co Intel pros. Most of the other
Speaker 1: programs shifted and expanded over time, and some of them
Speaker 1: were particularly vague. For example, in co Intel pro New Left,
Speaker 1: the FBI did not have a precise definition for what
Speaker 1: New Left even meant. But co Intel pro White Hate
Speaker 1: was focused on white supremacist groups, especially the Ku Klux Klan,
Speaker 1: and it kept that focus throughout its whole existence. The
Speaker 1: Ku Klux Klan has been through a few iterations in
Speaker 1: the United States, and it surged in popularity during the
Speaker 1: Civil Rights movement, with its members fighting against integration and
Speaker 1: terrorizing black people in other communities, using everything from cross
Speaker 1: burnings to murder. Co Intel pro White Hate targeted seventeen
Speaker 1: Ku Klux Klan organizations and nine other hate groups, including
Speaker 1: the American Nazi Party. Another big difference is that many
Speaker 1: of the other co intel pros were focused on organizations
Speaker 1: that were challenging the status quo. The Ku Klux Klan
Speaker 1: and other targeted hate groups, on the other hand, were
Speaker 1: maintaining the status quo by upholding segregation, racism, and white supremacy.
Speaker 1: They harassed, threatened, and murdered integrationists and civil rights workers,
Speaker 1: primarily in the Southern United States. In general, members of
Speaker 1: these organizations were also Christian, anti communists, intensely patriotic, and
Speaker 1: supportive of both local and federal law enforcement. So, unlike
Speaker 1: with the other co intel pros, the FBI's goal wasn't
Speaker 1: to totally neutralize these groups. It was just to curb
Speaker 1: their violence and prevent that violence from spreading to other groups.
Speaker 1: The FBI also took the initiative to launch its other
Speaker 1: co intel pros based on its own assessments of what
Speaker 1: constituted a threat, But co intel pro white hate followed
Speaker 1: intense pressure from outside the bureau, including from President Lyndon
Speaker 1: Baines Johnson and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Current and
Speaker 1: former klansmen and other white supremacists had carried out a
Speaker 1: whole series of murders and other acts of violence. This
Speaker 1: included the nineteen sixty three Sixteenth Street Baptist church bonding,
Speaker 1: which killed fourteen year olds Addie mccollins, Denise McNair and
Speaker 1: Carol Robertson and eleven year old Cynthia Wesley. It also
Speaker 1: included the nineteen sixty three murder of Medgar Evers and
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixty four murders of civil rights activists Michael Schwermer,
Speaker 1: Andrew Goodman, and James Cheney. After coinceel pro white hate started,
Speaker 1: members of the clan also murdered Viola 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. Cointel pro white hate then served
Speaker 1: several purposes for the FBI. It allowed the bureau to
Speaker 1: demonstrate for the President and the Attorney General that it
Speaker 1: was doing something to investigate these crimes. At the same time,
Speaker 1: by using covert counterintelligence, the FBI could do most of
Speaker 1: this work in secret without alienating or antagonizing Southern law enforcement,
Speaker 1: many of whom tacitly allowed the Ku Klux Klan and
Speaker 1: other hate groups to operate in their area or actively participated.
Speaker 1: As a side note, when j Edgar Hoover said quote
Speaker 1: doctor Martin Luther King is the most notorious liar in
Speaker 1: the country in nineteen sixty four, that was in response
Speaker 1: to King's criticisms that the Bureau was too friendly with
Speaker 1: Southern segregationists and that the Southern FBI agents were not
Speaker 1: taking threats to Black Americans seriously. The FBI used a
Speaker 1: lot of the types of tactics that we discussed earlier
Speaker 1: in the episode during cointel pro white hate. As we
Speaker 1: noted earlier, the Bureau didn't really need to create materials
Speaker 1: to try to bring bad pr to the clan because
Speaker 1: the clan was doing a lot of that work for them.
Speaker 1: The FBI publicized not only their hate crimes, but also
Speaker 1: other crimes committed by clan leaders and members, including things
Speaker 1: like embezzlement and attempting to arrange marriages between clan members
Speaker 1: and underage girls. The FBI also publicly identified clan leaders,
Speaker 1: including leaking their names to the press who published critical
Speaker 1: articles and satirical editorial cartoons. After the House on American
Speaker 1: Activities Committee held hearings on the clan, something that the
Speaker 1: committee was pressured to take on, the FBI released those
Speaker 1: findings to the press as well. The FBI also worked
Speaker 1: to so distrust within these organizations. They sent thousands of
Speaker 1: postcards to clan members that either implied or flat out
Speaker 1: said that the government had infiltrated the organization or that
Speaker 1: accused KKK leaders of fraud or other wrongdoing. These postcards
Speaker 1: said things like clansmen, trying to hide your identity behind
Speaker 1: your sheet? You received this, someone knows who you are.
Speaker 1: Once again, these postcards served multiple purposes to make clan
Speaker 1: members think the organization had been infiltrated, to make them
Speaker 1: wonder how many other people had seen that postcard on
Speaker 1: its way to them, and to make it possible for
Speaker 1: other people, including postal workers, to see that the target
Speaker 1: was in the clan. During coen Cel pro White Hate,
Speaker 1: the Bureau created the National Committee for Domestic Tranquility, which
Speaker 1: sent letters and other materials to clan members to stoke
Speaker 1: dissent and spread rumors about informants. They printed accusations that
Speaker 1: clan leaders were the anti Christ and kind of a
Speaker 1: weird irony. The FBI, which is we've talked about, was
Speaker 1: really focused on undermining communism, tried to undermine clan membership
Speaker 1: by spreading rumors that communists had infiltrated the organizations. The
Speaker 1: organization itself was fiercely anti communist. Some of the operations
Speaker 1: were almost bizarre. In one instance, the FBI collected the
Speaker 1: charred remnants of a cross that the clan had burned
Speaker 1: and then had it delivered by courier to a clan meeting,
Speaker 1: hoping to reinforce the idea that not only had someone
Speaker 1: known about the cross burning and who was behind it,
Speaker 1: but that they also knew when and where the group gathered.
Speaker 1: It is not clear how effective this was. According to
Speaker 1: the book that I was reading about this, they took
Speaker 1: it outside and tried to light it on fire again.
Speaker 1: The targeted hate groups naturally realized that they had informants
Speaker 1: in their midst Some turned toward requiring lie detector tests
Speaker 1: and questioning people under the effects of sodium pentathal to
Speaker 1: try to determine whether a person was loyal. It is
Speaker 1: not clear whether co Intel pro white hate thwarted white
Speaker 1: supremacist violence, but overall membership in the clan did drop
Speaker 1: during these years, from an estimated fourteen to fifteen thousand
Speaker 1: members before co Intel pro tour twey three hundred in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one. It does also seem that public perceptions
Speaker 1: of the clan shifted during these same years, with more people,
Speaker 1: especially more white people, seeing the clan in similar hate groups,
Speaker 1: as violent and unstable and mentally connecting the clan to Nazis.
Speaker 1: Some white Southern leaders who had tacitly or directly approved
Speaker 1: of the clan's activities gradually distanced themselves during the Bureaus operations.
Speaker 1: So in the next episode, we're going to talk more
Speaker 1: about some of the other Cohentel pros, including intense targeting
Speaker 1: of the Black Panthers, and we'll also talk about, honestly
Speaker 1: one of my favorite parts of this whole story, which
Speaker 1: is how these programs were finally exposed. That is a
Speaker 1: very very good story. Thanks so much for joining us
Speaker 1: on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note,
Speaker 1: our email addresses History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and
Speaker 1: you can subsc vibe to the show on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.