WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: COINTELPRO 1 0:00:02.400 --> 0:00:05.400 Hello and Happy Saturday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm 0:00:05.440 --> 0:00:09.840 Holly Frye. Our next two Saturday Classics are a listener 0:00:09.880 --> 0:00:12.880 request from a friend who is also a history teacher, 0:00:13.400 --> 0:00:16.239 who noticed that she's been seeing a lot of references 0:00:16.280 --> 0:00:20.560 to co Intel Pro on social media lately. We don't 0:00:20.600 --> 0:00:24.119 often run two partners as Saturday Classics, but our episodes 0:00:24.160 --> 0:00:27.720 on co Intel Pro are not one continuous narrative. Part 0:00:27.720 --> 0:00:31.080 ones today we will talk about some background on the 0:00:31.160 --> 0:00:35.120 FBI and the origins of its counterintelligence programs, as well 0:00:35.159 --> 0:00:38.839 as one specific operation, which was called co Intel Pro 0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:42.760 White Hate. Then next week, Part two will cover two 0:00:43.040 --> 0:00:46.320 other co Intel pros and how the public learned about 0:00:46.320 --> 0:00:50.440 these programs. These episodes are also an example of something 0:00:50.479 --> 0:00:53.320 we said in this week's Behind the Scenes about not 0:00:53.479 --> 0:00:56.040 needing to go back very far in history to find 0:00:56.120 --> 0:00:59.880 precedence and things that resonate with things that are happening now. 0:01:00.680 --> 0:01:03.600 We recorded our episodes on co Intel Pro in July 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:07.320 of twenty twenty, during international protests over the murder of 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:12.080 George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin. This originally came 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:18.720 out July twentieth, twenty twenty Welcome to Stuff You Missed 0:01:18.720 --> 0:01:29.120 in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome 0:01:29.160 --> 0:01:32.600 to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. 0:01:32.800 --> 0:01:35.520 Something that has come up several times on our show 0:01:35.840 --> 0:01:39.000 is FBI surveillance of people who were associated with the 0:01:39.040 --> 0:01:42.720 civil rights movement in the United States. Most recently, we 0:01:42.760 --> 0:01:45.760 talked about the bureau creating this file on James Baldwin 0:01:45.800 --> 0:01:49.160 that was more than seventeen hundred pages long, and in 0:01:49.240 --> 0:01:52.080 earlier episodes we've talked about things like the FBI using 0:01:52.160 --> 0:01:55.840 wiretaps to spy on Byerd Rustin and Martin Luther King Junior. 0:01:56.720 --> 0:01:59.920 A lot of this surveillance was connected to a series 0:02:00.160 --> 0:02:04.640 of counterintelligence programs, or co intel pros that primarily targeted 0:02:04.720 --> 0:02:08.000 left wing organizations and people in the US from nineteen 0:02:08.040 --> 0:02:12.079 fifty six until nineteen seventy one. The FBI framed this 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:15.440 as work that was necessary to prevent violence and protect 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:18.080 national security, but a whole lot of the people and 0:02:18.200 --> 0:02:21.600 organizations that they targeted were not violent and were not 0:02:21.720 --> 0:02:25.880 threatening national security. Mostly they were just threatening the status quo, 0:02:26.360 --> 0:02:29.800 and the FBI pursued the one co intel pro that 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:34.000 really really was focused on violent organizations with a totally 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:36.840 different end in mind than what it pursued with the 0:02:36.880 --> 0:02:41.080 other operations. This is one of those topics that includes 0:02:41.120 --> 0:02:43.960 a whole lot of history that is just a complicated tangle, 0:02:44.480 --> 0:02:46.880 So we're going to tackle it in two parts. Today, 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:50.040 we'll talk about the history of the FBI, especially as 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:55.480 it related to communism and perceived subversive threats, because all 0:02:55.560 --> 0:02:59.360 that fed directly into co Intel Pro. We're also going 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:01.800 to give an o review of the types of tactics 0:03:01.800 --> 0:03:04.760 that the FBI used across these various programs, and we're 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:06.840 going to talk about the one co intel pro that 0:03:07.000 --> 0:03:08.919 was kind of an outlier in all of this, which 0:03:08.960 --> 0:03:12.760 was cointel Pro White Hate. Next time, we will get 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:15.640 into some of the specifics of the co intel pros 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:19.560 that targeted black liberation organizations and the new Left, as 0:03:19.560 --> 0:03:22.880 well as how these programs were finally exposed to the public. 0:03:23.320 --> 0:03:26.600 The investigation team that would become the US Federal Bureau 0:03:26.639 --> 0:03:30.360 of Investigation was established in nineteen oh eight, and at 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:33.399 first this was a small group of newly hired investigators 0:03:33.400 --> 0:03:36.120 who worked for the Department of Justice under the Office 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:39.560 of the Chief Examiner. Before this point when the Department 0:03:39.600 --> 0:03:43.680 of Justice needed investigators, it had either hired private investigators 0:03:44.200 --> 0:03:48.280 or borrowed investigators from other departments. In nineteen oh nine, 0:03:48.360 --> 0:03:51.240 the Office of the Chief Examiner was renamed the Bureau 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:56.240 of Investigation. The Bureau's work involved enforcing federal law and 0:03:56.360 --> 0:03:59.960 helping to protect the nation from threats. In nineteen seven, 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:03.680 just after the US entered World War One, Congress passed 0:04:03.720 --> 0:04:07.280 the Espionage Act, or an Act to punish acts of 0:04:07.360 --> 0:04:11.440 interference with Foreign relations, the neutrality of the foreign commerce 0:04:11.480 --> 0:04:14.800 of the United States, to punish espionage and better to 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:17.760 enforce the criminal laws of the United States, and for 0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:22.120 other purposes. The Bureau of Investigation had become the government's 0:04:22.240 --> 0:04:25.919 largest investigative agency, and it was tasked with enforcing the 0:04:26.040 --> 0:04:30.120 Espionage Act. The Bureau of Investigation also had an assortment 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:33.600 of other duties, including guarding the US border with Mexico 0:04:33.680 --> 0:04:37.360 during the Mexican Revolution. The same year that the Espionage 0:04:37.400 --> 0:04:42.000 Act was passed, j Edgar Hoover joined the Department of Justice. 0:04:42.080 --> 0:04:45.800 The following year, Congress passed the Sedition Act, which expanded 0:04:45.800 --> 0:04:49.920 the Espionage Act to focus on anti war activists and socialists. 0:04:50.720 --> 0:04:54.120 The Sedition Act made it a federal crime to quote, willfully, 0:04:54.240 --> 0:04:59.360 utter print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurreless, or 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:02.360 abusive life language about the form of the government of 0:05:02.400 --> 0:05:07.680 the United States. It also outlawed urging, inciting, or advocating 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:12.480 any curtailment or reduction in the production of war material. Then, 0:05:12.520 --> 0:05:16.760 in nineteen nineteen, US Attorney General A. Mischel Palmer's home 0:05:16.920 --> 0:05:19.680 was bombed. This was part of a series of male 0:05:19.760 --> 0:05:23.200 bombings carried out that year, with seven other bombings happening 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:26.400 on that same night. We have a two part episode 0:05:26.440 --> 0:05:29.159 on the bombings and the massive series of raids and 0:05:29.200 --> 0:05:32.760 deportations that followed, and that two parter originally came out 0:05:32.760 --> 0:05:36.159 in twenty sixteen. J Edgar Hoover led a team to 0:05:36.240 --> 0:05:39.920 investigate these bombings, and the espionage and sedition acts were 0:05:39.920 --> 0:05:44.240 a big part of it. The raids, incarcerations, and deportations 0:05:44.279 --> 0:05:47.200 that followed became known as the Palmer Raids and they 0:05:47.200 --> 0:05:49.760 were part of the first Red Scare, which was a 0:05:49.839 --> 0:05:55.200 widespread fear of Bolshevists, anarchists, socialists, and immigrants as a 0:05:55.200 --> 0:05:59.279 threat to American life and national security. By nineteen twenty, 0:05:59.360 --> 0:06:02.720 Attorney General Arl Palmer's handling of these investigations had come 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:06.000 under intense scrutiny from both within and outside of the 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:09.120 US government. On May twenty eighth of that year, a 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:12.080 team of twelve lawyers issued a report on the raids 0:06:12.440 --> 0:06:16.880 Mister port detailed cruel and unusual punishments, arrests without warrant, 0:06:17.240 --> 0:06:21.960 unreasonable searches and seizures compelling persons to witness against themselves, 0:06:22.400 --> 0:06:26.479 propaganda by the Department of Justice, and provocative agents, which 0:06:26.480 --> 0:06:31.400 were basically operatives who entrapped people. Palmer's reputation suffered as 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:34.040 a result of all this, and he returned to private 0:06:34.080 --> 0:06:37.880 practice after failing to win the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. 0:06:38.839 --> 0:06:41.839 William J. Flynn was director of the Bureau of Investigation 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:44.480 at the time, and soon he was replaced as well. 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:48.920 The Espionage and Sedition Acts were repealed in nineteen twenty 0:06:48.960 --> 0:06:54.200 and nineteen twenty one, but Hoover's reputation wasn't really tarnished 0:06:54.240 --> 0:06:57.360 by his involvement in all this. Soon he was being 0:06:57.360 --> 0:07:00.359 groomed to take over the Bureau. Jay Edgar Hoover became 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:03.960 the Bureau of Investigations director in nineteen twenty four, and 0:07:04.040 --> 0:07:07.240 the bureau was renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 0:07:07.360 --> 0:07:10.680 nineteen thirty five. Of course, there is a ton of 0:07:10.760 --> 0:07:14.120 history between when Hoover joined the Department of Justice and 0:07:14.200 --> 0:07:18.120 when the FBI started its co intel pros. Hoover was 0:07:18.160 --> 0:07:21.559 involved in modernizing and standardizing the FBI, and the bureau 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:27.239 itself was involved in investigating organized crime during Prohibition. During 0:07:27.280 --> 0:07:31.720 World War II, the FBI also maintained lists of Japanese, German, 0:07:31.800 --> 0:07:34.800 and Italian nationals believed to be a threat to domestic 0:07:34.880 --> 0:07:39.360 security and kept those people under surveillance. Then, of course, 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:43.520 Japanese immigrants and their American born descendants were incarcerated under 0:07:43.560 --> 0:07:47.040 Executive Order ninety sixty six. That is also covered in 0:07:47.080 --> 0:07:51.320 a previous two parter of the podcast. The Central Intelligence 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:54.440 Agency was founded in nineteen forty seven to focus on 0:07:54.520 --> 0:07:58.480 foreign intelligence. That left the FBI to focus on domestic 0:07:58.520 --> 0:08:02.960 intelligence and on investigationading federal crimes. This creation of the 0:08:02.960 --> 0:08:06.920 CIA happened under the National Security Act of nineteen forty seven, 0:08:07.120 --> 0:08:11.440 and that act also included this definition of counterintelligence quote 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:17.560 information gathered and activities conducted to protect against espionage, other 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:23.000 intelligence activities, sabotage, or assassinations conducted by or on behalf 0:08:23.040 --> 0:08:28.040 of foreign governments or elements thereof foreign organizations or foreign persons, 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:32.800 or international terrorist activities. A big part of this same 0:08:32.880 --> 0:08:36.720 time span was the fight against communism. Following a precedent 0:08:36.800 --> 0:08:39.400 that had been set by the Palmer Raids, the First 0:08:39.440 --> 0:08:43.360 Red Scare, and the Espionage and Sedition Acts, in nineteen 0:08:43.440 --> 0:08:47.079 forty Congress passed the Alien Registration Act, also known as 0:08:47.080 --> 0:08:50.480 the Smith Act. In this act included clauses that made 0:08:50.480 --> 0:08:53.720 it illegal for any citizen or resident of the US 0:08:53.760 --> 0:08:59.400 to quote, advocate, a bet, advise, or teach the duty, necessity, desirability, 0:08:59.559 --> 0:09:03.560 or propriety of overthrowing, or destroying any government in the 0:09:03.679 --> 0:09:08.040 United States by force or violence. Just as the Espionage 0:09:08.080 --> 0:09:11.400 and Sedition Acts had been used to target political dissenters 0:09:11.440 --> 0:09:15.040 and immigrants, the Smith Act became a primary tool for 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:19.600 prosecuting communists. In nineteen forty eight, eleven leaders of the 0:09:19.600 --> 0:09:23.600 Communist Party USA were tried and convicted under the Smith Act. 0:09:24.280 --> 0:09:27.520 They hadn't been directly advocating for the overthrow of the 0:09:27.600 --> 0:09:30.679 US government, but they had been teaching from works by 0:09:30.760 --> 0:09:35.959 Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin that described the revolutionary overthrow 0:09:36.000 --> 0:09:40.880 of governments as necessary. The Supreme Court upheld these convictions 0:09:40.880 --> 0:09:43.840 in Dennis versus the United States in nineteen fifty one, 0:09:44.559 --> 0:09:47.520 and this Court decision moved the country away from an 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:51.280 earlier standard that required evidence of a clear and present 0:09:51.400 --> 0:09:54.520 danger in order to justify the government placing limits on 0:09:54.600 --> 0:10:00.000 free speech. The focus on communism escalated during the Cold War. 0:09:59.800 --> 0:10:02.360 W OR two had left the US and the USSR 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:06.160 as the two remaining superpowers, and at first the US 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:09.640 was the only one with nuclear weapons, but the Soviet 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:13.400 Union detonated its first to nuclear device in nineteen forty nine, 0:10:13.640 --> 0:10:16.600 and soon it became clear that spies had been at 0:10:16.640 --> 0:10:21.000 work within the US nuclear program. This sparked an increasing 0:10:21.040 --> 0:10:24.400 fixation on the idea that Soviet agents were infiltrating the 0:10:24.480 --> 0:10:28.960 United States, including through the US Communist Party. There was 0:10:28.960 --> 0:10:32.840 also a more general fear of Communist infiltration, regardless of 0:10:32.880 --> 0:10:36.760 whether a particular person or organization had ties back to 0:10:36.800 --> 0:10:41.040 the Soviet Union. The House on American Activities Committee had 0:10:41.080 --> 0:10:45.040 been established in nineteen thirty eight to investigate suspected disloyalty, 0:10:45.080 --> 0:10:49.199 including ties to communism. During the Cold War, the committee's 0:10:49.200 --> 0:10:53.439 activities became notorious under the direction of Senator Joseph McCarthy. 0:10:54.080 --> 0:10:56.680 This was all part of the Second Red Scare, which 0:10:56.720 --> 0:10:59.920 was another national panic, this time focused on the idea 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:04.680 of Communist infiltration. This panic grew out of the tensions 0:11:04.720 --> 0:11:07.720 between the US and the USSR, and it was further 0:11:07.760 --> 0:11:11.440 inflamed by other events like the Chinese Communist Revolution which 0:11:11.440 --> 0:11:14.440 started in nineteen forty nine and the Korean War which 0:11:14.480 --> 0:11:17.720 started in nineteen fifty. To be clear, some of the 0:11:17.760 --> 0:11:21.520 people targeted by the House and American Activities Committee really 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:25.160 were communists or otherwise had ties to the Communist Party, 0:11:25.800 --> 0:11:28.720 and there were some Communists who really did have ties 0:11:28.760 --> 0:11:31.720 back to the Soviet Union and its leadership, even to 0:11:31.760 --> 0:11:34.880 the point of spying on the US or expressing overt 0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:38.640 loyalty to the Soviet Union and its leadership. But the 0:11:38.679 --> 0:11:42.720 overall paranoia was disproportionate to the actual level of threat 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:45.959 or the number of Communists who had ties to the USSR. 0:11:46.920 --> 0:11:50.600 That also went way beyond communism and started targeting more 0:11:50.800 --> 0:11:55.800 general political activity and dissent. The Communist Party had advocated 0:11:55.840 --> 0:11:59.000 for things like labor rights, civil rights, and women's rights, 0:11:59.000 --> 0:12:01.600 and that made it really ease to brand anyone who 0:12:01.679 --> 0:12:05.880 fought for these same causes as a communist, as McCarthy, Hoover, 0:12:06.080 --> 0:12:10.000 and other public figures stoked existing fear and paranoia. The 0:12:10.080 --> 0:12:14.240 government and private organizations tried to purge themselves of anyone 0:12:14.320 --> 0:12:18.360 deemed to be disloyal or a security threat for any reason, 0:12:18.960 --> 0:12:23.079 for example, anyone who might be susceptible to blackmail, and 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:26.880 the national climate was one of suspicion, repression, and fear. 0:12:27.520 --> 0:12:30.760 By early nineteen fifty four, McCarthy's support was starting to 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:34.640 wane because of his aggressive tactics with the Committee. I 0:12:34.679 --> 0:12:36.760 can't remember now if we mentioned this already, but there 0:12:36.800 --> 0:12:39.640 are also is yet another two parter on this back 0:12:39.679 --> 0:12:43.160 in the archive. After he accused several Army officers of 0:12:43.200 --> 0:12:46.920 having Communist ties, his own behavior was investigated, and the 0:12:46.960 --> 0:12:49.800 Senate voted to condemn his conduct on December second of 0:12:49.880 --> 0:12:53.800 nineteen fifty four. Although the House on American Activities Committee 0:12:53.840 --> 0:12:57.839 still existed, its prominence and its reputation declined through the 0:12:57.920 --> 0:13:01.040 late nineteen fifties and sixties. In a lot of ways, 0:13:01.120 --> 0:13:04.000 the FBI's co intel pros picked up where the House 0:13:04.040 --> 0:13:07.040 on American Activities Committee left off, and we're going to 0:13:07.080 --> 0:13:09.800 talk more about that after we paused for a sponsor break. 0:13:19.400 --> 0:13:22.559 The FBI and the House on American Activities Committee were 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:25.760 actively working together during the McCarthy era, but the FBI 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:28.439 didn't really publicize what it was doing or try to 0:13:28.480 --> 0:13:32.079 promote the overall idea that communists had infiltrated a lot 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:37.200 of American institutions, particularly Hollywood. It left that to the Committee, 0:13:37.200 --> 0:13:40.400 whose activities were publicly known and reported in the press. 0:13:40.679 --> 0:13:43.400 One of the papers that I read while researching all 0:13:43.440 --> 0:13:48.400 of this described the FBI during this time as laundering 0:13:48.679 --> 0:13:53.080 its intelligence and counterintelligence activities through the House on American 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:57.560 Activities Committee. So when the House and American Activities Committee 0:13:57.600 --> 0:14:01.080 came under scrutiny in nineteen fifty four or its own 0:14:01.120 --> 0:14:06.040 activities declined, but the FBI's related work did not. Instead, 0:14:06.160 --> 0:14:09.400 Jay Edgar Hoover drew on the Communist Control Act of 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:13.000 nineteen fifty four or quote, an act to outlaw the 0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:17.400 Communist Party, to prohibit members of communist organizations from serving 0:14:17.480 --> 0:14:22.400 in certain representative capacities, and for other purposes nice and 0:14:22.400 --> 0:14:25.880 specific there this Act banned the Communist Party of the 0:14:26.000 --> 0:14:29.320 United States, framing it not as a legitimate political party. 0:14:29.560 --> 0:14:33.320 But as a conspiracy to overthrow the government. This law 0:14:33.440 --> 0:14:37.160 came out of this same ongoing fear and suspicion of communism, 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:40.920 and it also connected specifically to the labor movement. There 0:14:41.040 --> 0:14:45.200 was some overlap between the Communist Party and union organizers, 0:14:45.400 --> 0:14:48.760 and the act specifically banned members of the Communist Party 0:14:48.800 --> 0:14:53.320 from holding office and labor organizations. This was purportedly to 0:14:53.480 --> 0:14:58.640 protect unsuspecting workers from Communist subversion, but really it granted 0:14:58.640 --> 0:15:01.920 the government a lot of of leeway to investigate labor 0:15:02.040 --> 0:15:06.200 organizations and to invalidate their collective bargaining agreements if they 0:15:06.200 --> 0:15:11.080 were determined to be communists infiltrated. Hoover interpreted the Communist 0:15:11.160 --> 0:15:15.200 Control Act as giving the FBI brought authority to investigate 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:19.640 and proactively disrupt communist threats in the US, and when 0:15:19.640 --> 0:15:23.480 the Bureau started these counterintelligence programs, at first the focus 0:15:23.720 --> 0:15:28.720 was on communism. The first formal co intel pro built 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:33.600 on ongoing counterintelligence efforts that targeted communists. It was called 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:38.360 co Intel pro Communist Party USA or CPUSA, and that 0:15:38.480 --> 0:15:42.280 was launched in nineteen fifty six. This formal co Intel 0:15:42.360 --> 0:15:45.560 pro grew out of a series of field conferences that 0:15:45.600 --> 0:15:49.520 were held that year as suspected communists had been brought 0:15:49.560 --> 0:15:53.160 to trial under the Smith Act. The FBI's informants from 0:15:53.200 --> 0:15:56.640 within the Communist Party had been exposed when they were 0:15:56.680 --> 0:16:00.440 brought in to testify in court. These field conference were 0:16:00.440 --> 0:16:03.000 held in part to figure out how the Bureau could 0:16:03.000 --> 0:16:08.000 recruit new informants. A counterintelligence program was recommended as a 0:16:08.040 --> 0:16:12.560 way to keep targeting communists while recruiting new informants. Shortly 0:16:12.600 --> 0:16:17.200 after the FBI established cointel pro Communist Party USA. The 0:16:17.320 --> 0:16:21.200 US Supreme Court partially reversed its earlier decision in Dennis 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:24.400 versus the United States. This time the decision was in 0:16:24.480 --> 0:16:28.400 Yates v. United States. The Supreme Court, under Chief Justice 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:32.800 Earl Warren, ruled that radical reactionary speech was protected under 0:16:32.840 --> 0:16:36.640 the First Amendment. People could talk about revolution and overthrowing 0:16:36.680 --> 0:16:40.360 the government in the abstract, and that was protected speech 0:16:40.560 --> 0:16:44.520 unless it posed a clear and present danger. This overturned 0:16:44.560 --> 0:16:47.520 the convictions of fourteen people who had been charged with 0:16:47.640 --> 0:16:51.120 violating the Smith Act. On the same day, the Supreme 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:55.320 Court also issued to other decisions in cases involving communism 0:16:55.360 --> 0:16:58.560 and members of the Communist Party, and both cases protected 0:16:58.600 --> 0:17:01.440 their rights to things like price to see and due process. 0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:05.040 These Supreme Court decisions were the first of a series 0:17:05.119 --> 0:17:08.439 that overturned or narrowed the focus of laws that had 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:13.680 been providing the foundation for the FBI's activities against suspected communists. 0:17:14.320 --> 0:17:17.000 The FBI argued that these court rulings left them with 0:17:17.119 --> 0:17:21.280 no other choice but to fight communism through covert counterintelligence, 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:25.480 so by the time the cointel pros were uncovered and investigated, 0:17:25.600 --> 0:17:28.640 more than half of all the proposed operations had been 0:17:28.680 --> 0:17:32.960 aimed at the Communist Party USA. The FBI carried out 0:17:33.080 --> 0:17:37.399 one thousand, three hundred eighty eight separate documented efforts against 0:17:37.440 --> 0:17:41.000 the Communist Party, whose membership went from twenty two thousand 0:17:41.080 --> 0:17:44.679 in the early nineteen fifties to three thousand by nineteen 0:17:44.720 --> 0:17:49.400 fifty seven. But the focus expanded out from communism. Co 0:17:49.440 --> 0:17:54.280 intel pro CPUSA targeted communists and suspected communists, and then 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:59.400 organizations that had Communists among their members, and then organizations 0:17:59.400 --> 0:18:03.840 that were made be tangentially connected to suspected communists, and 0:18:03.880 --> 0:18:07.800 then organizations whose purpose and goals had some common themes 0:18:07.840 --> 0:18:11.440 with the Communist Party even if there were no Communists involved, 0:18:12.040 --> 0:18:16.280 and then the definition of communism expanded to include pretty 0:18:16.320 --> 0:18:20.040 much anything that the Bureau considered to be subversive. Co 0:18:20.119 --> 0:18:26.440 Intel pro Cposa also included counterintelligence operations against civil rights activists, 0:18:26.600 --> 0:18:31.400 initially because of known or suspected ties to communism. For example, 0:18:31.640 --> 0:18:34.880 Stanley David Levison was a friend and advisor to Martin 0:18:34.920 --> 0:18:37.720 Luther King Junior, and he had also been one of 0:18:37.760 --> 0:18:42.000 the major financiers of the Communist Party USA. But this 0:18:42.160 --> 0:18:45.880 targeting of civil rights activists was not just about actual 0:18:45.920 --> 0:18:49.720 connections to communism. It was also because the Bureau saw 0:18:49.880 --> 0:18:53.239 civil rights work in the US in general as a 0:18:53.280 --> 0:18:58.520 subversive threat. So as cointel pro Cposa expanded, the FBI 0:18:58.640 --> 0:19:03.280 put intense efforts into discrediting and disrupting civil rights organizations. 0:19:03.840 --> 0:19:07.840 The FBI repeatedly broke into civil rights organization's offices to 0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:11.960 steal documents, and got the IRS to start spurious audits 0:19:11.960 --> 0:19:15.640 of civil rights leaders. In nineteen sixty four, the FBI 0:19:15.760 --> 0:19:19.640 sent an anonymous letter to Martin Luther King Junior, supposedly 0:19:19.680 --> 0:19:23.560 written by an anonymous black person, calling him quote a 0:19:23.560 --> 0:19:27.760 colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that This 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:32.320 letter was accompanied by an audio recording purportedly documenting evidence 0:19:32.400 --> 0:19:36.440 of King's extramarital affairs. It ended by saying that there 0:19:36.520 --> 0:19:39.200 was quote only one thing left for you to do. 0:19:39.840 --> 0:19:42.399 The implication was that King should take his own life, 0:19:43.000 --> 0:19:45.360 and it said he had thirty four days to do it, 0:19:45.760 --> 0:19:48.399 that deadline being the day he was due to accept 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:51.920 the Nobel Peace Prize. So those are just examples of 0:19:52.040 --> 0:19:54.800 the targeting of civil rights groups. And as the focus 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:58.840 of co intel pro CPUSA expanded, the Bureau also started 0:19:59.000 --> 0:20:04.840 establishing other separate counterintelligence programs. When a Senate committee investigated 0:20:04.840 --> 0:20:08.440 the US government's intelligence operations starting in nineteen seventy five, 0:20:08.560 --> 0:20:11.120 we're going to talk about that in Part two. They 0:20:11.160 --> 0:20:15.720 found five specific named FBI co intel pros, including co 0:20:15.800 --> 0:20:19.760 intel pro Communist Party USA. The next co intel pro 0:20:19.960 --> 0:20:24.120 Socialist Workers Party started in nineteen sixty one. This one 0:20:24.160 --> 0:20:27.480 was short lived. There's a whole bunch of freedom of 0:20:27.520 --> 0:20:30.400 information acts stuff on the FBI website, and this one 0:20:30.440 --> 0:20:34.879 only has like three pages or three lengths of stuff 0:20:34.920 --> 0:20:37.119 to go through, like the other ones have sometimes twenty 0:20:37.119 --> 0:20:39.600 and thirty and multiple pages of links to go through. 0:20:40.320 --> 0:20:42.640 So we're not covering that one in as much detail. 0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:45.399 But one of the things that the Bureau routinely did 0:20:45.640 --> 0:20:48.919 was to target Socialist Workers Party members who were running 0:20:48.960 --> 0:20:53.399 for public office to undermine their political campaigns. In nineteen 0:20:53.440 --> 0:20:56.600 sixty four, the bureau launched co Intel pro White Hate, 0:20:56.760 --> 0:21:00.199 co Intel pro Black Nationalist Slash Hate groups started in 0:21:00.280 --> 0:21:04.280 nineteen sixty seven, and co Intel pro New Left started 0:21:04.320 --> 0:21:09.120 in nineteen sixty eight. Other counterintelligence programs were also unearthed 0:21:09.200 --> 0:21:12.600 later on, with targets that included the American Indian Movement 0:21:12.920 --> 0:21:17.880 and Puerto Rican independence activists. Ostensibly, the goals of all 0:21:17.920 --> 0:21:21.520 these counterintelligence programs were to protect national security and to 0:21:21.560 --> 0:21:28.480 prevent violence, and to do that the FBI would quote expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, 0:21:28.640 --> 0:21:32.920 or otherwise neutralize its targets. The one exception was co 0:21:33.080 --> 0:21:35.879 Intel pro White Hate, and with that the FBI was 0:21:35.920 --> 0:21:41.240 focused on curbing white nationalist violence rather than neutralizing the 0:21:41.320 --> 0:21:44.600 targeted groups altogether, which was more the focus and the 0:21:44.840 --> 0:21:47.560 other coin cel pros we're going to get to more 0:21:47.600 --> 0:21:50.320 about that in a bit. At the same time, even 0:21:50.400 --> 0:21:54.120 though the FBI was purportedly preventing violence, some of these 0:21:54.160 --> 0:21:59.200 operations incited violence. For example, the FBI tried to start 0:21:59.320 --> 0:22:02.879 or escalate violent disputes between the black Panthers and street 0:22:02.920 --> 0:22:07.000 gangs operating in the same areas. As another example, it's 0:22:07.040 --> 0:22:10.159 not clear whether the FBI played a direct part in 0:22:10.200 --> 0:22:14.199 the assassination of Malcolm X, but the Bureau definitely stoked 0:22:14.240 --> 0:22:17.520 the divisions and disputes within the Nation of Islam that 0:22:17.600 --> 0:22:21.719 led to his assassination. Another Bureau effort that was unearthed 0:22:21.800 --> 0:22:25.119 later was Operation Hoodwink, which was an effort to quote 0:22:25.240 --> 0:22:30.479 evoke a dispute between CPUSA and Lekosa Nostra, in other words, 0:22:30.480 --> 0:22:33.040 to try to start a war between the Communist Party 0:22:33.400 --> 0:22:37.199 and the Sicilian mafia. And beyond these ideas of national 0:22:37.240 --> 0:22:41.280 security and violence prevention, these programs also worked to maintain 0:22:41.720 --> 0:22:45.240 the existing social and political order in the United States. 0:22:45.800 --> 0:22:48.760 These co intail pros, many of them targeted organizations that 0:22:48.840 --> 0:22:52.199 were not violent and did not threaten national security, but 0:22:52.280 --> 0:22:55.680 they did advocate for changes big and small in how 0:22:55.720 --> 0:22:59.800 the country operated or treated its residents and citizens, especially 0:22:59.840 --> 0:23:03.040 with and people of color. Although there was some variation 0:23:03.240 --> 0:23:06.000 from one to another, which we will get into, the 0:23:06.040 --> 0:23:09.560 Bureau tended to use similar tactics all across all of 0:23:09.600 --> 0:23:13.960 these various counterintelligence programs. Most of these tactics came from 0:23:14.000 --> 0:23:17.120 counterintelligence works that had been carried out in foreign countries 0:23:17.200 --> 0:23:21.640 during wartime, with outcomes that the FBI considered to be successful. 0:23:22.359 --> 0:23:25.400 In other words, the United States had honed these techniques 0:23:25.440 --> 0:23:29.040 against its enemies during wartime, and then the FBI started 0:23:29.080 --> 0:23:32.520 using them in the US against its own citizens. To 0:23:32.680 --> 0:23:36.240 quote the Church Committee report, which followed a Senate investigation 0:23:36.480 --> 0:23:41.320 into US intelligence activities. Quote, the techniques were adopted wholesale 0:23:41.400 --> 0:23:45.640 from wartime counter intelligence and ranged from the trivial mailing 0:23:45.680 --> 0:23:49.480 reprints of reader's digest articles to college administrators to the 0:23:49.520 --> 0:23:54.200 degrading sending anonymous poison pen letters intending to break up marriages, 0:23:54.800 --> 0:23:59.800 and the dangerous encouraging gang warfare and falsely labeling members 0:23:59.840 --> 0:24:04.160 of violent groups as police informers. So the bureau relied 0:24:04.160 --> 0:24:08.440 on informants, surveillance, and other investigative tools to get information 0:24:08.480 --> 0:24:13.639 about organizations, their activities, and their members. This included everything 0:24:13.720 --> 0:24:18.359 from conducting interviews, to opening and photocopying people's mail, to 0:24:18.520 --> 0:24:22.719 breaking into organization's offices to tap phones and copy documents. 0:24:23.600 --> 0:24:27.360 Then it used that information to create division, distrust, and dissent. 0:24:28.400 --> 0:24:32.560 Sometimes the interviews themselves did that work, interviewing members of 0:24:32.600 --> 0:24:35.840 an organization to make others suspect they were informants, or 0:24:36.240 --> 0:24:39.760 conducting multiple simultaneous interviews to make people think that their 0:24:39.880 --> 0:24:44.480 organization had been infiltrated. One specific tactic used to breed 0:24:44.600 --> 0:24:48.600 distrust was called snitch jacketing, also known as bad jacketing, 0:24:48.960 --> 0:24:52.840 which involved using things like planted evidence and faked communications 0:24:52.880 --> 0:24:54.960 to make it seem like a loyal member of an 0:24:55.080 --> 0:24:59.639 organization was really an FBI informant. In some cases, FBI 0:24:59.680 --> 0:25:03.359 informed planted the suspicion that loyal members were informants to 0:25:03.400 --> 0:25:06.960 shift the focus off of themselves, and the FBI used 0:25:07.000 --> 0:25:10.400 this tactic within organizations that had a reputation for violence, 0:25:10.440 --> 0:25:13.560 as mentioned earlier, even though that carried the real potential 0:25:13.600 --> 0:25:17.000 for the targeted member to be assassinated or otherwise harmed. 0:25:17.520 --> 0:25:23.000 The Bureau also called people's parents, employers, landlords, and universities 0:25:23.040 --> 0:25:26.919 to inform them of their involvement in targeted organizations to 0:25:26.960 --> 0:25:30.720 try to get them fired, evicted, or expelled. Many of 0:25:30.760 --> 0:25:34.200 the targets of cointel pro New Left were college students, 0:25:34.560 --> 0:25:37.359 and the FBI either contacted their parents to tell them 0:25:37.400 --> 0:25:42.280 about their children's purportedly subversive activities or they faked calls 0:25:42.280 --> 0:25:46.240 from parents to students haranguing them for their political activity. 0:25:46.920 --> 0:25:50.800 The FBI also created and distributed published material that was 0:25:50.840 --> 0:25:54.359 meant to discredit their targets, and they fed news stories, 0:25:54.680 --> 0:25:59.439 sometimes real and sometimes fabricated, to the media. FBI informants 0:25:59.440 --> 0:26:02.719 gave media interviews in which they intentionally tried to make 0:26:02.760 --> 0:26:06.840 the organizations they were purportedly representing look as bad as possible, 0:26:07.320 --> 0:26:10.879