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Speaker 1: Previously on snafu.

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Speaker 2: The FBI arrested twenty persons in Camden, New Jersey, early

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Speaker 2: today and charge them.

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Speaker 3: With trying to steal draft records from the federal building there.

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Speaker 4: What we wanted was to persuade the jury that the

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Speaker 4: war was wrong and that it had to be stopped,

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Speaker 4: and that our action was an attempt to find a

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Speaker 4: jury who would set us free and end the war.

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Speaker 5: Why should these lives be cut down for ten rubber

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Speaker 5: and oil?

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Speaker 4: And the judge says to the four person, do you

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Speaker 4: have any other verdicts on any of the other defendants

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Speaker 4: that are different on any of these counts? And the

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Speaker 4: foreman said, no, your honor.

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Speaker 6: And Senator Dole, the Republican chairman to accuse the Democrats

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Speaker 6: of trying to make the FBI look like an American gestapo.

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Speaker 7: I'm the defin chairman of the City of Illinois Black

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Speaker 7: campin party.

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Speaker 8: Free Hampton.

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Speaker 9: We said, we work with.

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Speaker 7: Anybody from police, with anybody that has revolutions.

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Speaker 9: On their nine.

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Speaker 1: In the late nineteen sixties, a lot of people had

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Speaker 1: revolution on their minds, So when Fred Hampton spoke, they listened.

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Speaker 10: He really was a great organizer and can relate to

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Speaker 10: people quite well and had that charism where people were followed.

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Speaker 11: That's Omar Barbour who joined the Black Panther Party in

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Speaker 11: nineteen sixty seven.

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Speaker 10: And you have to have integrity and people have to

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Speaker 10: feel you have integrity. And you can fill that with

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Speaker 10: Fred that he had integrity because understand that racism is

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Speaker 10: an excuse you of capitalism, and we know that racism

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Speaker 10: is just is a bad product capitalism.

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Speaker 11: Hampton opposed to the War in Vietnam as another byproduct

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Speaker 11: of capitalism. He empathized with the people of Vietnam. In

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Speaker 11: his view, they're suffering at the hands of the US

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Speaker 11: military was inextricably linked to the oppression that Americans of

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Speaker 11: color faced at home.

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Speaker 1: In response to that oppression.

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Speaker 11: And the poverty around them, Hampton and the Black Panthers

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Speaker 11: offered simple, effective solutions, free breakfast programs for kids, free

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Speaker 11: healthcare clinics, the kinds of things the US government wasn't providing. Yes,

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Speaker 11: people say, people, if you are fight of.

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Speaker 9: You a fight, it'll feel.

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Speaker 11: Hampton mobilized real working Americans, particularly people of color, which

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Speaker 11: made him a threat to the wealthy white establishment. Hampton

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Speaker 11: knew he was on Jay Edgar Hoover's radar.

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Speaker 9: We know they have half, we.

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Speaker 12: Know they're looking for us, we know they have had us.

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Speaker 10: And then he simmits fourth nineteen sixty nine data. We

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Speaker 10: all wrote out wield and testaments.

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Speaker 13: Police arrived at Fred Hampton's West Side apartment the four

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Speaker 13: forty five this morning. They had a search war and

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Speaker 13: authorizing them to look for illegal weapons.

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Speaker 11: That morning, America woke up to the news that Hampton

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Speaker 11: had been killed, ostensibly in a shootout with police.

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Speaker 13: Stints Attorney's office says that Hampton and another man were

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Speaker 13: killed in the fifteen minute gun battle which followed.

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Speaker 11: The official story was the police were investigating a tip

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Speaker 11: about an illegal weapons stash at Hampton's home. When the

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Speaker 11: cops arrived, the story went the panthers unleashed a hail

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Speaker 11: of gunfire on the police, setting off a shootout that

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Speaker 11: killed Hampton. But that story did not hold up to scrutiny.

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Speaker 11: Looking at the crime scene, it was immediately apparent that

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Speaker 11: there hadn't been a shootout at all. At least one

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Speaker 11: hundred shots had been fired, but the bullet holes clearly

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Speaker 11: showed that ninety nine of them had come from police guns. Outside.

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Speaker 11: Hampton didn't pick up a gun. He hadn't even gotten

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Speaker 11: out of bed. The police had murdered him in cold blood.

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Speaker 10: When we found out that of all the shots that

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Speaker 10: were fired in the apartment, only one was fired out

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Speaker 10: and everything is fire in then it became much more

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Speaker 10: clearer than there was a shooting. And now the shootout never.

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Speaker 9: Said a word.

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Speaker 6: You never got.

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Speaker 7: About the bed.

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Speaker 11: Akua and Jerry was Fred Hampton's girlfriend at the time

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Speaker 11: of the shooting. She was eight months pregnant. In this interview,

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Speaker 11: she's holding their new infant son.

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Speaker 7: The person was in the room. They kept going out,

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Speaker 7: stop shooting, stop shooting. We have a pregnant woman or

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Speaker 7: pregnant sister in here.

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Speaker 14: Piggs kept on shooting.

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Speaker 7: Heard Pigs say he's barely alive, he'll barely make it.

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Speaker 7: As soon they were talking about shevving fled. Then they

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Speaker 7: started shooting Pig. They started shooting up, shooting again. I

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Speaker 7: heard the screen. They stopped shooting. Pig said he was

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Speaker 7: good and dead.

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Speaker 10: Now the whole thing was fabricated and was disproved, And

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Speaker 10: that really got to understand that there was definitely much

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Speaker 10: more involved than just them coming to Servi a Warren

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Speaker 10: or whatever. The justification was.

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Speaker 11: In nineteen seventy one, the Illinois States Attorney who ordered

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Speaker 11: the raid was charged with obstructing justice. In the Hampton case,

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Speaker 11: the illusion that Hampton died in a gunfight with police evaporated,

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Speaker 11: leaving the public to wonder who wanted him dead and

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Speaker 11: why they thought they could murder him with impunity. The

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Speaker 11: answers took years to come out, but when they finally did,

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Speaker 11: America would learn the truth behind Hampton's murder and the

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Speaker 11: truth about Jaedgar Hoover's secret FBI. I'm Ed Helms and

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Speaker 11: This is Snaffo, a show about history's greatest screw ups.

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Speaker 11: On season two, medburg the story of a daring heist

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Speaker 11: that exposed Jaedgar Hoover's epic FBI snaffo. The Citizens Commission

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Speaker 11: to Investigate the FBI had pulled off an incredibly risky heist.

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Speaker 11: They'd leaked the stolen documents to the press and successfully

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Speaker 11: evaded j Edgar Hoover's dragnet. As you might recall, buried

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Speaker 11: within those documents was a single word, a code name

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Speaker 11: co intel pro. To the burglars. At the time, it

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Speaker 11: meant nothing, just some bureau jargon. Soon an even splashier scandal,

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Speaker 11: Watergate was dominating the headlines the media. Burglary could have

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Speaker 11: become a historical footnote, but it.

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Speaker 1: Wasn't over yet.

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Speaker 5: I had gone to the Senate Judiciary Committee to pick

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Speaker 5: up a very mundane item, and people were using the

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Speaker 5: photo copy of the machine, and I had to wait

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Speaker 5: to get a copy of this report.

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Speaker 11: Carl Stern was a young reporter covering the Justice Department

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Speaker 11: for NBC. One day in nineteen seventy two, he was

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Speaker 11: in a government office, just waiting for a copy machine

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Speaker 11: when an offhand comment piqued his interest.

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Speaker 5: While I was waiting, my friend said, here, ever seen

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Speaker 5: these papers? And he had a couple of dozen pages

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Speaker 5: that had been provided courtesy of the Citizens Commission to

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Speaker 5: Investigate the FBI. While you're wasting time here, why don't

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Speaker 5: you take a look. And flipping through the pages, I

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Speaker 5: noticed one It said Cohen telpro new Left.

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Speaker 11: The FBI file contained an article from Baron's magazine criticizing

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Speaker 11: left wing student activism at Columbia. The file also contained

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Speaker 11: a memo to agents of the media FBI office instructing

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Speaker 11: them to anonymously mail this article to local college administrators.

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Speaker 5: It was you know, a little handwriting below the notice

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Speaker 5: to the field office that said Tom or for the

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Speaker 5: agent in charge there, Tom Lewis, Tom, can you handle

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Speaker 5: swarththor Haverford and Villanova. I mean, they had this thing

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Speaker 5: really quite explicitly described.

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Speaker 9: That's what caught my eye.

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Speaker 11: The implication was clear the FBI was covertly trying to

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Speaker 11: sway colleges into cracking down on anti war students. Co

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Speaker 11: Intel pro New Left appeared to be the name of

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Speaker 11: this operation. But what the hell kind of operation was this?

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Speaker 5: Mailed anonymously? Do FBI agents mail andi leftwik literature anonymously?

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Speaker 5: Is that what FBI agents do?

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Speaker 9: And that's what bothered me.

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Speaker 1: Carl asked his usual government sources.

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Speaker 5: A series of Justice Department and FBI employees.

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Speaker 9: When I raised the you know, we can't talk.

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Speaker 11: About that, which is FED speak for keep your nose

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Speaker 11: out of this, Carl.

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Speaker 5: Well, nothing is going to get a reporter's interest more

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Speaker 5: quickly than SAGA can't talk about it.

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Speaker 11: So Carl turned to FOYA, the Good Old Freedom of

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Speaker 11: Information Act, although at this time it was actually the

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Speaker 11: Good New Freedom of Information Act. It had only passed

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Speaker 11: a few years earlier in nineteen sixty eight, Of course,

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Speaker 11: the FBI denied his initial request, citing national security concerns,

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Speaker 11: but Carl was a dog with a co intel pro bone,

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Speaker 11: so he sued the government. Now, a judge would read

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Speaker 11: a batch of documents explaining co intel pro and rule

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Speaker 11: on whether or not they could be released to Carl,

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Speaker 11: but he.

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Speaker 9: Didn't want to read all those pages, so.

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Speaker 5: He gave it to his clerk, one of his clerks,

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Speaker 5: to read over the weekend. The clerk lived in one

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Speaker 5: of these housing to elements over in Virginia. It was summertime,

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Speaker 5: quite hot. He went to the swimming pool to take

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Speaker 5: a tip and took a handful of the documents with

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Speaker 5: him to read at the pool.

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Speaker 11: Northern Virginia, where even the pool side reading is highly classified.

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Speaker 5: Okay, well, unfortunately, after his swimming went back to his apartment,

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Speaker 5: the doorbell rang and it was some sweet young thing

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Speaker 5: holding the documents, saying, sir, you left me. He's under

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Speaker 5: your chair, your lounge. So here were these highly important

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Speaker 5: documents which were in court litigating the sea, and they

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Speaker 5: were under his chair at the swimming pool.

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Speaker 11: There's probably an alternate universe in which the aforementioned sweet

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Speaker 11: young thing was a Soviet spy who picked up these documents,

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Speaker 11: leaked them all and brought down the US government.

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Speaker 15: But instead that sweet young thing who found retrieved these

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Speaker 15: documents save the Republic as she became the Clerk's wife.

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Speaker 9: Yep, it was.

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Speaker 11: The first meet cute in the history of the Freedom

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Speaker 11: of Information Act. A victory for love and soon maybe

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Speaker 11: a victory for Carl. But just as Carl started digging

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Speaker 11: for its deepest, darkest secrets, the Bureau suffered the greatest

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Speaker 11: loss of its sixty four year history. I'll let Walter

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Speaker 11: Cronkite break the news to you.

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Speaker 2: Good evening. Jay Edgar Hoover has died at the age

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Speaker 2: of seventy seven. For almost every living American generation, Hoover,

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Speaker 2: the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, stood as

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Speaker 2: a symbol of incorruptible law enforcement and untouchable who liked

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Speaker 2: to boast that his men could not be bought.

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Speaker 11: In May second, nineteen seventy two, j Edgar Hoover died

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Speaker 11: suddenly at his home in Washington, DC. The official cause

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Speaker 11: of death cardiovascular disease.

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Speaker 9: We like to think that maybe we hastened that a

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Speaker 9: little bit.

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Speaker 11: Okay, so Bonnie Rains and the other burglars might not

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Speaker 11: have been too upset, but mainstream America was in mourning.

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Speaker 11: President Nixon ordered flags flown at half staff. Hoover's body

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Speaker 11: lay in state at the Capitol Rotunda, the first unelected

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Speaker 11: civil servant given that honor. After thousands of people streamed

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Speaker 11: through the Capitol to pay their respects, the only director

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Speaker 11: the FBI had ever known was laid to rest at

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Speaker 11: Congressional Cemetery. It is eulogy for Hoover. President Nixon didn't

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Speaker 11: just praise the late FBI director. He also lashed out

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Speaker 11: at the FBI's haters.

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Speaker 16: The FBI will carry on in the future true to

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Speaker 16: its finest traditions in the past, because, regardless of what

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Speaker 16: the snipers and detractors would have us believe, the fact

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Speaker 16: is a director Hoover built the bureau totally on principle.

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Speaker 11: Hoover died a hero to mainstream America, having blackmailed, imprisoned, buried,

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Speaker 11: or otherwise outlasted generations of enemies and detractors. I'll be honest,

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Speaker 11: I wish Hoover had lived just a little bit longer,

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Speaker 11: because the following year, the judge in Carl Stearn's Secret

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Speaker 11: Document case ruled in his favor and ordered the release

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Speaker 11: of a few crucial documents explaining that mysterious phrase co

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Speaker 11: intel pro.

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Speaker 9: What I got was four pages of paper.

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Speaker 11: Okay, so not a lot of pages, but turns out

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Speaker 11: a lot of revelations even then.

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Speaker 5: The first of the four pages reference eighth co and

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Speaker 5: tailpro programs dealing with things as the Black Extreamist Socialist

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Speaker 5: Workers Party, disruption of white hate crubs, they got New Left,

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Speaker 5: of course, so on and on.

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Speaker 11: It had been more than two and a half years

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Speaker 11: since the Burglars first uncovered that word co intel pro.

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Speaker 11: Now finally the world would know what it meant. This

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Speaker 11: was the umbrella term for no fewer than eight FBI programs,

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Speaker 11: all using patently unconstitutional counterintelligence tactics against American citizens, and,

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Speaker 11: according to Carl sources, all happening without the knowledge of

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Speaker 11: any Attorneys general. It was an explosive story. On December sixth,

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Speaker 11: nineteen seventy three, a dapper and confident young Carl Stern

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Speaker 11: appeared on the NBC Nightly News and introduced America to

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Speaker 11: the dark sides of j Edgar Hoover and the FBI.

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Speaker 3: The documents proved for the first time with the FBI

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Speaker 3: undertook a program to harris and destroy new Left political

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Speaker 3: organizations whose views the federal police agency disagreed with. Wrote

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Speaker 3: FBI Director Hoover, the purpose of the program would be

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Speaker 3: to expose and disrupt the new Left. We must frustrate

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Speaker 3: every effort of these groups and individuals to consolidate their

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Speaker 3: forces or to recruit new or youthful adherents.

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Speaker 11: Carl's referencing memos from nineteen sixty eight here, But to

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Speaker 11: be clear, Cointel pro began all the way back in

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Speaker 11: nineteen fifty six. The FBI had kept it a secret

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Speaker 11: for the better part of two decades, but now Carl

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Speaker 11: was reading the bureau's secrets out loud on national television.

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Speaker 3: One former agent who participated in the program has described

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Speaker 3: how burglaries, forged blackmail letters, and threats of violence were

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Speaker 3: used to try to stop anti war marches. Many of

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Speaker 3: the techniques were clearly illegal, but justified in the interest

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Speaker 3: of national security. Today, the Justice Departments said no Attorney

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Speaker 3: General authorized or knew of the program.

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Speaker 11: Almost immediately the calls for congressional hearings began, but in

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Speaker 11: classic Congress fashion, Congress dragged its feet. It took several

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Speaker 11: more shocking revelations, including the news that Hoover had illegally

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Speaker 11: spied on members of Congress, for the legislative branch to

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Speaker 11: officially establish a committee to start looking into all this shit.

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Speaker 11: Leading that committee was Senator Frank Church, Democrat of Idaho.

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Speaker 17: He once said to me and others that he would

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Speaker 17: be the last Democrat ever elected to the Senate from Idaho,

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Speaker 17: and in fact, that's exactly what happened.

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Speaker 1: That's Locke Johnson.

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Speaker 11: He was special assistant to Frank Church during what came

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Speaker 11: to be known as the Church Committee hearings. Locke and

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Speaker 11: his team of investigators conducted an exhaustive review of intelligence

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Speaker 11: practices at the FBI, CIA, NSSAY, and a bunch of

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Speaker 11: other spooky acronyms. By the way, for more on that,

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Speaker 11: I hope you'll check out our bonus interview with Locke. Anyway,

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Speaker 11: it took more than a year before the committee was

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Speaker 11: ready to make its findings public.

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Speaker 17: We were slow rolled and stonewalled, and we used a

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Speaker 17: couple of Washington expressions. We had to fight them tooth

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Speaker 17: and nail.

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Speaker 11: Despite the slow rolling and stonewalling, Church's team eventually pried

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Speaker 11: mountains of co intel pro documents away from the FBI,

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Speaker 11: they conducted interviews with agents and with victims of the

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Speaker 11: bureau's misbehavior. On November eighteenth, nineteen seventy five, Frank Church

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Speaker 11: sat in a crowded, high columned chamber in the Russell

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Speaker 11: Senate Office building and called to order a momentous hearing.

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Speaker 18: There has never been a full public accounting of FBI

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Speaker 18: domestic intelligence operations. Therefore this committee has undertaken such an investigation.

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Speaker 17: It was packed with people. Very ornate took place and

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Speaker 17: in the front of the people there are five hundred

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Speaker 17: people or so, citizens and tourists in many cases, and

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Speaker 17: no doubt some KGB people, and they're trying to learn

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Speaker 17: about American intelligence. In the front row television cameras and

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Speaker 17: reporters senators all the eleven senators, and behind the senators

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Speaker 17: were we staffer is sitting to help them if they

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Speaker 17: needed help.

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Speaker 11: You can actually see a young Lock Johnson just behind

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Speaker 11: Frank Church in the old C span footage of the hearings.

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Speaker 1: The proceedings began with a thank you.

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Speaker 11: Frank Church voiced his appreciation for the anonymous burglars whose

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Speaker 11: courageous actions had precipitated these hearings. From there, the focus

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Speaker 11: turned to two government lawyers, Fritz Schwartz and Curtis Smothers.

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Speaker 11: They were there to lay out the facts of Hoover's

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Speaker 11: secret FBI. Here's Schwartz now turning to Cohen Tailpro coen.

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Speaker 14: Telpro is a abbreviation of the words counter intelligence program.

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Speaker 14: Telpro is the name for the effort by the Bureau

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Speaker 14: to destroy people and to destroy organizations, or, as they

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Speaker 14: used the words disrupt, to neutralize.

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Speaker 17: All the horrible operations by the intelligence agency is, particularly

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Speaker 17: the FBI against American citizens, had their origins in this

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Speaker 17: false belief that communism was going to destroy US.

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Speaker 11: Counterintelligence activities are by definition conducted to counter the activities

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Speaker 11: of foreign intelligence agents, but for years the FBI had

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Speaker 11: operated under the assumption that anyone speaking out against the

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Speaker 11: government could be a foreign agent, or at least could

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Speaker 11: be investigated as if they were.

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Speaker 1: Here's Curtis Smothers.

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Speaker 19: Part of the problem as they attempted to translate the

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Speaker 19: tactics used first against the Communist Party against virtually every

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Speaker 19: perceived enemy. As the Bureau looked across the landscape and

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Speaker 19: decided whose be neutralized, discredited, or destroyed, take.

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Speaker 11: For example, the Socialist Workers Party. They had been the

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Speaker 11: target of what the FBI called quote black bag jobs,

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Speaker 11: acute euphemism for when the FBI just straight up committed burglary.

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Speaker 11: Between nineteen sixty and sixty six, FBI agents broke into

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Speaker 11: the party's New York City offices no fewer than ninety

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Speaker 11: two times. You know what they say, If at first

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Speaker 11: you don't succeed in finding evidence of Soviet espionage, try

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Speaker 11: try again ninety one more times. More than four hundred

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Speaker 11: black bag jobs would eventually come to light. Many of

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Speaker 11: them involved photographing private homes and offices and or leaving

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Speaker 11: behind listening devices to gather information on their targets. This

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Speaker 11: kind of thing is legal if you have a warrant,

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Speaker 11: but the FBI never bothered with that pesky formality, which

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Speaker 11: meant none of what they learned from these break ins

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Speaker 11: would be admissible in court. Hoover and his men were

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Speaker 11: well aware of this. They didn't intend to build criminal

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Speaker 11: cases against co intel pros targets. Rather, the goal of

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Speaker 11: these operations was simply to gather information that could be

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Speaker 11: used against.

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Speaker 14: Them, all information on activities in connection with demonstrations aimed

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Speaker 14: at social reform, whatever that may be.

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Speaker 11: Basically, if your politics didn't meet with the FBI's approval,

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Speaker 11: the bureau felt entitled to gather information on every aspect

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Speaker 11: of your life.

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Speaker 19: Information which extended to their personal lives and died down

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Speaker 19: to when including sex activities.

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Speaker 11: Hoover kept these black bag jobs under wraps with an

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Speaker 11: almost unbelievably simplistic bureaucratic trick. Any files related to the

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Speaker 11: break ins went into a specially designated file called I

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Speaker 11: swear I'm not making this up, the do not file file.

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Speaker 11: Presumably Hoover kept that file locked in his this is

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Speaker 11: not a filing cabinet filing cabinet and whatever he needed

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Speaker 11: to threaten, embarrass, or just confuse his targets, he knew

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Speaker 11: exactly where to look that do not file file.

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Speaker 14: Bureau agents were told to attack the new Left by

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Speaker 14: disinformation and misinformation, and I.

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Speaker 19: Will give you.

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Speaker 11: Schwartz recounted a story from the first inauguration of Richard Nixon.

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Speaker 11: He told the committee how a protest group called the

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Speaker 11: National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam had cooperated

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Speaker 11: with police and their efforts to keep demonstrations calm and organized,

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Speaker 11: but the FBI didn't want an orderly protest, they wanted chaos,

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Speaker 11: so they resorted to counterintelligence tactics.

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Speaker 14: Now what did the FBI do. They found out what

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Speaker 14: Citizen Band was being used for walkie talkies, and they

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Speaker 14: used that Citizen Band to supply the marshals with misinformation

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Speaker 14: and pretending to be a unit of the National Mobilization

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Speaker 14: to end the war in Vietnam, countermanded the orders issued

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Speaker 14: by the movement.

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Speaker 17: The bureau had targeted a lot of people that went

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Speaker 17: way beyond even spying. These documents made it clear that

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Speaker 17: the FBI was attacking these individuals, attempting to destroy their reputations.

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Speaker 11: As it turned out, investigating actual criminals took a back

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Speaker 11: seat to petty, vindictive harassment, like trying to get people fired.

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Speaker 11: They'd even contacted a bank in Wisconsin and urged them

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Speaker 11: not to give a home loan to a cub Scout

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Speaker 11: leader with Communist sympathies.

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Speaker 17: And I'll never forget going to visit Anatole Rappaport. He

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Speaker 17: wrote some of the pioneer work in game theory, so

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Speaker 17: he was one of America's finest intellectuals.

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Speaker 11: Rapaport was a Russian immigrant US Air Force veteran and

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Speaker 11: professor at the University of Michigan. He'd been at the

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Speaker 11: forefront of the teaching movement, inviting students to drop what

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Speaker 11: they were doing and join open discussions of what was

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Speaker 11: going on in Vietnam.

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Speaker 17: Jego Hoover went after him like you wouldn't leave, through

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Speaker 17: anonymous letter, writing in particular, why well, First of all,

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Speaker 17: Rappaport had been born in Russia. Ooh, scary. So the

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Speaker 17: FBI began to send out these anonymous letters claiming that

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Speaker 17: Rappaport was a communist, that he was in control of

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Speaker 17: Moscow and KGB. The letters went to legislators in the

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Speaker 17: state of Michigan, went to university administrators, and to the

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Speaker 17: great shame of all of them involved, they believed these

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Speaker 17: stories and finally hounded Rappaport out of the University of Michigan.

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Speaker 11: By the time Locke learned that Rapaport had been a

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Speaker 11: target of co intel pro, Rapaport was living in Canada, and.

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Speaker 17: He sat down and leafed through these documents. As I

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Speaker 17: sat there, and he would shake his head and he

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Speaker 17: just couldn't believe that his own government, the Federal Bureau

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Speaker 17: of Investigation, had been the one behind all of these

395
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Speaker 17: attacks against him. And at the end of going a

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Speaker 17: couple of hours through these documents, he began to weep

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Speaker 17: so very sad spectacle. And that's just, you know, one

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Speaker 17: of probably two thousand ors so cases like throughout the country.

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Speaker 11: This was one of co intel Pro's favorite tactics, the

400
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Speaker 11: poison pen letter, usually sent anonymously or forged to employers, colleagues,

401
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Speaker 11: or even loved ones. At the hearings, Curtis Smothers was

402
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Speaker 11: visibly uncomfortable as he read aloud from a particularly disgusting example,

403
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Speaker 11: an anonymous letter sent by the FBI to the husband

404
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Speaker 11: of a white woman who was involved with a black

405
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Speaker 11: activist group.

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Speaker 19: Look, man, I guess your old lady doesn't get enough

407
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Speaker 19: at home. Oh, she wouldn't be shucking and jibing with

408
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Speaker 19: all black men in action, you did, Like, all she

409
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Speaker 19: wants to integrate is the bedroom.

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Speaker 11: Remember, the FBI was overwhelmingly white at this time. It

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Speaker 11: was almost certainly a white male FBI agent who wrote

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Speaker 11: these lines.

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Speaker 19: And us black sisters ain't gonna take no second best

414
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Speaker 19: for all men. It's signed a soul system.

415
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Speaker 11: The FBI used this same tactic against white actress Jean Seberg,

416
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Speaker 11: who was known for supporting groups like the NAACP and

417
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Speaker 11: the Black Panthers. When Sieberg became pregnant in nineteen seventy,

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Speaker 11: the Los Angeles office of the FBI saw an opportunity

419
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Speaker 11: to neutralize her. With Hoover's approval, agents furnished fake letters

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Speaker 11: to a gossip columnist who reported in the La Times

421
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Speaker 11: that an anonymous actress matching Sieberg's description had cheated on

422
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Speaker 11: her husband with a Black Panther and was carrying his child.

423
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Speaker 11: Overwhelmed with stress from these public smears, Seeberg went into

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Speaker 11: premature labor, and the baby did not survive. Sieberg never recovered,

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Speaker 11: though she lived long enough to see the FBI's role

426
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Speaker 11: in the affair come to light. She died by suicide

427
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Speaker 11: in nineteen seventy nine, and then came the bureau's most

428
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Speaker 11: infamous poison pen letter of all. It would emerge as

429
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Speaker 11: part of the FBI's sweeping and relentless effort to disrupt

430
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Speaker 11: the civil rights movement. Co Intel profiles on doctor Martin

431
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Speaker 11: Luther King Junior revealed that Hoover had become paranoid to

432
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Speaker 11: the point of delusion.

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Speaker 19: By January of sixty two. Mister Hoover has already typed

434
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Speaker 19: doctor King as no good. Hoover is particularly disturbed after

435
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Speaker 19: in nineteen sixty three it became clear that the concept

436
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Speaker 19: of nonviolence was gaining adherents. Quoting from a memorandum, the

437
00:27:52,800 --> 00:27:57,160
Speaker 19: plan here is to completely discredit doctor King by quote,

438
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Speaker 19: taking him off his pedestal, and to reduce him completely

439
00:28:02,320 --> 00:28:03,000
Speaker 19: in influence.

440
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Speaker 11: In the wake of the nineteen sixty three March on

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Speaker 11: Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where King delivered his famous

442
00:28:10,600 --> 00:28:13,760
Speaker 11: I Have a Dream speech, Hoover had his men conduct

443
00:28:13,800 --> 00:28:19,000
Speaker 11: an exhaustive investigation and to ties between King and Soviet intelligence.

444
00:28:19,560 --> 00:28:23,800
Speaker 11: The connection between them, his agents reported back was quote infinitesimal.

445
00:28:24,720 --> 00:28:28,360
Speaker 14: This was not accepted by the director of the FBI.

446
00:28:29,280 --> 00:28:34,760
Speaker 14: He found that thinking wrong, unacceptable and said that it

447
00:28:34,840 --> 00:28:37,400
Speaker 14: must be changed, And it was changed.

448
00:28:38,320 --> 00:28:41,240
Speaker 11: Think about that for a second. When his own well

449
00:28:41,280 --> 00:28:45,080
Speaker 11: oiled investigative machine presented Hoover with facts that didn't line

450
00:28:45,160 --> 00:28:48,479
Speaker 11: up with his assumptions, he ordered his agents to ignore

451
00:28:48,520 --> 00:28:52,920
Speaker 11: those facts, and he launched an effort to destroy King anyway.

452
00:28:53,280 --> 00:28:56,200
Speaker 14: The lower level people in the FBI apologized for having

453
00:28:56,240 --> 00:29:00,640
Speaker 14: misunderstood matters, and on they go with this effort to

454
00:29:00,680 --> 00:29:06,520
Speaker 14: discredit and start they do the bugs on doctor King.

455
00:29:09,880 --> 00:29:13,000
Speaker 11: Eventually, an illegal bug picked up evidence that King was

456
00:29:13,000 --> 00:29:16,200
Speaker 11: having an affair. As he prepared to travel to Norway

457
00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:20,000
Speaker 11: to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, the FBI sent him

458
00:29:20,040 --> 00:29:22,000
Speaker 11: the ultimate poison pen letter.

459
00:29:23,200 --> 00:29:26,680
Speaker 14: The Bureau went so far as to mail anonymous letters

460
00:29:26,680 --> 00:29:31,080
Speaker 14: to doctor King and his wife, which were mailed shortly

461
00:29:31,120 --> 00:29:36,680
Speaker 14: before he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and finishes

462
00:29:36,800 --> 00:29:40,880
Speaker 14: with this suggestion, King, there is only one thing left

463
00:29:40,920 --> 00:29:43,200
Speaker 14: for you to do. You know what it is. You

464
00:29:43,280 --> 00:29:45,480
Speaker 14: have just thirty four days in which to do it.

465
00:29:46,160 --> 00:29:49,040
Speaker 14: This exact number has been selected for a specific reason.

466
00:29:49,080 --> 00:29:52,040
Speaker 14: It has definite practical significance. It was thirty four days

467
00:29:52,040 --> 00:29:52,840
Speaker 14: before the award.

468
00:29:53,280 --> 00:29:53,920
Speaker 1: You were done.

469
00:29:55,320 --> 00:29:57,920
Speaker 14: That was taken by doctor King to mean a suggestion

470
00:29:58,080 --> 00:30:03,680
Speaker 14: for suicide. Was it not understand, Senator who wrote the letter? Well,

471
00:30:03,760 --> 00:30:06,080
Speaker 14: that's a matter of dispute. It was found in the

472
00:30:06,080 --> 00:30:07,640
Speaker 14: files of mister Sullivan.

473
00:30:08,880 --> 00:30:12,640
Speaker 11: Schwartz was referring to FBI Director Bill Sullivan. Sullivan's name

474
00:30:12,720 --> 00:30:15,560
Speaker 11: was all over the co Intel pro documents. He'd helped

475
00:30:15,560 --> 00:30:18,600
Speaker 11: Hoover design the first co Intel pro operations back in

476
00:30:18,680 --> 00:30:19,720
Speaker 11: nineteen fifty six.

477
00:30:20,560 --> 00:30:24,080
Speaker 14: He claims that it's a plant in his files and

478
00:30:24,080 --> 00:30:25,960
Speaker 14: that someone else in the Bureau in.

479
00:30:25,880 --> 00:30:27,240
Speaker 9: Fact wrote the document.

480
00:30:27,600 --> 00:30:30,440
Speaker 14: The document which was found is a draft of the letter,

481
00:30:30,480 --> 00:30:32,840
Speaker 14: which was the anonymous letter which was actually sent.

482
00:30:32,960 --> 00:30:34,520
Speaker 18: Is there right to dispute that the letter did in

483
00:30:34,560 --> 00:30:36,000
Speaker 18: fact come from the FBI.

484
00:30:36,680 --> 00:30:37,920
Speaker 9: We've heard no dispute of that.

485
00:30:53,960 --> 00:30:56,440
Speaker 11: As the Church Committee hearings went on, it became clear

486
00:30:56,440 --> 00:30:59,920
Speaker 11: that the FBI had strayed light years away from its mandate.

487
00:31:00,680 --> 00:31:03,880
Speaker 11: The Bureau was supposed to enforce America's laws and prevent

488
00:31:03,960 --> 00:31:07,640
Speaker 11: criminal activity, but even when the targets were actual criminals,

489
00:31:07,960 --> 00:31:11,200
Speaker 11: co intel pro didn't appear at all interested in enforcing

490
00:31:11,240 --> 00:31:11,680
Speaker 11: the law.

491
00:31:12,400 --> 00:31:16,440
Speaker 17: We had one FBI informant who had infiltrated the Klan.

492
00:31:17,440 --> 00:31:20,480
Speaker 11: Shortly before he was set to testify. This informant, Gary

493
00:31:20,560 --> 00:31:23,680
Speaker 11: Thomas Rowe, told the Church Committee staff he didn't want

494
00:31:23,680 --> 00:31:26,400
Speaker 11: his face on camera. He had been a mole in

495
00:31:26,440 --> 00:31:30,080
Speaker 11: the Birmingham, Alabama KKK and if anyone recognized them, his

496
00:31:30,200 --> 00:31:31,440
Speaker 11: life might be in danger.

497
00:31:32,280 --> 00:31:36,680
Speaker 17: So we had him wear a mask with eye holes

498
00:31:36,800 --> 00:31:39,080
Speaker 17: and a mouth hole so he could.

499
00:31:38,840 --> 00:31:40,760
Speaker 1: Speak locks under selling it.

500
00:31:40,920 --> 00:31:44,479
Speaker 11: Roe basically testified before Congress with what looked kind of

501
00:31:44,560 --> 00:31:47,760
Speaker 11: like a diaper on his head. Just google Gary Rowe

502
00:31:47,840 --> 00:31:49,320
Speaker 11: Church Committee you'll see what I mean.

503
00:31:50,000 --> 00:31:53,120
Speaker 17: He told us that the FBI had told him, Look,

504
00:31:53,400 --> 00:31:55,040
Speaker 17: what we want you to do is go down there

505
00:31:55,480 --> 00:31:59,360
Speaker 17: and have affairs with clan members wives. And so the

506
00:31:59,360 --> 00:32:03,320
Speaker 17: word gets well this is going on and the Klan members'

507
00:32:03,360 --> 00:32:05,720
Speaker 17: families will be dissolved and disrupted.

508
00:32:07,120 --> 00:32:11,360
Speaker 11: Okay, now that's a weird government assignment. But Roe was

509
00:32:11,400 --> 00:32:14,680
Speaker 11: also gathering some very valuable intel. He discovered that the

510
00:32:14,720 --> 00:32:17,680
Speaker 11: Birmingham chapter of the Klan was planning to assault the

511
00:32:17,680 --> 00:32:21,240
Speaker 11: Freedom Writers as they came through town. He even learned

512
00:32:21,320 --> 00:32:24,120
Speaker 11: that the local police were going to assist them by

513
00:32:24,160 --> 00:32:27,560
Speaker 11: looking the other way. So Roe did what an informant

514
00:32:27,600 --> 00:32:30,920
Speaker 11: is supposed to do. He informed his handlers that a

515
00:32:31,000 --> 00:32:32,840
Speaker 11: violent crime was about to happen.

516
00:32:33,640 --> 00:32:37,160
Speaker 14: Did you inform the FBI about planned violence prior to

517
00:32:37,200 --> 00:32:37,840
Speaker 14: that incident?

518
00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:41,760
Speaker 12: Sir I gave the FBI information pertanning to the Freedom Writers,

519
00:32:41,760 --> 00:32:44,360
Speaker 12: so approximately three weeks before the girth.

520
00:32:45,040 --> 00:32:47,000
Speaker 1: But the FBI did nothing.

521
00:32:47,520 --> 00:32:50,960
Speaker 11: On Mother's Day nineteen sixty one, the Freedom Writers reached

522
00:32:51,000 --> 00:32:54,240
Speaker 11: Birmingham and were brutally assaulted by the KKK.

523
00:32:55,440 --> 00:32:58,440
Speaker 12: They were big more badly Yes, there were a thousand

524
00:32:58,520 --> 00:33:00,880
Speaker 12: men at least almost day of the morning of the

525
00:33:00,880 --> 00:33:03,360
Speaker 12: Freedom Writers, just roaming up and down right in front

526
00:33:03,360 --> 00:33:06,080
Speaker 12: of city Hall. We had baseball bets, we had clubs,

527
00:33:06,120 --> 00:33:09,000
Speaker 12: we had chains, we had pistol sticking in our belts.

528
00:33:09,360 --> 00:33:10,600
Speaker 12: It was just unbelievable.

529
00:33:12,600 --> 00:33:15,640
Speaker 11: Later Rowe asked his handler why the g men hadn't

530
00:33:15,640 --> 00:33:16,200
Speaker 11: stepped in.

531
00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:20,800
Speaker 12: He said, we our investigating agency, not an enforcement agency.

532
00:33:20,840 --> 00:33:23,160
Speaker 12: All we do is gather information, That was my answer.

533
00:33:26,040 --> 00:33:30,040
Speaker 11: Tens of thousands of quote subversives surveiled over the course

534
00:33:30,080 --> 00:33:34,320
Speaker 11: of decades, hundreds of illegal break ins, thousands of informants

535
00:33:34,320 --> 00:33:38,000
Speaker 11: and wiretaps. You think that casting a net this wide

536
00:33:38,160 --> 00:33:41,720
Speaker 11: the FBI would have prevented some crime or another, even

537
00:33:41,800 --> 00:33:44,480
Speaker 11: if it was by accident. Hadn't the GMN caught at

538
00:33:44,600 --> 00:33:49,520
Speaker 11: least one actual bad guy in all of this? Apparently not.

539
00:33:50,680 --> 00:33:53,880
Speaker 11: Just as blanket surveillance had failed to catch the media burglars,

540
00:33:54,640 --> 00:33:57,480
Speaker 11: a decade and a half of co intel pro operations

541
00:33:57,520 --> 00:34:01,840
Speaker 11: also failed to catch a single Communist agent or any

542
00:34:01,880 --> 00:34:07,000
Speaker 11: other criminal, Hoover's FBI had gotten people fired, broken up marriages,

543
00:34:07,200 --> 00:34:11,359
Speaker 11: destabilized law abiding political groups, and sown a general sense

544
00:34:11,400 --> 00:34:15,759
Speaker 11: of paranoia throughout the American left. But years later, when

545
00:34:15,840 --> 00:34:21,200
Speaker 11: historian and FBI expert Athan Theoharis conducted an exhaustive analysis

546
00:34:21,239 --> 00:34:24,080
Speaker 11: of everything that had come to light, he reached a

547
00:34:24,200 --> 00:34:28,799
Speaker 11: devastating conclusion quote, I can think of no crime that

548
00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:34,360
Speaker 11: was stopped by information gained during co intel pro. Co

549
00:34:34,480 --> 00:34:38,239
Speaker 11: Intel pro hadn't saved a single American life. In fact,

550
00:34:38,360 --> 00:34:41,480
Speaker 11: as the Church Committee was about to learn, the opposite

551
00:34:41,560 --> 00:34:48,960
Speaker 11: was true, the FBI had American blood on its hands.

552
00:34:51,000 --> 00:34:53,480
Speaker 11: In nineteen sixty eight, j Edgar Hoover wrote a memo.

553
00:34:53,760 --> 00:34:56,600
Speaker 11: In it he urged his g men to quote prevent

554
00:34:56,760 --> 00:34:59,960
Speaker 11: the rise of a messiah who could unify and elect

555
00:35:00,440 --> 00:35:04,960
Speaker 11: the militant black nationalist movement. That movement and its leaders

556
00:35:05,280 --> 00:35:08,560
Speaker 11: became co intel pros chief targets, and.

557
00:35:08,560 --> 00:35:13,200
Speaker 17: Black Panthers, by the way, were the arch victims among

558
00:35:13,440 --> 00:35:17,480
Speaker 17: all the array of other victims from Anatole Rappertport to

559
00:35:17,560 --> 00:35:22,000
Speaker 17: doctor King to klueclickt Plan, you name it. The Black

560
00:35:22,080 --> 00:35:26,439
Speaker 17: Panthers and other black kind of extremist groups but non

561
00:35:26,520 --> 00:35:31,920
Speaker 17: violent and were the major targets that Hoover wanted to

562
00:35:32,000 --> 00:35:32,440
Speaker 17: destroy it.

563
00:35:33,120 --> 00:35:36,040
Speaker 20: He declares the Black Panther Party the greatest threat to

564
00:35:36,040 --> 00:35:39,120
Speaker 20: the internal security of the United States in nineteen sixty eight.

565
00:35:39,840 --> 00:35:42,960
Speaker 11: That's Donna Merch, a scholar of the Black Panther Party.

566
00:35:43,120 --> 00:35:45,760
Speaker 20: And does it it precisely the moment that the party

567
00:35:45,840 --> 00:35:51,440
Speaker 20: is turning away from its use of police patrols and

568
00:35:51,840 --> 00:35:54,320
Speaker 20: explicit arm self defense imagery.

569
00:35:55,160 --> 00:35:58,319
Speaker 11: These police patrols were organized groups of Black Panthers who

570
00:35:58,400 --> 00:36:01,760
Speaker 11: patrolled their neighborhood are in accordance with the Second Amendment

571
00:36:02,160 --> 00:36:06,319
Speaker 11: as a deterrent against police violence. They saw this as

572
00:36:06,360 --> 00:36:10,319
Speaker 11: an essential way to defend their communities against ongoing, unchecked

573
00:36:10,600 --> 00:36:14,839
Speaker 11: and widely accepted abuse from police. But Donna says the

574
00:36:14,840 --> 00:36:17,880
Speaker 11: Panthers were turning away from their focus on guns in

575
00:36:17,920 --> 00:36:21,319
Speaker 11: favor of social programs just as the FBI stepped up

576
00:36:21,320 --> 00:36:24,880
Speaker 11: its efforts against the Panthers. She told us the FBI's

577
00:36:24,880 --> 00:36:27,439
Speaker 11: interest in the Panthers was never really about the threat

578
00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:29,759
Speaker 11: of violence, but about their ideas.

579
00:36:30,880 --> 00:36:32,400
Speaker 20: And so I think there was a real sense of

580
00:36:32,440 --> 00:36:36,040
Speaker 20: fright about the strength of their ideas and the depth

581
00:36:36,040 --> 00:36:38,680
Speaker 20: of support that they had within the black community, but

582
00:36:38,800 --> 00:36:43,120
Speaker 20: also among Mother Country radicals, among white college students, also

583
00:36:43,680 --> 00:36:47,720
Speaker 20: white artists and writers. Because the Panthers were an intellectual movement.

584
00:36:49,280 --> 00:36:52,799
Speaker 10: It was just awakening, if you will, as what it

585
00:36:52,880 --> 00:36:55,000
Speaker 10: was to be a young black Afnan American.

586
00:36:55,960 --> 00:36:58,239
Speaker 11: This is Omar Barber again, whom you heard from at

587
00:36:58,239 --> 00:37:00,720
Speaker 11: the top of this episode on a party.

588
00:37:00,760 --> 00:37:02,200
Speaker 10: One of the things we had to do was to

589
00:37:02,200 --> 00:37:04,840
Speaker 10: read and not only the autobioer Malcolm X, but James

590
00:37:04,880 --> 00:37:09,400
Speaker 10: Baldwins of various books as well as France Banon.

591
00:37:10,120 --> 00:37:11,200
Speaker 9: I reatch you out earth.

592
00:37:12,920 --> 00:37:14,680
Speaker 11: If this is different from the image you have in

593
00:37:14,719 --> 00:37:18,240
Speaker 11: your mind when you hear Black Panthers, that's probably because

594
00:37:18,239 --> 00:37:22,320
Speaker 11: the FBI was so successful in smearing them. The Panthers

595
00:37:22,320 --> 00:37:27,440
Speaker 11: were committed socialists. Fred Hampton's socialist principles compelled him to

596
00:37:27,520 --> 00:37:32,080
Speaker 11: feed the poor, educate kids, and reach out across racial lines.

597
00:37:33,640 --> 00:37:37,200
Speaker 11: In sixty eight, Hampton formed the Rainbow Coalition, a collection

598
00:37:37,239 --> 00:37:40,680
Speaker 11: of groups that were not natural allies. In fact, some

599
00:37:40,719 --> 00:37:43,920
Speaker 11: of them had actively fought against each other. They ranged

600
00:37:43,960 --> 00:37:47,400
Speaker 11: from street charities to street gangs, and from Chinese and

601
00:37:47,400 --> 00:37:51,759
Speaker 11: Puerto Rican revolutionaries to the Young Patriots Organization, a group

602
00:37:51,840 --> 00:37:55,520
Speaker 11: of poor white Appalachians who'd moved to Chicago to find work.

603
00:37:56,280 --> 00:38:00,360
Speaker 11: Through the Rainbow Coalition, Fred demonstrated that these disparate movements

604
00:38:00,960 --> 00:38:02,480
Speaker 11: had a lot in common.

605
00:38:03,440 --> 00:38:06,799
Speaker 10: But then he would articulate what that stand up living was,

606
00:38:07,280 --> 00:38:11,440
Speaker 10: that children's educations, the ability to feed themselves, and he

607
00:38:11,440 --> 00:38:14,200
Speaker 10: would say, look, that's the same problem we have down

608
00:38:14,239 --> 00:38:18,799
Speaker 10: in Bronsville in Chicago. He wasn't coming to those Appellachian

609
00:38:18,880 --> 00:38:21,319
Speaker 10: whites and saying, you know, your guys should come with us,

610
00:38:21,360 --> 00:38:24,360
Speaker 10: because we the better ones. And now he was saying,

611
00:38:24,480 --> 00:38:27,440
Speaker 10: you know, if you really look at your condition and

612
00:38:27,520 --> 00:38:31,360
Speaker 10: you understand it is because of capitalism.

613
00:38:32,239 --> 00:38:35,600
Speaker 11: The Black Panther newspaper, which they distributed in cities all

614
00:38:35,600 --> 00:38:38,800
Speaker 11: over the country, was a visible reminder of their presence

615
00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:43,560
Speaker 11: and their political agenda. So were the Panthers food distribution programs.

616
00:38:44,160 --> 00:38:46,240
Speaker 11: Both became targets of the FBI.

617
00:38:46,920 --> 00:38:52,440
Speaker 20: They sprayed scatole, which is a foul smelling basically chemical

618
00:38:52,480 --> 00:38:53,719
Speaker 20: agent on the newspaper.

619
00:38:54,360 --> 00:38:57,920
Speaker 10: We used to get the paper shipped in from Oakland

620
00:38:58,000 --> 00:38:59,920
Speaker 10: and to Kenney Airport. We go pick up the papers.

621
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:02,920
Speaker 10: They would be destroyed what and we would get a

622
00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:04,719
Speaker 10: call from not to the workers say, man, you guys

623
00:39:04,760 --> 00:39:06,080
Speaker 10: been to go to papers. In fact, some of the

624
00:39:06,080 --> 00:39:07,960
Speaker 10: workers used to hide out papers for us to we

625
00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:09,080
Speaker 10: come get them, and stuff like.

626
00:39:09,040 --> 00:39:13,160
Speaker 20: That the breakfast programs had to constantly be moved, that

627
00:39:13,239 --> 00:39:16,640
Speaker 20: they were really trying to destroy the breakfast programs because

628
00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:20,840
Speaker 20: they meaning the FBI and local on state law enforcement,

629
00:39:21,160 --> 00:39:24,160
Speaker 20: they saw those as such a danger because of the

630
00:39:24,239 --> 00:39:28,440
Speaker 20: ways that they would influence parents and children and families.

631
00:39:28,960 --> 00:39:31,520
Speaker 11: Omar and a fellow Panthers knew they were being targeted

632
00:39:31,520 --> 00:39:34,320
Speaker 11: by the government, but it was never really clear exactly

633
00:39:34,360 --> 00:39:35,560
Speaker 11: who was behind it.

634
00:39:36,040 --> 00:39:39,800
Speaker 20: The core strategy is to criminalize and kill the leadership

635
00:39:39,800 --> 00:39:42,239
Speaker 20: of the party and the rank and file. At the

636
00:39:42,360 --> 00:39:46,000
Speaker 20: very least a third of the party was agen provocateurs

637
00:39:46,000 --> 00:39:46,759
Speaker 20: and informers.

638
00:39:48,640 --> 00:39:51,000
Speaker 11: Omar says, it's now clear that many of the people

639
00:39:51,000 --> 00:39:54,280
Speaker 11: around him were working to undermine the Black Panther Party.

640
00:39:54,560 --> 00:39:58,520
Speaker 10: We had members who were doing stick ups, robbing people,

641
00:39:58,880 --> 00:40:01,960
Speaker 10: and doing other things, and we call them agent provocate tools.

642
00:40:02,680 --> 00:40:06,600
Speaker 11: These provocateurs would commit flagrant crimes like robberies and muggings,

643
00:40:06,960 --> 00:40:09,200
Speaker 11: and they would make sure that their actions implicated the

644
00:40:09,200 --> 00:40:13,120
Speaker 11: Panther organization, giving law enforcement an excuse to move in.

645
00:40:13,520 --> 00:40:15,839
Speaker 10: And subsequently we learned to find a lot of those

646
00:40:15,880 --> 00:40:18,920
Speaker 10: people where in fact, not only agent provocate tools, but

647
00:40:19,040 --> 00:40:21,560
Speaker 10: undercover officers, and.

648
00:40:21,480 --> 00:40:25,360
Speaker 20: You're inserting people into organizations to increase that level of

649
00:40:25,400 --> 00:40:30,320
Speaker 20: anger and to increase that level of violence, and often

650
00:40:30,440 --> 00:40:32,840
Speaker 20: inserting violence because that was a way to have people

651
00:40:32,920 --> 00:40:34,800
Speaker 20: arrested and then locked away in prison.

652
00:40:36,280 --> 00:40:41,240
Speaker 11: The FBI strategy worked. The bureau successfully created deep rifts

653
00:40:41,360 --> 00:40:45,440
Speaker 11: within the party, using forged letters and agent provocateurs to

654
00:40:45,640 --> 00:40:49,360
Speaker 11: encourage violence and foster grievances. The same was true for

655
00:40:49,440 --> 00:40:52,760
Speaker 11: the Black Panthers' relationships to other black organizations.

656
00:40:53,120 --> 00:40:58,439
Speaker 17: A special agent in San Diego wrote a classified letter

657
00:40:58,520 --> 00:41:02,400
Speaker 17: back to Jagger, who were saying, we've managed to convince

658
00:41:02,480 --> 00:41:06,960
Speaker 17: one black group in San Diego that the real enemies

659
00:41:06,960 --> 00:41:10,560
Speaker 17: are another black group, and we've got them into an argument,

660
00:41:11,120 --> 00:41:14,000
Speaker 17: and there have been some shootings and some killings between

661
00:41:14,040 --> 00:41:17,200
Speaker 17: these two groups. And we prevented them from concentrating on

662
00:41:17,280 --> 00:41:20,320
Speaker 17: civil rights by getting them involved in gang warfare against

663
00:41:20,360 --> 00:41:25,120
Speaker 17: each other. And that was a co Intel pro goal.

664
00:41:27,239 --> 00:41:30,279
Speaker 11: In nineteen sixty eight, co Intel Pro successfully framed a

665
00:41:30,320 --> 00:41:34,239
Speaker 11: Panther named Geronimo Pratt, who was arrested and convicted of

666
00:41:34,320 --> 00:41:37,799
Speaker 11: murdering a woman in Los Angeles. He spent twenty seven

667
00:41:37,880 --> 00:41:41,080
Speaker 11: years in prison before it was finally proven that Pratt

668
00:41:41,320 --> 00:41:43,920
Speaker 11: had been in Oakland, four hundred miles away.

669
00:41:44,040 --> 00:41:45,160
Speaker 1: At the time of the crime.

670
00:41:46,400 --> 00:41:50,120
Speaker 11: The FBI had known Pratt was innocent the entire time,

671
00:41:50,800 --> 00:41:54,080
Speaker 11: but they allowed him to spend nearly three decades in prison.

672
00:41:55,920 --> 00:41:58,799
Speaker 11: And then there was the case of Fred Hampton. The

673
00:41:58,840 --> 00:42:01,480
Speaker 11: Black Panthers, and many of had long been convinced that

674
00:42:01,560 --> 00:42:05,200
Speaker 11: Jay Edgar Hoover had assassinated Hampton. Now that Hoover was

675
00:42:05,239 --> 00:42:08,800
Speaker 11: dead and his secrets were out, the nation finally learned

676
00:42:09,040 --> 00:42:13,120
Speaker 11: the full story. In nineteen sixty seven, a young black

677
00:42:13,160 --> 00:42:16,839
Speaker 11: man named William O'Neil stole a car in Chicago, drove

678
00:42:16,920 --> 00:42:21,040
Speaker 11: it to Indiana, and abandoned it. Since he'd crossed state lines,

679
00:42:21,080 --> 00:42:24,359
Speaker 11: his crime was a federal one, so the FBI investigated.

680
00:42:24,920 --> 00:42:26,280
Speaker 1: Eventually, an agent caught.

681
00:42:26,120 --> 00:42:26,760
Speaker 9: Up with O'Neil.

682
00:42:27,440 --> 00:42:30,440
Speaker 11: He told him that even though he was caught red handed,

683
00:42:30,960 --> 00:42:34,200
Speaker 11: there was no need to worry. They could work something out.

684
00:42:35,239 --> 00:42:39,080
Speaker 11: He then asked O'Neill to infiltrate the Illinois Black Panther party.

685
00:42:40,400 --> 00:42:44,200
Speaker 11: O'Neill excelled as an informant. He ingratiated himself with the

686
00:42:44,239 --> 00:42:47,520
Speaker 11: Panthers and became head of security to their charismatic young leader,

687
00:42:47,760 --> 00:42:52,640
Speaker 11: Fred Hampton. In late nineteen sixty nine, O'Neill provided the

688
00:42:52,719 --> 00:42:55,560
Speaker 11: FBI with the address of the house where Hampton was staying.

689
00:42:56,320 --> 00:42:59,120
Speaker 11: He told them there were guns there, and he drew

690
00:42:59,160 --> 00:43:02,120
Speaker 11: a map of the house, even marking the location of

691
00:43:02,160 --> 00:43:07,000
Speaker 11: Fred Hampton's bed. On the night of December third, nineteen

692
00:43:07,040 --> 00:43:09,600
Speaker 11: sixty nine, O'Neil slipped a sedative into a glass of

693
00:43:09,640 --> 00:43:13,200
Speaker 11: kool aid and gave it to Chairman Fred and then departed.

694
00:43:14,239 --> 00:43:16,600
Speaker 11: A few hours later, the police arrived and shot their

695
00:43:16,640 --> 00:43:19,479
Speaker 11: way into the apartment using the map. They went straight

696
00:43:19,520 --> 00:43:22,240
Speaker 11: to the bedroom and killed Fred Hampton in cold blood

697
00:43:22,400 --> 00:43:25,160
Speaker 11: as he lay drugged and knocked out in his bed.

698
00:43:31,560 --> 00:43:34,360
Speaker 11: O'Neil was not the last informant and Hampton was not

699
00:43:34,440 --> 00:43:35,680
Speaker 11: the last Panther to die.

700
00:43:36,239 --> 00:43:41,600
Speaker 10: Not only was it the organizations that were targeted Cointelpro,

701
00:43:41,719 --> 00:43:44,880
Speaker 10: but the greater Black community. There was a criminalation of

702
00:43:44,880 --> 00:43:48,400
Speaker 10: a people, a race of people, not just the organization

703
00:43:48,480 --> 00:43:51,360
Speaker 10: that may be and represented those people. That's the angle

704
00:43:51,400 --> 00:43:53,160
Speaker 10: that we still have to look at. There were a

705
00:43:53,200 --> 00:43:56,520
Speaker 10: lot of panthers that were killed in very unusual circumstances

706
00:43:57,040 --> 00:43:58,760
Speaker 10: that a lot of pants in that won in jail.

707
00:43:59,280 --> 00:44:04,360
Speaker 10: If the committee's invest atic guy had not uncovered those files,

708
00:44:04,719 --> 00:44:06,520
Speaker 10: I think we would have seen more desks.

709
00:44:07,560 --> 00:44:10,360
Speaker 11: As part of his research before the hearings, Locke Johnson

710
00:44:10,400 --> 00:44:14,360
Speaker 11: traveled to Boston to interview former FBI Assistant Director Bill Sullivan,

711
00:44:14,760 --> 00:44:18,440
Speaker 11: one of the chief architects of co Intel pro Now.

712
00:44:18,719 --> 00:44:21,440
Speaker 11: He was sitting directly across from Locke in a private

713
00:44:21,520 --> 00:44:23,200
Speaker 11: room at Logan Airport.

714
00:44:23,520 --> 00:44:26,680
Speaker 17: And I asked him, how could you have done these things?

715
00:44:27,640 --> 00:44:31,520
Speaker 17: How could you have tried to destroy anatole, rappaport and

716
00:44:31,640 --> 00:44:36,160
Speaker 17: doctor King and the hundreds upon hundreds of other people

717
00:44:37,000 --> 00:44:39,879
Speaker 17: in the civil rights movement and in the anti war

718
00:44:40,000 --> 00:44:43,279
Speaker 17: protest movement. How could you have done that to these

719
00:44:43,320 --> 00:44:47,160
Speaker 17: people who weren't breaking any laws, that they were expressing

720
00:44:47,200 --> 00:44:52,799
Speaker 17: their views. And he said, that's what Hoover wanted me

721
00:44:52,920 --> 00:44:55,920
Speaker 17: to do. And I had a mortgage on my house

722
00:44:56,880 --> 00:45:01,279
Speaker 17: and I had three kids in college. I reminded me

723
00:45:01,360 --> 00:45:06,319
Speaker 17: of Hannah Urant's banality of evil. Help people do the

724
00:45:06,320 --> 00:45:11,120
Speaker 17: most awful things for the most mundane reasons. It was

725
00:45:11,200 --> 00:45:26,640
Speaker 17: really quite shocking. You know the old cliche about you

726
00:45:26,640 --> 00:45:29,200
Speaker 17: could hear a pin drop, That's exactly what it was.

727
00:45:29,239 --> 00:45:30,280
Speaker 17: In the Russell.

728
00:45:30,000 --> 00:45:33,640
Speaker 11: Auditorium after hearing the facts of Cotel pro laid out

729
00:45:33,680 --> 00:45:37,640
Speaker 11: before the Church Committee. Michigan Senator Philip Hart spoke up.

730
00:45:37,760 --> 00:45:42,080
Speaker 8: I've been told for years by, among others, some of

731
00:45:42,120 --> 00:45:45,600
Speaker 8: my own family that this is exactly what the Bureau

732
00:45:45,760 --> 00:45:49,000
Speaker 8: was doing all the time, And in my great wisdom

733
00:45:50,040 --> 00:45:54,920
Speaker 8: in high office, I assured them they were on pot.

734
00:45:55,760 --> 00:45:59,799
Speaker 9: This just wasn't true, couldn't happen. They wouldn't do it.

735
00:46:00,640 --> 00:46:02,560
Speaker 11: Heart was nearing the end of his third and final

736
00:46:02,680 --> 00:46:05,560
Speaker 11: term in the Senate. His health was declining. In fact,

737
00:46:05,719 --> 00:46:07,719
Speaker 11: according to Locke, Heart had to miss some of the

738
00:46:07,760 --> 00:46:11,360
Speaker 11: hearings for medical reasons, but he had heard enough.

739
00:46:11,880 --> 00:46:16,360
Speaker 8: What you've described is a series of illegal actions intended

740
00:46:16,680 --> 00:46:21,880
Speaker 8: squarely to deny First Amendment rights to some Americans. The trick, now,

741
00:46:23,040 --> 00:46:26,120
Speaker 8: as I say it, Miss Chairman, is for this committee

742
00:46:26,360 --> 00:46:29,440
Speaker 8: to be able to figure out how to persuade the

743
00:46:29,520 --> 00:46:32,080
Speaker 8: people of this country that indeed it did go on,

744
00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:36,360
Speaker 8: and how shall we ensure that it never happened again.

745
00:46:37,840 --> 00:46:39,959
Speaker 17: And it was kind of a turning point in which

746
00:46:40,040 --> 00:46:44,960
Speaker 17: even the three conservative Republicans sort of had an epiphany

747
00:46:45,320 --> 00:46:48,640
Speaker 17: that the FBI had really gone way too far. They

748
00:46:48,680 --> 00:46:53,040
Speaker 17: had no accountability, and the anchor of democracy is accountability.

749
00:46:53,880 --> 00:46:56,400
Speaker 11: As he filled the questions from the Church committee, visibly

750
00:46:56,480 --> 00:47:00,960
Speaker 11: sweaty and red as a phone tapping Tomato. FBI Deputy

751
00:47:00,960 --> 00:47:05,040
Speaker 11: Associate Director James Adams acknowledged that the Bureau had strayed

752
00:47:05,040 --> 00:47:08,239
Speaker 11: from its mission. He encouraged Congress to give them some

753
00:47:08,360 --> 00:47:12,319
Speaker 11: quote guidelines, at which point Frank Church reminded him that

754
00:47:12,400 --> 00:47:15,960
Speaker 11: he already had some you know, laws.

755
00:47:16,320 --> 00:47:19,880
Speaker 18: You shouldn't have ever had to have had guidelines to

756
00:47:19,960 --> 00:47:24,280
Speaker 18: tell you that the federal government's chief law enforcement agency

757
00:47:24,320 --> 00:47:28,080
Speaker 18: ought not to disobey the law. And really, you don't

758
00:47:28,160 --> 00:47:30,040
Speaker 18: need explicit guidelines to.

759
00:47:30,000 --> 00:47:31,360
Speaker 9: Tell you that, or you shouldn't have.

760
00:47:32,040 --> 00:47:33,200
Speaker 18: Wouldn't you agree?

761
00:47:33,560 --> 00:47:38,520
Speaker 3: I would say that, looking at it today, we should

762
00:47:38,520 --> 00:47:40,120
Speaker 3: have looked at it that way yesterday.

763
00:47:42,480 --> 00:47:47,160
Speaker 11: Hindsight's twenty twenty Congress wasn't going to accept that old

764
00:47:47,239 --> 00:47:52,759
Speaker 11: chestnut and leave it at that. In the wake of

765
00:47:52,800 --> 00:47:55,840
Speaker 11: the Church hearings, it passed a new law limiting future

766
00:47:55,920 --> 00:47:58,080
Speaker 11: FBI directors to a term of ten years.

767
00:47:58,920 --> 00:48:03,200
Speaker 17: Finally, seventy five, we began to do something in the

768
00:48:03,320 --> 00:48:07,440
Speaker 17: United States of America about secret power, the most dangerous

769
00:48:07,480 --> 00:48:11,280
Speaker 17: power of all, and we tried to tame secret power

770
00:48:12,000 --> 00:48:14,880
Speaker 17: by creating a House and sidate Intelligence Committee.

771
00:48:15,680 --> 00:48:19,080
Speaker 11: It sounds crazy now, but the Church Committee really was

772
00:48:19,160 --> 00:48:22,800
Speaker 11: the first time that Congress ever held the FBI to account.

773
00:48:24,640 --> 00:48:27,720
Speaker 11: In the wake of these revelations, both Houses of Congress

774
00:48:27,760 --> 00:48:31,480
Speaker 11: eventually voted to keep permanent standing committees to review what

775
00:48:31,560 --> 00:48:39,480
Speaker 11: intelligence agencies were doing, which they still do today. The

776
00:48:39,560 --> 00:48:43,520
Speaker 11: media burglars watched the hearings unfold, unable to discuss them

777
00:48:43,520 --> 00:48:46,000
Speaker 11: with each other or take any credit for the crucial

778
00:48:46,080 --> 00:48:46,920
Speaker 11: role they'd played.

779
00:48:47,280 --> 00:48:50,279
Speaker 21: It was very exciting when the Church Committee decided to

780
00:48:50,280 --> 00:48:50,840
Speaker 21: take us on.

781
00:48:51,280 --> 00:48:52,279
Speaker 9: This is fabulous.

782
00:48:53,000 --> 00:48:55,080
Speaker 21: I wasn't sure it was going to rise to that level,

783
00:48:55,160 --> 00:48:59,120
Speaker 21: but I thought it was amazing. And you know, we

784
00:48:59,160 --> 00:49:02,400
Speaker 21: had raised the coniousness in the whole country about the FBI.

785
00:49:03,239 --> 00:49:07,520
Speaker 22: I had sort of a feeling of, well, finally, you know,

786
00:49:09,040 --> 00:49:11,160
Speaker 22: not that I expected a whole lot out of it,

787
00:49:11,200 --> 00:49:15,120
Speaker 22: but at least it was, you know, the Congress is

788
00:49:15,200 --> 00:49:18,759
Speaker 22: acknowledging the you know, the anti democratic stuff that had

789
00:49:18,800 --> 00:49:19,440
Speaker 22: been going on.

790
00:49:20,320 --> 00:49:24,760
Speaker 2: Our hope was that there would be serious oversight of

791
00:49:25,000 --> 00:49:26,880
Speaker 2: the FBI and the CIA.

792
00:49:26,760 --> 00:49:29,319
Speaker 1: Long overdue in this so called democracy.

793
00:49:30,160 --> 00:49:32,040
Speaker 17: If you look at the history of Jaegar Hoover, it

794
00:49:32,040 --> 00:49:36,640
Speaker 17: was the most damaging act against him in that long history.

795
00:49:37,160 --> 00:49:40,200
Speaker 17: In my view, there were more heroes and burglars because

796
00:49:40,719 --> 00:49:43,480
Speaker 17: it brought to light the fact that cointelpro and the

797
00:49:43,520 --> 00:49:46,920
Speaker 17: counter intelligence program of the FBI existed.

798
00:49:50,800 --> 00:49:55,359
Speaker 11: Next on SNAFU, the fallout from the Church Committee revelations,

799
00:49:56,719 --> 00:49:57,320
Speaker 11: What are.

800
00:49:57,160 --> 00:49:58,960
Speaker 9: We going to do about this? Easy as We're going

801
00:49:59,040 --> 00:49:59,279
Speaker 9: to get?

802
00:49:59,320 --> 00:50:05,160
Speaker 11: The time of Goodbye, the final chapters of our burglar stories.

803
00:50:05,280 --> 00:50:10,560
Speaker 9: I Changed, Sinning and Sorry, My Underground Life.

804
00:50:11,200 --> 00:50:13,600
Speaker 1: And a Return to the Scene of the Crime.

805
00:50:16,760 --> 00:50:20,360
Speaker 11: Snapoo is a production of iHeartRadio, Film, Nation Entertainment, and

806
00:50:20,400 --> 00:50:24,759
Speaker 11: Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. This

807
00:50:24,840 --> 00:50:27,320
Speaker 11: season of Snapfoo is based on the book The Burglary

808
00:50:27,400 --> 00:50:30,880
Speaker 11: The Discovery of Jay Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI, written by

809
00:50:30,880 --> 00:50:31,680
Speaker 11: Betty Metzger.

810
00:50:32,360 --> 00:50:33,800
Speaker 1: It's executive produced by.

811
00:50:33,680 --> 00:50:38,280
Speaker 11: Me Ed Helms, Milan Papelka, Mike Walbo, Whitney Donaldson, Andy Chug,

812
00:50:38,360 --> 00:50:42,280
Speaker 11: Dylan Fagan, and Betty Metzger. Our lead producers are Sarah

813
00:50:42,320 --> 00:50:47,040
Speaker 11: Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Producer is Stephen Wood. This episode

814
00:50:47,080 --> 00:50:49,720
Speaker 11: was written by Albert Chen, Sarah Joyner, and Stephen Wood,

815
00:50:49,760 --> 00:50:52,520
Speaker 11: with additional writing and story editing from Alissa Martino and

816
00:50:52,760 --> 00:50:56,719
Speaker 11: Ed Helms. Tory Smith is our associate producer. Nevin Calla

817
00:50:56,800 --> 00:51:00,520
Speaker 11: poly is our production assistant. Facts checking by char ARLs Richter.

818
00:51:01,000 --> 00:51:04,800
Speaker 11: Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Sensitivity consult from Oloa

819
00:51:04,880 --> 00:51:08,440
Speaker 11: Kemi Ala de Sui, editing, sound design and original music

820
00:51:08,480 --> 00:51:11,880
Speaker 11: by Ben Chugg, Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley.

821
00:51:12,239 --> 00:51:16,240
Speaker 11: Additional editing from Kelsey Albright, Olivia Canny and Jimma Castelli.

822
00:51:16,320 --> 00:51:20,760
Speaker 11: Foley theme music by Dan Rosatto. Special thanks to Alison Cohen,

823
00:51:20,840 --> 00:51:24,720
Speaker 11: Daniel Welsh and Ben Riizak. Additional thanks to director Joanna

824
00:51:24,760 --> 00:51:27,440
Speaker 11: Hamilton for letting us use some of the original interviews

825
00:51:27,520 --> 00:51:32,280
Speaker 11: from her incredible documentary nineteen seventy one. Finally, our deepest

826
00:51:32,320 --> 00:51:36,280
Speaker 11: gratitude to the courageous Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI,

827
00:51:36,800 --> 00:51:41,680
Speaker 11: Bill Davidon, Ralph Daniel, Judy fine Gold, Keith Forsyth, Bonnie Rains,

828
00:51:41,920 --> 00:51:45,439
Speaker 11: John Rains, Sarah Schumer and Bob Williamson.