[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [SRRTAC-L:6988] COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story (WCAR)
(fwd)
Al Kagan
akagan at uiuc.edu
Sat Oct 20 13:54:59 CDT 2001
>Delivered-To: akagan at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu
>Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2001 02:24:45 -0500 (CDT)
>From: Dale Wertz <dwertz at mc.net>
>To: SRRT Action Council <srrtac-l at ala.org>
>Cc: PLGNet-L at listproc.sjsu.edu
>Subject: [SRRTAC-L:6988] COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story (WCAR) (fwd)
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> COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story is a paper presented at the
>2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. The version
>forwarded below is abridged and does not include the bibliography or
>footnotes. The paper is described as being compiled by Paul Wolf with
>contributions by Chomsky and others, but scanning the document I did not
>find any part of it written by the contributors. Their influence is
>certainly present at least.
>
> The full paper, with bibliography, is available at
>http://www.derechos.net/paulwolf/cointelpropapers/coinwcar3.htm
>
> A timely read as we enter another era of supposed threats to the
>American Way of Life. dw
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2001 06:53:52 -0400 (EDT)
>From: Marpessa Kupendua <nattyreb1 at home.com>
>Reply-To: a-infos-en at ainfos.ca
>To: a-infos-en at ainfos.ca
>Subject: (en) COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story (WCAR)
>
> ________________________________________________
> A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
> http://www.ainfos.ca/
> ________________________________________________
>
>U.S. TERRORISM AGAINST DISSIDENTS
>===============================
>From: "radtimes" <resist at best.com>
>Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2001 12:59 AM
>
>
> COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story (WCAR) by Paul Wolf, et. al.
>> http://www.e-venthorizon.net/human_rights/wcar_cointelpro.html
>
> The introductory content of Paul Wolf's white paper, with
> contributions from Robert Boyle, Bob Brown, Tom Burghardt,
> Noam Chomsky, Ward Churchill, Kathleen Cleaver, Bruce Ellison,
> Cynthia McKinney, Nkechi Taifa, Laura Whitehorn, Nicholas
> Wilson, and Howard Zinn, as presented at the WCAR
> Conference in September 2001.
>
>
> [The following paper was presented to the 2001 WCAR in
> Durban, South Africa. A longer and annotated version of this
> document is available online: www.house.gov]
>
>
> TABLE OF CONTENTS
>
> Overview
> Victimization
> COINTELPRO Techniques
> Murder and Assassination
> Agents Provocateurs
> The Ku Klux Klan
> The Secret Army Organization
> Snitch Jacketing
> The Subversion of the Press
> Political Prisoners
> Leonard Peltier
> Mumia Abu Jamal
> Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt
> Dhoruba Bin Wahad
> Marshall Eddie Conway
> Justice Hangs in the Balance
> Appendix: The Legacy of COINTELPRO
> CISPES
> The Judi Bari Bombing
> Bibliography
>
> * * *
>
> Overview
> We're here to talk about the FBI and U.S. democracy because
> here we have this peculiar situation that we live in a democratic
> country ó everybody knows that, everybody says it, it's
> repeated, it's dinned into our ears a thousand times, you grow
> up, you pledge allegiance, you salute the flag, you hail
> democracy, you look at the totalitarian states, you read the
> history of tyrannies, and here is the beacon light of democracy.
> And, of course, there's some truth to that. There are things you
> can do in the United States that you can't do many other places
> without being put in jail.
>
> But the United States is a very complex system. It's very hard to
> describe because, yes, there are elements of democracy; there
> are things that you're grateful for, that you're not in front of the
> death squads in El Salvador. On the other hand, it's not quite a
> democracy. And one of the things that makes it not quite a
> democracy is the existence of outfits like the FBI and the CIA.
> Democracy is based on openness, and the existence of a secret
> policy, secret lists of dissident citizens, violates the spirit of
> democracy.
>
> Despite its carefully contrived image as the nation's premier
> crime fighting agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has
> always functioned primarily as America's political police. This
> role includes not only the collection of intelligence on the
> activities of political dissidents and groups, but often times,
> counterintelligence operations to thwart those activities. The
> techniques employed are easily recognized by anyone familiar
> with military psychological operations. The FBI, through the use
> of the criminal justice system, the postal system, the telephone
> system and the Internal Revenue Service, enjoys an operational
> capability surpassing even that of the CIA, which conducts
> covert actions in foreign countries without having access to
> those institutions.
>
> Although covert operations have been employed throughout FBI
> history, the formal COunter INTELligence PROgrams
> (COINTELPRO's) of the period 1956-1971 were the first to be
> both broadly targeted and centrally directed. According to FBI
> researcher Brian Glick, "FBI headquarters set policy, assessed
> progress, charted new directions, demanded increased
> production, and carefully monitored and controlled day-to-day
> operations. This arrangement required that national
> COINTELPRO supervisors and local FBI field offices
> communicate back and forth, at great length, concerning every
> operation. They did so quite freely, with little fear of public
> exposure. This generated a prolific trail of bureaucratic paper.
> The moment that paper trail began to surface, the FBI
> discontinued all of its formal domestic counterintelligence
> programs. It did not, however, cease its covert political activity
> against U.S. dissidents."
>
> Of roughly 20,000 people investigated by the FBI solely on the
> basis of their political views between 1956-1971, about 10 to
> 15% were the targets of active counterintelligence measures per
> se. Taking counterintelligence in its broadest sense, to include
> spreading false information, it's estimated that about two-thirds
> were COINTELPRO targets. Most targets were never
> suspected of committing any crime.
>
> The nineteen sixties were a period of social change and unrest.
> Color television brought home images of jungle combat in
> Vietnam and protesters and priests burning draft cards and
> American flags. In the spring and summer months of 1964,
> 1965, 1966, 1967 and 1968, massive black rebellions swept
> across almost every major US city in the Northeast, Midwest
> and California. Presidents Johnson and Nixon, and many others
> feared violent revolution and denounced the protesters.
> President Kennedy had felt the opposite: "Those who make
> peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution
> inevitable."
>
> The counterculture of the sixties, and the FBI's reaction to it,
> were in many ways a product of the 1950s, the so-called "Age of
> McCarthyism." John Edgar Hoover, longtime Director of the FBI,
> was a prominent spokesman of the anti-communist paranoia of
> the era:The forces which are most anxious to weaken our
> internal security are not always easy to identify. Communists
> have been trained in deceit and secretly work toward the day
> when they hope to replace our American way of life with a
> Communist dictatorship. They utilize cleverly camouflaged
> movements, such as peace groups and civil rights groups to
> achieve their sinister purposes.
>
> While they as individuals are difficult to identify, the Communist
> party line is clear. Its first concern is the advancement of Soviet
> Russia and the godless Communist cause. It is important to
> learn to know the enemies of the American way of life.
>
> Throughout the 1960s, Hoover consistently applied this theory to
> a wide variety of groups, on occasion reprimanding agents
> unable to find "obvious" communist connections in civil rights
> and anti-war groups. During the entire COINTELPRO period, no
> links to Soviet Russia were uncovered in any of the social
> movements disrupted by the FBI.
>
> The commitment of the FBI to undermine and destroy popular
> movements departing from political orthodoxy has been
> extensive, and apparently proportional to the strength and
> promise of such movements, as one would expect in the case of
> the secret police organization of any state, though it is doubtful
> that there is anything comparable to this record among the
> Western industrial democracies.
>
> In retrospect, the COINTEPRO's of the 1960s were thoroughly
> successful in achieving their stated goals, "to expose, disrupt,
> misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the enemies of the
> State.
>
> Victimization
> The most serious of the FBI disruption programs were those
> directed against "Black Nationalists." Agents were instructed to
> undertake actions to discredit these groups both within "the
> responsible Negro community" and to "Negro radicals," also "to
> the white community, both the responsible community and to
> `liberals' who have vestiges of sympathy for militant black
> nationalists simply because they are Negroes..."
>
> A March 4th, 1968 memo from J Edgar Hoover to FBI field
> offices laid out the goals of the COINTELPRO - Black Nationalist
> Hate Groups program: "to prevent the coalition of militant black
> nationalist groups;" "to prevent the rise of a messiah who could
> unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement;" "to
> prevent violence on the part of black nationalist groups;" "to
> prevent militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining
> respectability;" and "to prevent the long-range growth of militant
> black nationalist organizations, especially among youth."
> Included in the program were a broad spectrum of civil rights
> and religious groups; targets included Martin Luther King,
> Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, and Elijah
> Muhammad.
>
> A top secret Special Report for President Nixon, dated June
> 1970 gives some insight into the motivation for the actions
> undertaken by the government to destroy the Black Panther
> party. The report describes the party as "the most active and
> dangerous black extremist group in the United States." Its
> "hard-core members" were estimated at about 800, but "a recent
> poll indicates that approximately 25 per cent of the black
> population has a great respect for the BPP, including 43 per cent
> of blacks under 21 years of age." On the basis of such
> estimates of the potential of the party, counterintelligence
> operations were carried out to ensure that it did not succeed in
> organizing as a substantial social or political force.
>
> Another memorandum explains the motivation for the FBI
> operations against student protesters: "the movement of
> rebellious youth known as the 'New Left,' involving and
> influencing a substantial number of college students, is having a
> serious impact on contemporary society with a potential for
> serious domestic strife." The New Left has "revolutionary aims"
> and an "identification with Marxism-Leninism." It has attempted
> "to infiltrate and radicalize labor," and after failing
>"to subvert and
> control the mass media" has established "a large network of
> underground publications which serve the dual purpose of an
> internal communication network and an external propaganda
> organ." Its leaders have "openly stated their sympathy with the
> international communist revolutionary movements in South
> Vietnam and Cuba; and have directed others into activities which
> support these movements."
>
> The effectiveness of the state disruption programs is not easy to
> evaluate. Black leaders estimate the significance of the
> programs as substantial. Dr. James Turner of Cornell
> University, former president of the African Heritage Studies
> Association, assessed these programs as having "serious
> long-term consequences for black Americans," in that they "had
> created in blacks a sense of depression and hopelessness."
>
>
>Article copyright ) Paul Wolf, et al; all rights reserved.
>
>[...]
>
>
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--
Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA
tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu
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