In 1956 the FBI instituted a domestic counterintelligence program, known by the acronym COINTELPRO, against the Communist Party, USA. The program was thereafter expanded to include other Marxist-Leninist groups and violence-prone and revolutionary organizations. No other FBI operation has incurred more intensive attack, much of it directed against J. Edgar Hoover, who headed the bureau from 1924 until his death on May 2, 1972.
It is not my purpose to exculpate or vindicate Hoover but to record what is known about the FBI'S COINTELPROs that has not been sufficiently publicized or has in some instances even been concealed.
COINTELPRO was a series of covert-action programs conducted between 1956 and 1971 and directed at organizations that were subjects of national-security investigations. The object of these counterintelligence programs was to use FBI resources to disrupt certain selected groups in order to counter perceived threats to the national security. These groups were domestic organizations, and their supporters were for the most part U.S. citizens.
The program might have been more aptly named the countersubversion program, or the counterterrorist program, because it had as its targets subversive and terrorist groups, their members, and their advocates. It was designed to apply to domestic subversives and terrorist the type of tactics used to frustrate and disrupt the efforts of foreign intelligence services. Such tactics are usually deceptive in nature, and hoaxes are often used.
Origin of COINTELPRO
On March 8, 1956, Hoover briefed President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Vice President Richard Nixon, Attorney General Herbert Brownell, and at least 15 other highest-level U.S. government officials at the White House. He told them that the FBI sought to infiltrate, penetrate, disorganize, and disrupt the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), using every means available to secure information and evidence. "The techniques are numerous," he said.
Four months later, William C. Sullivan, who was chief of the Central Research Section of the Intelligence Division of the FBI, proposed that the counterintelligence operations directed against the Communist Party be considered by a committee "to discuss and formulate and recommend a systematic program for the disruption of [the party]."
Supporting this proposal, Sullivan pointed out, "the Socialist Workers Party [followers of Leon Trotsky] has acknowledge that the socialist movement in the United States includes the Communist Party, USA." He said, "The Trotskyites, aware of the dissatisfaction within the Communist Party, USA, are now engaged in an organized campaign to recruit members from among the dissatisfied communists."
A committee set up to consider a systematic program against CPUSA recommended that such a program be established. The most extraordinary aspect of this was that the FBI opted to utilize against the CPUSA a COINTELPRO-type program that was already being conducted by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).
While feeling fully justified in carrying out a counterintelligence operation
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