COINTELPRO facts for kids

This is a COINTELPRO note about actress Jean Seberg. It suggests a plan to share news about her pregnancy. She supported the Black Panther Party. The FBI hoped this would make her look bad to the public. Secret efforts to make activists look bad and ruin their friendships were common COINTELPRO tactics.

COINTELPRO was a series of secret and illegal projects ran by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 1956 to 1971. The name COINTELPRO comes from "Counter Intelligence Program."

The FBI used these projects to watch, sneak into, make look bad, and break up American political groups. FBI records show that COINTELPRO targeted groups and people the FBI thought were trying to cause trouble. These included groups fighting for women's rights, the Communist Party USA, and people against the Vietnam War.

They also targeted activists from the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power movement. Famous people like Martin Luther King Jr. and groups like the Black Panther Party were targets. Other groups included those for environmental and animal rights, the American Indian Movement (AIM), and groups wanting independence for places like Puerto Rico.

The FBI had used secret operations before, but COINTELPRO was the official name for these specific projects between 1956 and 1971.

How It Started

Official COINTELPRO operations began in August 1956. The first program aimed to "increase arguments, cause trouble, and make people leave" the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Tactics included anonymous phone calls, tax audits, and creating fake documents to divide the group.

In October 1956, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover ordered that the FBI's ongoing watching of black leaders be part of COINTELPRO. He said this was because the movement had communists in it.

Targeting Important Leaders

After the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Hoover made King a main target for COINTELPRO. Soon after, the FBI was secretly listening in on King's home and hotel rooms. They knew King was becoming the most important leader of the civil rights movement.

In the mid-1960s, King started to publicly criticize the FBI. In 1967, the FBI started a program focused on King and the SCLC, as well as other black nationalist groups. It told 23 FBI offices to "disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" these groups.

A memo from March 1968 stated the program's goals. These included preventing black nationalist groups from joining forces.

A specific target was the Poor People's Campaign. This was a national effort organized by King and the SCLC to protest in Washington, DC. The FBI watched and disrupted the campaign across the country. They also used local tactics to make people not support the march. The Black Panther Party was another targeted group. The FBI worked to destroy the party from the inside.

Overall, COINTELPRO included breaking up and hurting the Socialist Workers Party (1961), the Ku Klux Klan (1964), the Nation of Islam, the Black Panther Party (1967), and the entire New Left movement. This movement included anti-war, community, and religious groups (1968).

How COINTELPRO Was Revealed

The program was secret until 1971. That year, a group called the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania. They took several secret files and shared them with news agencies. A boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in March 1971 helped the group carry out the break-in. Muhammad Ali was a COINTELPRO target because he had joined the Nation of Islam and the anti-war movement.

Many news organizations at first refused to publish the information. But The Washington Post did, after checking that the documents were real. This made other news groups publish the story too. Within a year, Director J. Edgar Hoover said that the main COINTELPRO program was over.

People Who Were Targeted

Many people were targeted by COINTELPRO operations. Some notable individuals include:

• Ralph Abernathy
• Mumia Abu-Jamal
• Muhammad Ali
• James Baldwin
• Judi Bari
• H. Rap Brown
• Kwame Ture
• Bunchy Carter
• Eldridge Cleaver
• Jeff Fort
• Howard Bruce Franklin
• Fred Hampton
• Tom Hayden
• Ernest Hemingway
• Abbie Hoffman
• Erica Huggins
• Jose Cha Cha Jimenez
• Muhammad Kenyatta
• Clark Kerr
• Martin Luther King Jr.
• Stanley Levison
• Viola Liuzzo
• Malcolm X
• Jessica Mitford
• Huey P. Newton
• Filiberto Ojeda Ríos
• Mario Savio
• Jean Seberg
• Assata Shakur
• Morris Starsky
• John Trudell

See also

In Spanish: Programa de Contrainteligencia para niños