CoIntelPro and the FBICounterintelligence Programs

CIA-styled covert action: infiltration, psychological warfare, legal harassment

J. Edgar Hoover’s Directive at the Command of the President

“The Purpose of this new counterintelligence endeavor is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit,or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist, hate-type organizations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership, and supporters . . .”

Example of CoIntelPro

• Martin Luther King, Jr. – In response to his growing popularity, Cointelpro director William C. Sullivan warned: – “We must mark King now, if we have not before, as the most

dangerous Negro in the future of this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national security . . . It may be unrealistic to limit our actions to legalistic proofs that would stand up in court or before Congressional Committees.”

• Fake tape purportedly proving King’s relations with a number of prostitutes and, thus, “the depths of his sexual perversion and depravity.”

• Tape packaged with a letter suggesting King commit suicide to avoid the shame of the tape’s release.

Constitutionality of Cointelpro?• “Regardless of the unattractiveness or noisy militancy of

some private citizens or organizations, the Constitution does not permit federal interference with their activities except through the criminal justice system, armed with its ancient safeguards. There are no exceptions. No federal agency, the CIA, the IRS, or the FBI, can be at the same time policemen, prosecutor, judge, and jury. That is what constitutionally guaranteed due process is all about. . .COINTELPRO is the subversive notion that any public official, the president or the policeman, possesses a kind of inherent power to set aside the constitution whenever he thinks the public interest or “national security” warrants it. That notion is a postulate of tyranny.” – Congressman Don Edwards, 1975