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Cointelpro

OINTELPRO COINTELPRO (a syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert and illegal[1][2] projects conducted between 1956 and 1971 by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting American political organizations that the FBI perceived as subversive.[3][4][5][6] Groups and individuals targeted by the FBI included feminist organizations,[7][8] the Communist Party USA,[9] anti-Vietnam War organizers, activists in the civil rights and Black power movements (e.g., Martin Luther King Jr., the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party), environmentalist and animal rights organizations, the American Indian Movement (AIM), Chicano and Mexican-American groups like the Brown Berets and the United Farm Workers, and independence movements (including Puerto Rican independence groups, such as the Young Lords and the Puerto Rican Socialist Party). Although the program primarily focused on organizations that were part of the broader New Left, they also targeted white supremacist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan[10][11] and the National States' Rights Party.[12] The FBI has used covert operations against domestic political groups since its inception; however, covert operations under the official COINTELPRO label took place between 1956 and 1971.

[30] When the Southern Christian Leadership Conference(SCLC), an African-American civil rights organization, was founded in 1957, the FBI began to monitor and target the group almost immediately, focusing particularly on Bayard Rustin, Stanley Levison, and eventually Martin Luther King Jr.[31] Amidst the urban unrest of July–August 1967, the FBI began "COINTELPRO–BLACK HATE", which focused on King and the SCLC, as well as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee(SNCC), the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), the Deacons for Defense and Justice, Congress of Racial Equality(CORE), and the Nation of Islam. The problem persists after Hoover...."The record before this court," Federal Magistrate Joan Lefkow stated in 1991, "shows that despite regulations, orders and consent decrees prohibiting such activities, the FBI had continued to collect information concerning only the exercise of free speech.^ Mosedale, Mike (February 16, 2000).

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