| http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/returnofcointelpro.html
THE RETURN OF COINTELPRO The New York Times reported on December 1 that Attorney General John Ashcroft is considering a plan to relax restrictions on the FBI's spying on religious and political organizations in the United States. Specific mention was made of the practices followed by J. Edgar Hoover in the 60s and how Congress placed restrictions on them. It is these restrictions that Ashcroft is planning to relax. What they are really talking about is the FBI's COINTELPRO operation. And it is important for activists and citizens in general to realize that COINTELPRO was not just about spying on the American people, but of "dirty tricks", covert operations that targeted anti-war groups, early feminists, Native American activists, and civil rights workers including Martin Luther King. The FBI's activities, which Ashcroft wants to bring back, included burglaries, forgery, planting false stories in the media, and frame-ups. Innocent Americans who had committed no crimes other than to disagree with the policies of the state were falsely accused and sent to jail, had their careers wrecked, and in some cases died. During this period of time, less than 5% of the files kept on citizens by the FBI were in any way connected to criminal investigations, so intense was the FBI's focus on quelling political dissent. In the 1970s, the COINTELPRO files were leaked to the press. Americans were outraged, as the very idea of a secret police force working to undermine free and open political debate was enraging to a generation not so far removed from the horrors of the Third Reich. Congress had to be seen to do something about what most Americans correctly saw as un-American and un-Constitutional behavior by the FBI. The mere existence of such a secret police threatened to delegitimize the entire government, and as a result, Congress was forced to hold hearings. During those hearings, Americans learned that the FBI, far from it's media-polished image as scientific crime fighters, was maintaining networks of informants across the land, in every college, in large companies, everywhere. These informants were reporting citizens who spoke out against the government to the FBI, much as their Nazi counterparts had done just 25 years previously. FBI college informants were infiltrating the anti-war movement for the express purpose of wrecking it by the commission of illegal activities which would justify the wholesale shut-down or public embarrassment of the movement. One particular FBI stunt, done on the orders of the Nixon White House, had on-campus FBI informants organize an anti-war protest at a popular Southern California amusement park, then once it was underway stage a riot to generate as much negative publicity towards the anti-war movement. In this way, the unwinnable Vietnam war was allowed to perpetuate itself far longer, and at greatest loss of life, than would have been the case had the Democratic process not been willfully and criminally subverted by the FBI. Yet another revelation that came out of the Congressional hearings into COINTELPRO was that much negative publicity about the civil rights movement was a complete fiction manufactured by the FBI itself. One of the most famous incidents revolved around the Black Panther Coloring Book, a book of racist and hateful images put out by the FBI but blamed on the Black Panthers by' the all-too-willing media. Yet another COINTELPRO operation was directed against actress Jean Seberg, an outspoken supporter of civil rights. The FBI, knowing that Seberg was expecting a child, put out the false story (with the help of the Los Angeles Times) that she was actually pregnant by one of the Black Panthers, a scandal which even though false, wrecked Seberg's career and drove her to suicide. Only because Seberg's husband was a French Diplomat and threatened to turn the FBI's actions into an international incident was the FBI forced to publicly apologize for what they had done. Ashcroft wants the FBI to be allowed to do such things again, burglaries, frames-ups, smears, career wrecking, and all in the name of "Homeland Security". The actions of the FBI, which in the 60s almost brought down the government, are now to be the standard operating procedures used against those who have committed no crimes, but merely refuse to agree with the policies of the supreme state. Please click on THIS LINK to learn more about the history of COINTELPRO. |
