Click Here: Check out "US Domestic Covert Operations 2"
-----
US Domestic Covert Operations
From the Archive: WAR AT HOME
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Gary Lee)
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 14:21:22 GMT
Organization: The Gloons of Tharf
Newsgroups: alt.society.anarchy
/** pn.publiceye: 23.5 **/ ** Written 7:12 pm Jan 25, 1991 by nlgclc in cdp:pn.publiceye **
Path:
crash!usc!cs.utexas.edu!news.sprintlink.net!news.bluesky.net!solaris.cc.vt.edu!
news.duke.edu!zombie.ncsc.mil!news.missouri.edu!pencil.cs.missouri.edu!rich
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Rich Winkel)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: From the Archive: WAR AT HOME (4/5)
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Date: 11 Mar 1995 19:09:20 GMT
Organization: ?
Lines: 617
Approved: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Resent-From: rich
Originator: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harassment Through
Psychological Warfare
While boring from within, the FBI and police also attack dissidentmovements from the outside. They openly mount propaganda campaignsthrough public addresses, news releases, books, pamphlets, magazinearticles, radio, and television. They also use covert deception andmanipulation. Documented tactics of this kind include:
False Media Stories: COINTELPRO documents expose frequent collusionbetween news media personnel and the FBI to publish false and distorted materialat the Bureau's behest. The FBI routinely leaked derogatory informationto its collaborators in the news media. It also created newspaper and magazinearticles and television "documentaries" which the media knowingly or unknowinglycarried as their own. Copies were sent anonymously or under bogus letterheadto activists' financial backers, employers, business associates, families,neighbors, church officials, school administrators, landlords, and whomeverelse might cause them trouble.
One FBI media fabrication claimed that Jean Seberg, a white film staractive in anti-racist causes, was pregnant by a prominent Black leader.The Bureau leaked the story anonymously to columnist Joyce Haber andalso had it passed to her by a "friendly" source in the Los AngelesTimes editorial staff. The item appeared without attribution inHaber's nationally syndicated column of May 19, 1970. Seberg's husbandhas sued the FBI as responsible for her resulting stillbirth, nervousbreakdown, and suicide.
Bogus Leaflets, Pamphlets, and Other Publications: COINTELPRO documentsshow that the FBI routinely put out phony leaflets, posters, pamphlets,newspapers, and other publications in the name of movement groups. Thepurpose was to discredit the groups and turn them against one another.
FBI cartoon leaflets were used to divide and disrupt the main nationalanti-war coalition of the late 1960s. Similar fliers were circulated in1968 and 1969 in the name of the Black Panthers and the United Slaves(US), a rival Black nationalist group based in Southern California. Thephony Panther/US leaflets, together with other covert operations, werecredited with subverting a fragile truce between the two groups andigniting an explosion of internecine violence that left four Panthersdead, many more wounded, and a once-flourishing regional Black movementdecimated.
Another major COINTELPRO operation involved a children's coloring bookwhich the Black Panther Party had rejected as anti-white andgratuitously violent. The FBI revised the coloring book to make it evenmore offensive. Its field offices then distributed thousands of copiesanonymously or under phony organizational letterheads. Many backers ofthe Party's program of free breakfasts for children withdrew theirsupport after the FBI conned them into believing that the bogus coloringbook was being used in the program.
Forged Correspondence: Former employees have confirmed that the FBIhas the capacity to produce state-of-the-art forgery. This capacity wasused under COINTELPRO to create snitch jackets and bogus communications thatexacerbated differences among activists and disrupted their work.
One such forgery intimidated civil rights worker Muhammed Kenyatta(Donald Jackson), causing him to abandon promising projects in Jackson,Mississippi. Kenyatta had foundation grants to form Black economiccooperatives and open a "Black and Proud School" for dropouts. He wasalso a student organizer at nearby Tougaloo College. In the winter of1969, after an extended campaign of FBI and police harassment, Kenyattareceived a letter, purportedly from the Tougaloo College DefenseCommittee, which "directed" that he cease his political activitiesimmediately. If he did not "heed our diplomatic and well-thought-outwarning," the committee would consider taking measures "which would havea more direct effect and which would not be as cordial as this note."Kenyatta and his wife left. Only years later did they learn it was notTougaloo students, but FBI covert operators who had driven themout.
Later in 1969, FBI agents fabricated a letter to the mainly whiteorganizers of a proposed Washington, D.C. anti-war rally demanding thatthey pay the local Black community a $20,000 "security bond." Thisattempted extortion was composed in the name of the local Black UnitedFront (BUF) and signed with the forged signature of its leader. FBIinformers inside the BUF then tried to get the group to back such ademand, and Bureau contacts in the media made sure the story receivedwide publicity.
The Senate Intelligence Committee uncovered a series of FBI letters sentto top Panther leaders throughout 1970 in the name of Connie Mathews, anintermediary between the Black Panther Party's national office andPanther leader Eldridge Cleaver, in exile in Algeria. These exquisiteforgeries were prepared on pilfered stationery in Panther vernacularexpertly simulated by the FBI's Washington, D.C. laboratory. Each wasforwarded to an FBI Legal Attache at a U.S. Embassy in a foreigncountry that Mathews was due to travel through and then posted at justthe right time "in such a manner that it cannot be traced to theBureau." The FBI enhanced the eerie authenticity of these fabricationsby lacing them with esoteric personal tidbits culled from electronicsurveillance of Panther homes and offices. Combined with otherforgeries, anonymous letters and phone calls, and the covertintervention of FBI and police infiltrators, the Mathews correspondencesucceeded in inflaming intra-party mistrust and rivalry until it eruptedinto the bitter public split that shattered the organization in thewinter of 1971.
Anonymous Letters and Telephone Calls: During the 1960s, activistsreceived a steady flow of anonymous letters and phone calls which turn outto have been from the FBI. Some were unsigned, while others bore bogus namesor purported to come from unidentified activists in phony or actual organizations.
Many of these bogus communications promoted racial divisions and fears,often by exploiting and exacerbating tensions between Jewish and Blackactivists. One such FBI-concocted letter went to SDS members who hadjoined Black students protesting New York University's discharge of aBlack teacher in 1969. The supposed author, an unnamed "SDS member,"urged whites to break ranks and abandon the Black students because ofalleged anti-Semitic slurs by the fired teacher and hissupporters.
Other anonymous letters and phone calls falsely accused movement leadersof collaboration with the authorities, corruption, or sexual affairswith other activists' mates. The letter on the next page was used toprovoke "a lasting distrust" between a Black civil rights leader and hiswife. Its FBI authors hoped that his "concern over what to do about it"would "detract from his time spent in the plots and plans of hisorganization." As in the Seberg incident, inter-racial sex was apersistent theme. The husband of one white woman active in civil rightsand anti-war work filed for divorce soon after receiving theFBI-authored letter reproduced on page 50.
Still other anonymous FBI communications were designed to intimidatedissidents, disrupt coalitions, and provoke violence. Calls to StokelyCarmichael's mother warning of a fictitious Black Panther murder plotdrove him to leave the country in September 1968. Similaranonymous FBI telephone threats to SNCC leader James Forman wereinstrumental in thwarting efforts to bring the two groupstogether.
The Chicago FBI made effective use of anonymous letters to sabotage thePanthers efforts to build alliances with previously apolitical Blackstreet gangs. The most extensive of these operations involved the BlackP. Stone Nation, or "Blackstone Rangers," a powerful confederation ofseveral thousand local Black youth. Early in 1969, as FBI and policeinfiltrators in the Rangers spread rumors of an impending Pantherattack, the Bureau sent Ranger chief Jeff Fort an incendiary note signed"a black brother you don't know." Fort's supposed friend warned that"The brothers that run the Panthers blame you for blocking their thingand there's supposed to be a hit out for you." AnotherFBI-concocted anonymous "black man" then informed Chicago Panther leaderFred Hampton of a Ranger plot "to get you out of the way." Thesefabrications squelched promising talks between the two groups andenabled Chicago Panther security chief William O'Neal, an FBI-paidprovocateur, to instigate a series of armed confrontations from whichthe Panthers barely managed to escape without serious casualties.
Pressure Through Employers, Landlords, and Others: FBI records revealrepeated maneuvers to generate pressure on dissidents from theirparents, children, spouses, landlords, employers, collegeadministrators, church superiors, welfare agencies, credit bureaus, andthe like. Anonymous letters and telephone calls were often used to thisend. Confidential official communications were effective in bringing tobear the Bureau's immense power and authority.
Agents' reports indicate that such FBI intervention denied Martin LutherKing, Jr., and other 1960s activists any number of foundation grants andpublic speaking engagements. It also deprived alternativenewspapers of their printers, suppliers, and distributors and cost themcrucial advertising revenues when major record companies were persuadedto take their business elsewhere. Similar government manipulationmay underlie steps recently taken by some insurance companies to cancelpolicies held by churches giving sanctuary to refugees from El Salvadorand Guatemala.
Tampering With Mail and Telephone Service: The FBI and CIA routinelyused mail covers (the recording of names and addresses) and electronicsurveillance in order to spy on 1960s movements. The CIA alone admittedto photographing the outside of 2.7 million pieces of first-class mailduring the 1960s and to opening almost 215,000. Government agenciesalso tampered with mail, altering, delaying, or "disappearing" it.Activists were quick to blame one another, and infiltrators easilyexploited the situation to exacerbate their tensions.
Dissidents' telephone communications often were similarly obstructed.The SDS Regional Office in Washington, D.C., for instance, mysteriouslylost its phone service the week preceding virtually every nationalanti-war demonstration in the late 1960s.
Disinformation to Prevent or Disrupt Movement Meetings and Activities:A favorite COINTELPRO tactic uncovered by Senate investigators was toadvertise a non-existent political event, or to misinform people of thetime and place of an actual one. They reported a variety of disruptiveFBI "dirty tricks" designed to cast blame on the organizers of movementevents.
In one "disinformation" case, the [FBI's] Chicago Field Officeduplicated blank forms prepared by the National Mobilization Committeeto End the War in Vietnam ("NMC") soliciting housing for demonstratorsat the Democratic National Convention. Chicago filled out 217 of theseforms with fictitious names and addresses and sent them to the NMC,which provided them to demonstrators who made "long and useless journeysto locate these addresses." The NMC then decided to discard all repliesreceived on the housing forms rather than have out-of-town demonstratorstry to locate nonexistent addresses. (The same program was carried outwhen the Washington Mobilization Committee distributed housing forms fordemonstrators coming to Washington for the 1969 Presidential inauguralceremonies.)
In another case, during the demonstrations accompanying inaugurationceremonies, the Washington Field Office discovered that NMC marshalswere using walkie-talkies to coordinate their movements and activities.WFO used the same citizen band to supply the marshals withmisinformation and, pretending to be an NMC unit, countermanded NMCorders.
In a third case, a [Bureau] midwest field office disrupted arrangementsfor state university students to attend the 1969 inauguraldemonstrations by making a series of anonymous telephone calls to thetransportation company. The calls were designed to confuse both thetransportation company and the SDS leaders as to the cost oftransportation and the time and place for leaving and returning. Thisoffice also placed confusing leaflets around the campus to showdifferent times and places for demonstration-planning meetings, as wellas conflicting times and dates for traveling to Washington.
** End of text from cdp:pn.publiceye **
MediaFilter PoMoWar PsyWar
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om 2">
