Dis nodig om hier af te wyk van die rede vir hierdie skrywe, die feit dat die Amerikaanse CIA steeds met sy hande op al die beheermeganismes van die voortgaande Suid-Afrikaanse rewolusie sit.
Daar word met kommer kennis geneem van die toename in moorde op Afrikaners en ander Blankes sedert die Mangaung-konferensie in Desember verlede jaar waar die ANC-leier Jacob Zuma hom opnuut van opruiende uitsprake bedien het en ook 'n opvolgende uitspraak deur hom in Durban.
Feit is egter dat Zuma en ander ANC-leiers se uitsprake, wat klaarblyklik deel is van die ANC se sogenaamde Nasionale Demokratiese Rewolusie (NDR), nie in afsondering beskou kan word nie. Die NDR het 'n onmiskenbare plaaslike én internasionale eienskap, vir ons hier plaaslik onder andere van belang die ANC se versnelde grondgrypprogram (die “beskerming” van grondwet-1996 en al) en Zuma se laai van die regbank met ANC-kaders (weer eens, met die “beskerming” van 1996 se konstitusionele wonderwerk en al).
Daar is al in die verlede deur skrywers op hierdie en ander behoudende Afrikaner-webwerwe verklaar dat in die voor-1990-fase en met die sogenaamde Koue Oorlog nog amptelik aan die gang, veel gemaak is van die ondergrawende Afrikaner-bedrywighede van die voormalige Oosbloklande en hul inligtingsdienste, maar dat die rol van Sionisties-gedrewe Anglo-Amerikaanse magswêreld in hierdie saak moedswillig en voorbedag onderbeklemtoon is.
Die gevaar is groot dat die Afrikaner weer te doen het met so 'n berekende onderbeklemtoning.
Dit was nietemin 'n bekende saak, hierdie ondergrawing deur die Anglo-Amerikaanse magswêreld, by Afrikaners werksaam in die ou Suid-Afrikaanse inligtingsdienste, die bewys daarvan die standpunte van byvoorbeeld adv. Piet Pretorius wat hy in die boeke, Volksverraad, Volksverraad... Waarom? en Volkshoop gestel het, waarin hy die Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) impliseer.
In ontledings die afgelope paar weke het hierdie webwerf aandag gegee aan hierdie standpunte, en ook dié van ene Gunther Schickelgruber (Dokument X), na aanleiding van bewerings van kapt. Deon Loots in 'n beëdigde verklaring ter sake in die Boeremagverhoor. In daardie beëdigde verklaring is na 'n binnekring in die Broederbond bekend as die Verligte Aksiegroep, VAG, verwys. Volgens Pretorius is/was die VAG eintlik maar net die CIA se verlengstuk in ons land in die onderwerping van die Afrikaner aan 'n ANC-regime.
Dit is egter ook van belang dat daar van ander operateurs uit die voormalieg SA inligtingsdienste se standpunte kennis geneem word. So byvoorbeeld het Allan D. Elsdon in 'n boek (die Afrikaanse titel, Die lang generaal), verwys na die bedenklike sleutelrol wat genl. Langhendrik van der Berg in ons land se sabotasie-, sluipmoord- en ondergrawingsgeskiedenis gespeel het. Daardie boek en dit wat daarin aangevoer word het nog gans te min aandag in die oorweging van die Afrikaner se haglike toestand nou in die land geniet.
HET HEYNS KERNBOMME HELP VERKWANSEL?
Om maar aan een saak vermeld in Elsdon se boek aandag te gee...
In die boek word geïmpliseer dat dit Van der Berg was wat agter die sluipmoord op die NG teoloog Johan Heyns gesit het omdat Heyns, wat 'n ingeligte/betrokkene in die land se kernbom-program was, verraad sou gepleeg het.
Dis nodig om hier af te wyk van die rede vir hierdie skrywe, die feit dat die Amerikaanse CIA steeds met sy hande op al die beheermeganismes van die voortgaande Suid-Afrikaanse rewolusie sit.
In ontledings die afgelope weke op hierdie webwerf oor die VAG is gelet op die gesmous en buit van die land se skatte, sy dit nou beleggings, diamante, harde kontant, wapens of strategiese minerale, toe die ou regime laat vat en die nuwe regime amptelik in 1994 die leisels geneem het. 'n Moontlike afleiding daaruit is dat dit behoorlik 'n toestand van gryp en hardloop was.
Heyns is op Guy Fawkes-dag (5 November) 1994 (die jaar van oorgawe) met 'n 303-geweer in sy huis in Pretoria in 'n sluipmoord doodgeskiet. Ook in daardie jaar het die Jood Harry Schwartz (toe ANC-ambassadeur) met groot plegtigheid 'n ooreenkoms oor Suid-Afrika se kernwapens in Amerika onderteken. Die geskiedenis van ons land se kernwapenprogram kan nie gevolg word sonder om van die Jode en Israel se betrokkenheid daarby kennis te neem nie.
En ook nie gevolg word sonder om van Pik Botha kennis te neem nie, Botha wat nog tot in 2007 deur die ANC by onderhandelinge oor die kernprogram betrek is.
Maar net soos daar nie van ons land se atoombom-geskiedenis kennis geneem kan word sonder om kennis tee neem van Botha en Joodse betrokkenheid nie, so kan daar nie kennis geneem word van die gesmous met Suid-Afrikaanse wapens aan Afrika se diktators nie sonder dat daar van Botha en die Jode se betrokkenheid kennis geneem word nie.
En dalk 'n laaste oorweging oor Elsdon se boek...
Dis deur Anne-marie Mischke, 'n joernalsite wat FW de Klerk se broer Willem ('n koerantredakteur) soos 'n skaduwee van koerantredaksie na die volgende koerantredaksie gevolg het, in Afrikaans vertaal. FW de Klerk self is uiteraard nie sommer 'n hierjy as die aankoop van wapens oorweeg word nie. Hy weet ten minste van swak Spaanse en goeie Duitse staal.
Sou FW de Klerk vir Mischke 'n wenk laat deurglip het dit sal 'n goeie ding wees om Elsdon se boek by die “regte lesers” te kry deur dit in Afrikaans te vertaal? Deur hierdie vraag te stel wil daar allermins te kenne gegee word dit kan deel wees van 'n koudlei-operasie in 'n kernwapengesmous.
'n VIERDE ONDERSKATTE BRON VAN INLIGTING. EN DIE CIA
'n Veteraan uit die Suid-Afrikaanse inligtingsdienste het 'n naam wat jou sy ervaring en insigte kan laat onderskat: Piet Swanepoel.
Vir 'n aptytwekker kan Swanepoel se The secret war against Afrikaners (Politicsweb, 29 Julie 2012) gelees word.
Daarin skryf hy soos volg oor die CIA se Afrikaner-ondergrawende bedrywighede met behulp van die National Liberation Committee:”It operated under the guidance of the National Committee for Liberation, a multi-racial body formed in 1962, allegedly led by communists. The High Command was located in Johannesburg, with regional and sub-regional committees and cells under it. A 'Freedom Radio' was operated from Rivonia, Johannesburg and from Cape Town...
Some of those who were named in court, later, as members of the National Committee for Liberation escaped overseas too; among them were D.E.Montague Berman 'who was stated to have founded the organization', Randolph Vigne, John G.F.Lang and Neville Rubin'.
“In reality these men were not communists. Berman was sometimes described as a former communist, but the other three were well-off whites, who, to hoodwink Africans, pushed something called African socialism.
“All three, in addition to their revolutionary activities, were involved in publishing the New African, a radical journal by means of which Africans were incited to revolt against the government. In this enterprise they were financed by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) via a conduit, the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF).”
BLACK PANTHERS
Vele belangstellendes in ons land se veiligheidstoestand en die voortgang van die NDR het in die afgelope maande kennis geneem van 'n Swart bewussynsgroep van Amerika, die Black Panthers.
'n Verband tussen die Amerikaanse inligtingsdienste en die Black Panthers?
Ja. En volgens Wikipedia en die Amerikaanse regerring se Church-kommissie is dit amptelik. Die Black Panthers, en ook 'n organisasie soos The Nation of Islam (van Louis Farrakhan), is verbind deur die Amerikaanse Federale Speurdiens (FBI) se sogenaamde COINTELPRO-program met sabotasie en destabilisasie. Louis Farrakhan (intussen oorlede) en The Nation of Islam was veral in die Mbeki-era betrokke by die Suid-Afrikaanse Swart bewussynspolitiek.
Ten slotte moet daar kennis geneem word van die volgende opmerkings op 'n webwerf (AKSKA) oor die Black Panthers se betrokkenheid by misdaad as 'n faktor in die destabilisasie van 'n land en sy gemeenskappe:
“...Aanvalle is wreed en wanneer daar eers met martelings begin word, het die barbare, of hulle nou wit of swart is, geen keer nie. Die probleem wat ek tans het, is dat ons weet en ons weet ook dat die regering weet dat die PAC hulle geweldenaars in Tembisa (lokasie aan Kemptonpark se buitewyke) oplei om spesifiek hierdie tipe wrede aanvalle te doen...”
“...(O)ons vermoed dat dit (geweldsmisdaadsyfers) binne die volgende twee maande ernstig mag verander. Wanneer ons hierdie som weer in Augustus maak, sal ons ’n baie goeie idee van die PAC, DSM en Black panther invloed op die werklose emosioneel-onstabiele swart man op straat kry.”
Terloops, die PAC (Pan Africanist Congress) is met behulp van Amerikaanse (CIA-) hulp en fondse gestig.
Die volgende is ter sake:
The secret war against the Afrikaners (Piet Swanepoel )
29 July 2012
It operated under the guidance of the National Committee for Liberation, a multi-racial body formed in 1962, allegedly led by communists. The High Command was located in Johannesburg, with regional and sub-regional committees and cells under it. A "Freedom Radio" was operated from Rivonia, Johannesburg and from Cape Town...
Some of those who were named in court, later, as members of the National Committee for Liberation escaped overseas too; among them were D.E.Montague Berman "who was stated to have founded the organization', Randolph Vigne, John G.F.Lang and Neville Rubin".
In reality these men were not communists. Berman was sometimes described as a former communist, but the other three were well-off whites, who, to hoodwink Africans, pushed something called African socialism.
All three, in addition to their revolutionary activities, were involved in publishing the New African, a radical journal by means of which Africans were incited to revolt against the government. In this enterprise they were financed by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) via a conduit, the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF).
The Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was an African-American revolutionary socialist organization active in the United States from 1966 until 1982. The Black Panther Party achieved national and international notoriety through its involvement in the Black Power movement and U.S. politics of the 1960s and 1970s.[1]
Founded in Oakland, California by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale on October 15, 1966, the organization initially set forth a doctrine calling primarily for the protection of African-American neighborhoods from police brutality.[2] The leaders of the organization espoused socialist and Marxist doctrines; however, the Party's early black nationalist reputation attracted a diverse membership.[3] The Black Panther Party's objectives and philosophy expanded and evolved rapidly during the party's existence, making ideological consensus within the party difficult to achieve, and causing some prominent members to openly disagree with the views of the leaders.
The organization's official newspaper, The Black Panther, was first circulated in 1967. Also that year, the Black Panther Party marched on the California State Capitol in Sacramento in protest of a selective ban on weapons. By 1968, the party had expanded into many cities throughout the United States, among them, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Newark, New Orleans, New York City, Omaha, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.. Peak membership was near 10,000 by 1969, and their newspaper, under the editorial leadership of Eldridge Cleaver, had a circulation of 250,000.[4] The group created a Ten-Point Program, a document that called for "Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice and Peace", as well as exemption from conscription for African-American men, among other demands.[5] With the Ten-Point program, "What We Want, What We Believe", the Black Panther Party expressed its economic and political grievances.[6]
Gaining national prominence, the Black Panther Party became an icon of the counterculture of the 1960s.[7] Ultimately, the Panthers condemned black nationalism as "black racism" and became more focused on socialism without racial exclusivity.[8] They instituted a variety of community social programs designed to alleviate poverty, improve health among inner city black communities, and soften the Party's public image.[9] The Black Panther Party's most widely known programs were its armed citizens' patrols to evaluate behavior of police officers and its Free Breakfast for Children program. However, the group's political goals were often overshadowed by their criminality and their confrontational, militant, and violent tactics against police.[10]
Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover called the party "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country,"[11] and he supervised an extensive program (COINTELPRO) of surveillance, infiltration, perjury, police harassment, assassination, and many other tactics designed to undermine Panther leadership, incriminate party members and drain the organization of resources and manpower. Through these tactics, Hoover hoped to diminish the Party's threat to the general power structure of the U.S., or even maintain its influence as a strong undercurrent.[12] Angela Davis, Ward Churchill, and others have alleged that federal, state and local law enforcement officials went to great lengths to discredit and destroy the organization, including assassination.[13][14][15] Black Panther Party membership reached a peak of 10,000 by early 1969, then suffered a series of contractions due to legal troubles, incarcerations, internal splits, expulsions and defections. Popular support for the Party declined further after reports appeared detailing the group's involvement in illegal activities such as drug dealing and extortion schemes directed against Oakland merchants.[16] By 1972 most Panther activity centered around the national headquarters and a school in Oakland, where the party continued to influence local politics. Party contractions continued throughout the 1970s; by 1980 the Black Panther Party comprised just 27 members.[17]
The FBI engaged in political repression almost from the time of the agency's inception in 1908, and antecedents to COINTELPRO operated during the FDR and Truman administrations. Centralized operations under COINTELPRO officially began in August 1956 with a program designed to "increase factionalism, cause disruption and win defections" inside the Communist Party U.S.A. (CPUSA). Tactics included anonymous phone calls, IRS audits, and the creation of documents that would divide American communists internally.[14] An October 1956 memo from Hoover reclassified the FBI's ongoing surveillance of black leaders, including it within COINTELPRO, with the justification that the movement was infiltrated by communists.[15] When the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was founded in 1957, the FBI began to monitor and target the group almost immediately, focusing particularly on Bayard Rustin, Stanley Levison, and Martin Luther King, Jr.[16]
After the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, King was singled out as a major target for COINTELPRO. Under pressure from Hoover to focus not simply on communist infiltration of the civil rights movement, but on King specifically, Sullivan wrote: "In the light of King's powerful demagogic speech. . . . We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national security."[17] Soon after, the FBI was systematically bugging King's home and his hotel rooms.[18]
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) and its leader, Stokely Carmichael. BLACK HATE established the Ghetto Informant Program and instructed 23 FBI offices to "disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist hate type organizations".[19] This program coincided with a broader federal effort to prepare military responses for urban riots, and began increased collaboration between the FBI, Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, and the Department of Defense.[20] A particular target was the Poor People's Campaign, a national effort organized by King and the SCLC to occupy Washington, D.C. The FBI monitored and disrupted the campaign on a national level, while using targeted smear tactics locally to undermine support for the march.[21]
COINTELPRO–NEW LEFT
was created in April 1968, in the wake of King's assassination in Memphis and mass student protests at Columbia University.[22]
The program ultimately encompassed disruption of the Socialist Workers Party (1961), the Ku Klux Klan (1964), the Nation of Islam, the Black Panther Party (1967), and the entire New Left social/political movement, which included antiwar, community, and religious groups (1968). A later investigation by the Senate's Church Committee (see below) stated that "COINTELPRO began in 1956, in part because of frustration with Supreme Court rulings limiting the Government's power to proceed overtly against dissident groups..."[23] Official congressional committees and several court cases[24] have concluded that COINTELPRO operations against communist and socialist groups exceeded statutory limits on FBI activity and violated constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and association.[1]
[edit] Program exposed
The program was successfully kept secret until 1971, when the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI burglarized an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania, took several dossiers, and exposed the program by passing this information to news agencies. Many news organizations initially refused to publish the information. Within the year, Director Hoover declared that the centralized COINTELPRO was over, and that all future counterintelligence operations would be handled on a case-by-case basis.[25][26]
Further documents were revealed in the course of separate lawsuits filed against the FBI by NBC correspondent Carl Stern, the Socialist Workers Party, and a number of other groups. A major investigation was launched in 1976 by the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities of the United States Senate, commonly referred to as the "Church Committee" for its chairman, Senator Frank Church of Idaho. However, many documents are speculated to have remained unreleased, and many released documents have been partly, or entirely, redacted.
Since the conclusion of centralized COINTELPRO operations in 1971, FBI counterintelligence operations have been handled on a "case-by-case basis"; however allegations of improper political repression continue.[27][28]
In the Final Report of the Select Committee, COINTELPRO was castigated in no uncertain terms:
The Committee finds that the domestic activities of the intelligence community at times violated specific statutory prohibitions and infringed the constitutional rights of American citizens. The legal questions involved in intelligence programs were often not considered. On other occasions, they were intentionally disregarded in the belief that because the programs served the "national security" the law did not apply. While intelligence officers on occasion failed to disclose to their superiors programs which were illegal or of questionable legality, the Committee finds that the most serious breaches of duty were those of senior officials, who were responsible for controlling intelligence activities and generally failed to assure compliance with the law.[1]
Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that...the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.[23]
The Church Committee documented a history of use of the agency for purposes of political repression as far back as World War I, through the 1920s, when agents were charged with rounding up "anarchists and revolutionaries" for deportation, and then building from 1936 through 1976.
In an interview with the BBC's Andrew Marr, MIT professor of linguistics and political activist Noam Chomsky spoke about the purpose and the targets of COINTELPRO saying, "COINTELPRO was a program of subversion carried out not by a couple of petty crooks but by the national political police, the FBI, under four administrations... by the time it got through, I won't run through the whole story, it was aimed at the entire new left, at the women's movement, at the whole black movement, it was extremely broad. Its actions went as far as political assassination."[31][dubious – discuss]
According to the Church Committee:
While the declared purposes of these programs were to protect the "national security" or prevent violence, Bureau witnesses admit that many of the targets were nonviolent and most had no connections with a foreign power. Indeed, nonviolent organizations and individuals were targeted because the Bureau believed they represented a "potential" for violence -- and nonviolent citizens who were against the war in Vietnam were targeted because they gave "aid and comfort" to violent demonstrators by lending respectability to their cause.
The imprecision of the targeting is demonstrated by the inability of the Bureau to define the subjects of the programs. The Black Nationalist program, according to its supervisor, included "a great number of organizations that you might not today characterize as black nationalist but which were in fact primarily black." Thus, the nonviolent Southern Christian Leadership Conference was labeled as a Black Nationalist-"Hate Group."
Furthermore, the actual targets were chosen from a far broader group than the titles of the programs would imply. The CPUSA program targeted not only Communist Party members but also sponsors of the National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee and civil rights leaders allegedly under Communist influence or deemed to be not sufficiently "anti-Communist". The Socialist Workers Party program included non-SWP sponsors of anti-war demonstrations which were cosponsored by the SWP or the Young Socialist Alliance, its youth group. The Black Nationalist program targeted a range of organizations from the Panthers to SNCC to the peaceful Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and included every Black Student Union and many other black student groups. New Left targets ranged from the SDS to the InterUniversity Committee for Debate on Foreign Policy, from Antioch College ("vanguard of the New Left") to the New Mexico Free University and other "alternate" schools, and from underground newspapers to students' protesting university censorship of a student publication by carrying signs with four-letter words on them.
Examples of surveillance, spanning all presidents from FDR to Nixon, both legal and illegal, contained in the Church Committee report:[32]
• President Roosevelt asked the FBI to put in its files the names of citizens sending telegrams to the White House opposing his "national defense" policy and supporting Col. Charles Lindbergh.
• President Truman received inside information on a former Roosevelt aide's efforts to influence his appointments, labor union negotiating plans, and the publishing plans of journalists.
• President Eisenhower received reports on purely political and social contacts with foreign officials by Bernard Baruch, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.
• The Kennedy administration had the FBI wiretap a congressional staff member, three executive officials, a lobbyist, and a Washington law firm. US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy received the fruits of an FBI wire tap on Martin Luther King, Jr. and an electronic listening device targeting a congressman, both of which yielded information of a political nature.
• President Johnson asked the FBI to conduct "name checks" of his critics and members of the staff of his 1964 opponent, Senator Barry Goldwater. He also requested purely political intelligence on his critics in the Senate, and received extensive intelligence reports on political activity at the 1964 Democratic Convention from FBI electronic surveillance.
• President Nixon authorized a program of wiretaps which produced for the White House purely political or personal information unrelated to national security, including information about a Supreme Court Justice.
The COINTELPRO documents show numerous cases of the FBI's intentions to prevent and disrupt protests against the Vietnam War. Many techniques were used to accomplish this task. "These included promoting splits among antiwar forces, encouraging red-baiting of socialists, and pushing violent confrontations as an alternative to massive, peaceful demonstrations." One 1966 COINTELPRO operation attempted to redirect the Socialist Workers Party from their pledge of support for the antiwar movement.[33]
The FBI claims that it no longer undertakes COINTELPRO or COINTELPRO-like operations. However, critics claim that agency programs in the spirit of COINTELPRO targeted groups such as the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador,[34] the American Indian Movement,[2][35] Earth First!,[36] the White Separatist Movement,[37] and the Anti-Globalization Movement.[citation needed]
Methods
Body of Fred Hampton, national spokesman for the Black Panther Party, who was killed by members of the Chicago Police Department, as part of a COINTELPRO operation.[3][4][5][38]
According to attorney Brian Glick in his book War at Home, the FBI used four main methods during COINTELPRO:
1. Infiltration: Agents and informers did not merely spy on political activists. Their main purpose was to discredit and disrupt. Their very presence served to undermine trust and scare off potential supporters. The FBI and police exploited this fear to smear genuine activists as agents.
2. Psychological warfare: The FBI and police used myriad "dirty tricks" to undermine progressive movements. They planted false media stories and published bogus leaflets and other publications in the name of targeted groups. They forged correspondence, sent anonymous letters, and made anonymous telephone calls. They spread misinformation about meetings and events, set up pseudo movement groups run by government agents, and manipulated or strong-armed parents, employers, landlords, school officials and others to cause trouble for activists.
3. Legal harassment: The FBI and police abused the legal system to harass dissidents and make them appear to be criminals. Officers of the law gave perjured testimony and presented fabricated evidence as a pretext for false arrests and wrongful imprisonment. They discriminatorily enforced tax laws and other government regulations and used conspicuous surveillance, "investigative" interviews, and grand jury subpoenas in an effort to intimidate activists and silence their supporters.[3]
4. Illegal force: The FBI conspired with local police departments to threaten dissidents; to conduct illegal break-ins in order to search dissident homes; and to commit vandalism, assaults, beatings and assassinations.[3][4][5][39] The object was to frighten, or eliminate, dissidents and disrupt their movements.
The FBI specifically developed tactics intended to heighten tension and hostility between various factions in the black militancy movement, for example between the Black Panthers, the US Organization and the Blackstone Rangers. This resulted in numerous deaths, among which were San Diego Black Panther Party members John Huggins, Bunchy Carter and Sylvester Bell.[3]
The FBI also conspired with the police departments of many U.S. cities (San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Philadelphia, Chicago) to encourage repeated raids on Black Panther homes—often with little or no evidence of violations of federal, state, or local laws—which resulted directly in the police killing of many members of the Black Panther Party, most notably Chicago Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton on December 4, 1969.[3][4][5][40]
In order to eliminate black militant leaders whom they considered dangerous, the FBI is believed to have worked with local police departments to target specific individuals,[41] accuse them of crimes they did not commit, suppress exculpatory evidence and falsely incarcerate them.[citation needed] One Black Panther Party leader, Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, was incarcerated for 27 years before a California Superior Court vacated his murder conviction, ultimately freeing him. Appearing before the court, an FBI agent testified that he believed Pratt had been framed because both the FBI and the Los Angeles Police Department knew he had been out of the area at the time the murder occurred. [42][43]
Some sources claim that the FBI conducted more than 200 "black bag jobs",[44][45] which were warrantless surreptitious entries, against the targeted groups and their members.[46]
J. Edgar Hoover
In 1969 the FBI special agent in San Francisco wrote Hoover that his investigation of the Black Panther Party (BPP) revealed that in his city, at least, the Panthers were primarily feeding breakfast to children. Hoover fired back a memo implying the career ambitions of the agent were directly related to his supplying evidence to support Hoover's view that the BPP was "a violence-prone organization seeking to overthrow the Government by revolutionary means".[47]
Hoover was willing to use false claims to attack his political enemies. In one memo he wrote: "Purpose of counterintelligence action is to disrupt the BPP and it is immaterial whether facts exist to substantiate the charge."[48]
In one particularly controversial 1965 incident, civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo was murdered by Ku Klux Klansmen who gave chase and fired shots into her car after noticing that her passenger was a young black man; one of the Klansmen was acknowledged FBI informant Gary Thomas Rowe.[49][50] Rumors were spread that Liuzzo was a member of the Communist Party and abandoned her children to have sexual relationships with African Americans involved in the civil rights movement.[51][52] FBI records show that J. Edgar Hoover personally communicated these insinuations to President Johnson.[53][54] FBI informant Rowe has also been implicated in some of the most violent crimes of the 1960s civil rights era, including attacks on the Freedom Riders and the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.[49] According to Chomsky, in another instance in San Diego the FBI financed, armed, and controlled an extreme right-wing group of former Minutemen, transforming it into a group called the Secret Army Organization which targeted groups, activists, and leaders involved in the Anti-War Movement for both intimidation and violent acts.[55][56][57]
Hoover ordered preemptive action "to pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them before they exercise their potential for violence."[10][58]
[edit] Illegal surveillance
The final report of the Church Committee concluded:
Too many people have been spied upon by too many Government agencies and too much information has been collected. The Government has often undertaken the secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when those beliefs posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power. The Government, operating primarily through secret informants, but also using other intrusive techniques such as wiretaps, microphone "bugs", surreptitious mail opening, and break-ins, has swept in vast amounts of information about the personal lives, views, and associations of American citizens. Investigations of groups deemed potentially dangerous -- and even of groups suspected of associating with potentially dangerous organizations -- have continued for decades, despite the fact that those groups did not engage in unlawful activity.
Groups and individuals have been harassed and disrupted because of their political views and their lifestyles. Investigations have been based upon vague standards whose breadth made excessive collection inevitable. Unsavory and vicious tactics have been employed -- including anonymous attempts to break up marriages, disrupt meetings, ostracize persons from their professions, and provoke target groups into rivalries that might result in deaths. Intelligence agencies have served the political and personal objectives of presidents and other high officials. While the agencies often committed excesses in response to pressure from high officials in the Executive branch and Congress, they also occasionally initiated improper activities and then concealed them from officials whom they had a duty to inform.
Governmental officials -- including those whose principal duty is to enforce the law --have violated or ignored the law over long periods of time and have advocated and defended their right to break the law.
The Constitutional system of checks and balances has not adequately controlled intelligence activities. Until recently the Executive branch has neither delineated the scope of permissible activities nor established procedures for supervising intelligence agencies. Congress has failed to exercise sufficient oversight, seldom questioning the use to which its appropriations were being put. Most domestic intelligence issues have not reached the courts, and in those cases when they have reached the courts, the judiciary has been reluctant to grapple with them.[59][60]
[edit] Post-COINTELPRO operations
While COINTELPRO was officially terminated in April 1971, critics allege that continuing FBI actions indicate that post-COINTELPRO reforms did not succeed in ending COINTELPRO tactics.[61][62][63] Documents released under the FOIA show that the FBI tracked the late Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author David Halberstam for more than two decades.[64][65]
“Counterterrorism” guidelines implemented during the Reagan administration have been described as allowing a return to COINTELPRO tactics.[66] Some radical groups accuse factional opponents of being FBI informants or assume the FBI is infiltrating the movement.[67]
The FBI improperly opened investigations of American activist groups, even though they were planning nothing more than peaceful civil disobedience, according to a report by the inspector general (IG) of the U.S. Department of Justice. The review by the inspector general was launched in response to complaints by civil liberties groups and members of Congress. The FBI improperly monitored groups including the Thomas Merton Center, a Pittsburgh-based peace group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and Greenpeace USA, an environmental activism organization. Also, activists affiliated with Greenpeace were improperly put on a terrorist watch list, even though they were planning no violence or illegal acitivities. The IG report found the "troubling" FBI practices between 2001 and 2006. In some cases, the FBI conducted investigations of people affiliated with activist groups for "factually weak" reasons. Also, the FBI extended investigations of some of the groups "without adequate basis" and improperly kept information about activist groups in its files. The IG report also found that FBI Director Robert Mueller III provided inaccurate congressional testimony about one of the investigations, but this inaccuracy may have been due to his relying on what FBI officials told him.[68]
Several authors have accused the FBI of continuing to deploy COINTELPRO-like tactics against radical groups after the official COINTELPRO operations were ended. Several authors have suggested the American Indian Movement (AIM) has been a target of such operations. A few authors go further and allege that the federal government intended to acquire uranium deposits on the Lakota tribe's reservation land, and that this motivated a larger government conspiracy against AIM activists on the Pine Ridge reservation.[2][35][69][70][71] Others believe COINTELPRO continues and similar actions are being taken against activist groups.[71][72][73]
Caroline Woidat argued that with respect to Native Americans, COINTELPRO should be understood within a historical context in which "Native Americans have been viewed and have viewed the world themselves through the lens of conspiracy theory."[74]
Other authors note that while some conspiracy theories related to COINTELPRO are unfounded, the issue of ongoing government surveillance and repression is nonetheless real.[28][75]