← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Howard Campbell, Jr.
Thread ID: 17138 | Posts: 9 | Started: 2005-03-06
2005-03-06 08:46 | User Profile
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COINTELPRO -- White Hate Groups (1964-1968)
INTRODUCTION Intelligence Cover Organization ANONYMOUS MAILINGS Letters to Black Churches and Anti-Segregation Groups ALetters to Mayors Mafia Threat Post Card Mailings to Klansmen
MASS MEDIA PROGRAM Television Specials The Black Klan
INTRODUCTION Effective immediately, the Bureau is instituting a coordinated Counterintelligence Program (Cointelpro) directed against Klan-type and hate organizations. The purpose of this program is to expose, disrupt, and otherwise neutralize the activities of the various Klans and hate organizations, their leadership and adherents. The activities of these groups must be followed on a continuous basis so we may take advantage of all opportunities for counterintelligence and also inspire action in instances where circumstances warrant. The devious maneuvers and duplicity of these groups must be exposed to public scrutiny through the cooperation of reliable news media sources, both locally and at the Seat of Government. We must frustrate any effort of the groups to consolidate their forces or to recruit new or youthful adherents. In every instance, consideration should be given to disrupting the organized activity of these groups and no opportunity should be missed to capitalize upon organizational and personal conflicts of their leadership. If an enthusiastic approach is made to this new endeavor, there is no reason why the results achieved under this program will not equal or surpass our achievements in similar-type programs directed against subversives. Director to 17 Field Offices, Sept. 2, 1964
Intelligence Cover Organization You are in receipt of a prior communication regarding the establishment of the National Committee for Domestic Tranquility (NCDT), a Bureau-approved vehicle for attacking Klan policies, and disputes from a low-key, common sense, and patriotic position. You should regard this development as a highly confidential counterintelligence technique. Information concerning the NCDT should not be set forth in the details of any communication prepared for dissemination. In the event inquiries are made concerning the NCDT by interested intelligence agencies, you are not to divulge any information conerning the NCDT. Such inquiries should be promptly furnished the Bureau. Director to 20 Field Offices, May 12, 1966
ANONYMOUS MAILINGS
Letters to Black Churches and Anti-Segregation Groups ReBulet authorized the sending of an anonymous letter to Negro groups or active anti-segregation groups (including Negro churches in Birmingham) in an effort to expose the fact that [ ] is a member of the National Executive Committee of the National States Rights Party (NSRP). Copies of the above-mentioned anonymous letter were prepared. On 1/27/65, copies were sent to 15 Negro churches and/or anti-segregation groups in Birmingham. Information has been received in early February, 1965 and the information verified to the effect that [ ] has be [ ] Both offices reportedly have the same ownership. In view of the above, Bureau authority is requested for Birmingham to prepare a follow-up anonymous communication to the same Negro groups (15) to whom the original letter was sent. A suggested letter is as follows:
It sure tickled me when I found out that [ ] asn't [ ] Birmingham, Ala., any longer. [ ] You are to be thanked if you helped get [ ] transferred and maybe you can use your influence concerning his present job. It hurts to know he can manage a company which is dependent on Negro patronage for a very substantial portion of its business and also serve as [ ] of the National Executive Committee of the National States Rights Party. Hope you can spread the word. -- J.D. SAC, Birmingham to Director, Feb. 19, 1965
Letters to Mayors The June 19, 1965 edition of "The Saturday Evening Post" contains, beginning on page 86, a story entitled "Murder: The Klan on Trial." This is the story of the murder of Lieutenant Colonel LEMUEL PENN near Athens, Georgia, on 7/11/64, and the story rather graphically shows what can happen to a town which has a unit of the Klan. We propose to anonymously mail the story to the Mayors of 13 towns in the Atlanta Division who have Klan groups operating in or just outside their towns.
Dear Mayor: I saw the enclosed story in "The Saturday Evening Post" and wanted to call it to your attention. You know this could happen in our town as we have a Klan here. They meet (here insert local meeting place). I understand the local leader is (here insert name of local leader). -- A concerned citizen.
The 13 Mayors to whom we propose to send this material are Mayors of the following towns: Buford, Canton, Cleveland, Winder, Monroe, Lawrenceville, Jonesboro, Covington, Doraville, Lithonia, Jackson, Barnesville, and College Park. SAC, Atlanta to Director , June 9, 1965
Mafia Threat Racial informants have advised in April, 1965, that a meeting of the United Klans of America, Inc., Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (UKA), was held in Bessemer, Alabama, and this was a state meeting. [ ] advised that [ ], one of the three defendants to be tried on the murder charge in Hayneville, Alabama, was present at this meeting. It was announced that [ ] had received a letter addressed to him at Bessemer, Alabama (USA?), from Chicago, Illinois, and this letter was signed "Mafia." There was a black glove cut out of construction paper, with the words "Mafia," and "Vendetta," on it. Reportedly, this letter stated that all the Klan was marked for death, and if anything happened to the Negro boy who was riding with Mrs. LIUZZO when she was shot, then the Mafia would cut up [ ] family, piece by piece, before killing them. Reportedly, the letter had been postmarked aty Chicago, Illinois. It was also reported by Birmingham informants that the receipt of the above described letter by [ ] not only placed him in a state of fear and great concern, concerning the situation, but caused quite a number of the other Klansmen to be similarly concerned and in somewhat of a fearful state of mind. The Bureau is herewith requested to prepare an anonymous communication to [ ] and other known Klansmen and/or officials of the UKA, in an attempt to exploit the situation. The Bureau is herewith requested to give consideration to preparing an original cartoon or drawing setting out a black glove with the wording "Mafia" and "Vendetta," appropriately arranged in or on the drawing of the black glove. A suggested letter is as follows:
Klansman __: You know what happened to Mrs. Viola Liuzzo. The Mafia knows what you have been doing and what you are doing now. Your so-called 'non-violence' will receive proper action soon. SAC, Birmingham to Director, Aug. 4, 1965
Post Card Mailings Our experience has indicated that klansmen are not intellectuals, that their activities are prompted by their emotions, and that a lengthy article, no matter how well written, fails to impress those who are members. The proposed messages are intentionally short and to the point. Perhaps the die-hard redneck will not be impressed, but possibly some of the members, particularly those in the more middle class occupations who give the Klan an aura of respectability, will be caused to doubt the validity of the Klan and the integrity of its leaders. Using postal cards of this nature would serve several purposes along the following lines:
(1) Since these messages are not in sealed envelopes, a number of persons could read them before delivery, thus exposing klansmen and removing one of the Klan's most potent weapons -- its veil of secrecy.
(2) Widespread mailing would undoubtedly be reported to the leadership and since the source will not be identified, apprehension regading the Klan's security could cause them a major problem.
(3) The wives and families of klansmen will probably feel uneasy about these messages and may influence members to disassociate themselves.
(4) Some of the messages could be sent to business addresses rather than residences further spreading the word as to Klan membership. F.J. Baumgardner to W.C. Sullivan, Feb. 24, 1966
Enclosed is a Xerox copy of a cartoon which reportedly appeared in some issue of the Afro-American newspaper. This cartoon appears satirical of Klan and hate groups. Referenced Bulet advised that the Bureau was considering preparing an original cartoon depicting the same theme for anonymous mailing by all pertinent offices to Klan members in areas presenting the most potential for disruption. It is requested that the enclosed cartoon be given the same consideration as the cartoon mentioned in referenced communications and that appropriate wording be placed in the cartoon. SAC, Birmingham to Director, Mar. 25, 1965
Authority is granted you to anonymously mail Xerox copies of the cartoon submitted with relet to various National States Rights Party and United Klans of America, Inc., leaders and other individuals as a disruptive technique. It is suggested that for added impact the titles of both men be typed along with their names i.e. [ ] National States Rights Party [ ] United Klans of America, Inc. The original cartoon depicts two individuals, one dressed as a beatnik carrying a sign which reads "Peace! Brotherhood! Ban the Bomb!" the other dressed in Klan hood and robe carrying a fiery cross, unexpectedly meeting each other and one exclaiming to the other as they exhibit their credentials "Well, I'll be damned! I'm With the FBI Myself!" Director to SAC, Birmingham, June 24, 1965
Three of these postal cards are now ready for use and we have additional sketches which can be made up if more are needed in the future. Copies of the three cards are attached. ... It is noted that the various offices have furnished the number of positively identified klansmen whose addresses they have readily available. The total mailing would be less than 6,000 spread over 21 field divisions. F.J. Baumgardner to W.C. Sullivan, April 20, 1966
Who, me? Worried about FBI informers? One thing is sure! They can't make idiots out of us! I am an informant. Color me Fed! We seem to have sprung a leak! Invisible Govt: Someone is peeking under your sheet Klansmen: Which Klan leaders are spending your money tonight?
You are being forwarded under separate cover a supply of three different postal cards to be mailed by your office anonymously to a selected number of known Klan members. ... You must be certain that this mailing is limited to those individuals who have been positively identified as Klan members. ... Informants are not to be advised regarding the mailing of these cards but you should be alert to any information volunteered by informants regarding the cards and advise of any positive results achieved. Director to 21 Field Offices, April 28, 1966
We have received word from some of our offices that the first of these cards have been mailed and the results have been most impressive. The Cincinnati Office forwarded a clipping from the 5/24/66 edition of the "Cincinnati Inquirer" which revealed that a number of alleged klansmen had been receiving postal cards indicating that their identity as klansmen was known. An unidentified Klan leader is quoted as saying that these cards have been "very embarrassing" to many prominent businessmen and public officials who are secret sympathizers. The Miami Office has advised that klansmen [ ] revealed at a Klan meeting that Klan members were receiving these cards and that Jacksonville [ ] had reproduced an exact replica in large numbers to be mailed anonymously to high state and Federal officials. At a meeting of the United Florida Ku Klux Klan in Orlando, Florida, a vote was taken to reprint similar cards and mail them to persons who are known to be unfavorable to the Klan. The purpose of reproducing the cards and mailing them to non-Klan members is to confuse people concerning the actual number of klansmen and also to spark an official investigation to learn the identities of the originators of this mailing program. Miami has already instituted a discreet inquiry to determine if we can turn this development to our advantage by identifying these cards with Massey or other Klan members, leaving the inference that these individuals are responsible for the cards, thus causing further Klan disruption. F.J. Baumgardner to W.C. Sullivan, May 31, 1966
In view of the information developed that klansmen are reproducing postal cards which have been received by certain klansmen, you should discreetly endeavor to develop information which could be used to identify one or more klansmen as being responsible for the mailing of these cards. It is possible that some situation will arise leading to an arrest by local authorities, at which time a supply of these cards would be found in the possession of a klansman. Each office should consider requesting a handwriting examination if cards of this type are received by prominent individuals and brought to your attention. Comparison of handwriting should be requested with known specimens of [ ] which are in possession of the Miami Office and with any other suspected klansman who might participate in addressing such cards. Director to Florida SACs, June 2, 1966
As indicated in my memorandum of 5/31/66, klansmen in Florida were considering reproducing this card exactly and sending it to non-Klan members to help remove the stigma placed on klansmen by receipt of the card. The Florida offices were given instructions by airtel dated 6/2/66 as to how they should take advantage of any effort to reproduce the card. We have subsequently received word that [ ] is planning to duplicate 4,000 of these cards for mailing to non-Klan members, and that [ ] is planning to reproduce 10,000 of the cards for the same purpose. This is further indication of the effectiveness of these cards. F.J. Baumgardner to W.C. Sullivan, June 7, 1966
MASS MEDIA PROGRAM
Television Specials In the past several months we have disseminated various public source items to [ ]. Those items pertain to the National States Rights Party (NSRP) which is a notorious anti-Semitic, anti-Negro, right-wing hate group which continuously attacks the Director and the Bureau through its publications. This counterintelligence project resulted in a 30-minute television special which turned into an "expose" of the NSRP which completely closed three Florida chapters of this group. [ ] is now working on a follow-up show which will expose the UKA. We have already furnished him with some public source information concerning the UKA. G.C. Moore to W.C. Sullivan, Oct. 12, 1967
The Black Klan This is to recommend the attached treatise entitled "The Black Klan" be approved and forwarded to the Crime Records Division for referral to appropriate news media representatives. The caption "The Black Klan" is descriptive of the contents and compares the white Ku Klux Klan with the Black Panther Party. The article compares the militancy of both groups and their penchant for weapons. It is pointed out that both the Black Panthers and the white Klan use uniformed guards to harass and frighten. The article points out that the one big difference between the two is the fact that the Black Panthers look to the communists for at least moral support while the Klan looks to local citizenry. G.C. Moore to W.C. Sullivan, Dec. 17, 1968
Copyright Paul Wolf, 2002-2004. No copyright to original government works.
2005-03-06 19:47 | User Profile
Anyone whose politics are to the right of the[I]Weekly Standard[/I] or to the left of [I]The New Republic[/I] should familiarize himself with the history of COINTELPRO (COunter INtelligence PROgram)...
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COINTELPRO Revisited - The War at Home
While boring from within, the FBI and police also attack dissident movements from the outside. They openly mount propaganda campaigns through public addresses, news releases, books, pamphlets, magazine articles, radio, and television. They also use covert deception and manipulation. Documented tactics of this kind include:
False Media Stories: COINTELPRO documents expose frequent collusion between news media personnel and the FBI to publish false and distorted material at the Bureau's behest. The FBI routinely leaked derogatory information to its collaborators in the news media. It also created newspaper and magazine articles and television "documentaries" which the media knowingly or unknowingly carried as their own. Copies were sent anonymously or under bogus letterhead to activists' financial backers, employers, business associates, families, neighbors, church officials, school administrators, landlords, and whomever else might cause them trouble.
One FBI media fabrication claimed that Jean Seberg, a white film star active in anti-racist causes, was pregnant by a prominent Black leader. The Bureau leaked the story anonymously to columnist Joyce Haber and also had it passed to her by a "friendly" source in the Los Angeles Times editorial staff. The item appeared without attribution in Haber's nationally syndicated column of May 19, 1970. Seberg's husband has sued the FBI as responsible for her resulting stillbirth, nervous breakdown, and suicide.
Bogus Leaflets, Pamphlets, and Other Publications: COINTELPRO documents show that the FBI routinely put out phony leaflets, posters, pamphlets, newspapers, and other publications in the name of movement groups. The purpose was to discredit the groups and turn them against one another.
FBI cartoon leaflets were used to divide and disrupt the main national anti-war coalition of the late 1960s. Similar fliers were circulated in 1968 and 1969 in the name of the Black Panthers and the United Slaves (US), a rival Black nationalist group based in Southern California. The phony Panther/US leaflets, together with other covert operations, were credited with subverting a fragile truce between the two groups and igniting an explosion of internecine violence that left four Panthers dead, many more wounded, and a once-flourishing regional Black movement decimated.
Another major COINTELPRO operation involved a children's coloring book which the Black Panther Party had rejected as anti-white and gratuitously violent. The FBI revised the coloring book to make it even more offensive. Its field offices then distributed thousands of copies anonymously or under phony organizational letterheads. Many backers of the Party's program of free breakfasts for children withdrew their support after the FBI conned them into believing that the bogus coloring book was being used in the program.
Forged Correspondence: Former employees have confirmed that the FBI has the capacity to produce state-of-the-art forgery. This capacity was used under COINTELPRO to create snitch jackets and bogus communications that exacerbated 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 economic cooperatives and open a "Black and Proud School" for dropouts. He was also a student organizer at nearby Tougaloo College. In the winter of 1969, after an extended campaign of FBI and police harassment, Kenyatta received a letter, purportedly from the Tougaloo College Defense Committee, which "directed" that he cease his political activities immediately. If he did not "heed our diplomatic and well-thought-out warning," the committee would consider taking measures "which would have a 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 not Tougaloo students, but FBI covert operators who had driven them out.
Later in 1969, FBI agents fabricated a letter to the mainly white organizers of a proposed Washington, D.C. anti-war rally demanding that they pay the local Black community a $20,000 "security bond." This attempted extortion was composed in the name of the local Black United Front (BUF) and signed with the forged signature of its leader. FBI informers inside the BUF then tried to get the group to back such a demand, and Bureau contacts in the media made sure the story received wide publicity.
The Senate Intelligence Committee uncovered a series of FBI letters sent to top Panther leaders throughout 1970 in the name of Connie Mathews, an intermediary between the Black Panther Party's national office and Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, in exile in Algeria. These exquisite forgeries were prepared on pilfered stationery in Panther vernacular expertly simulated by the FBI's Washington, D.C. laboratory. Each was forwarded to an FBI Legal Attache at a U.S. Embassy in a foreign country that Mathews was due to travel through and then posted at just the right time "in such a manner that it cannot be traced to the Bureau." The FBI enhanced the eerie authenticity of these fabrications by lacing them with esoteric personal tidbits culled from electronic surveillance of Panther homes and offices. Combined with other forgeries, anonymous letters and phone calls, and the covert intervention of FBI and police infiltrators, the Mathews correspondence succeeded in inflaming intra-party mistrust and rivalry until it erupted into the bitter public split that shattered the organization in the winter of 1971.
Anonymous Letters and Telephone Calls: During the 1960s, activists received a steady flow of anonymous letters and phone calls which turn out to have been from the FBI. Some were unsigned, while others bore bogus names or 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 Black activists. One such FBI-concocted letter went to SDS members who had joined Black students protesting New York University's discharge of a Black teacher in 1969. The supposed author, an unnamed "SDS member," urged whites to break ranks and abandon the Black students because of alleged anti-Semitic slurs by the fired teacher and his supporters.
Other anonymous letters and phone calls falsely accused movement leaders of collaboration with the authorities, corruption, or sexual affairs with other activists' mates. The letter on the next page was used to provoke "a lasting distrust" between a Black civil rights leader and his wife. 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 his organization." As in the Seberg incident, inter-racial sex was a persistent theme. The husband of one white woman active in civil rights and anti-war work filed for divorce soon after receiving the FBI-authored letter reproduced on page 50.
Still other anonymous FBI communications were designed to intimidate dissidents, disrupt coalitions, and provoke violence. Calls to Stokely Carmichael's mother warning of a fictitious Black Panther murder plot drove him to leave the country in September 1968. Similar anonymous FBI telephone threats to SNCC leader James Forman were instrumental in thwarting efforts to bring the two groups together.
The Chicago FBI made effective use of anonymous letters to sabotage the Panthers efforts to build alliances with previously apolitical Black street gangs. The most extensive of these operations involved the Black P. Stone Nation, or "Blackstone Rangers," a powerful confederation of several thousand local Black youth. Early in 1969, as FBI and police infiltrators in the Rangers spread rumors of an impending Panther attack, 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 thing and there's supposed to be a hit out for you." Another FBI-concocted anonymous "black man" then informed Chicago Panther leader Fred Hampton of a Ranger plot "to get you out of the way." These fabrications squelched promising talks between the two groups and enabled Chicago Panther security chief William O'Neal, an FBI-paid provocateur, to instigate a series of armed confrontations from which the Panthers barely managed to escape without serious casualties.
Pressure Through Employers, Landlords, and Others: FBI records reveal repeated maneuvers to generate pressure on dissidents from their parents, children, spouses, landlords, employers, college administrators, church superiors, welfare agencies, credit bureaus, and the like. Anonymous letters and telephone calls were often used to this end. Confidential official communications were effective in bringing to bear the Bureau's immense power and authority.
Agents' reports indicate that such FBI intervention denied Martin Luther King, Jr., and other 1960s activists any number of foundation grants and public speaking engagements. It also deprived alternative newspapers of their printers, suppliers, and distributors and cost them crucial advertising revenues when major record companies were persuaded to take their business elsewhere. Similar government manipulation may underlie steps recently taken by some insurance companies to cancel policies held by churches giving sanctuary to refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala.
Tampering With Mail and Telephone Service: The FBI and CIA routinely used mail covers (the recording of names and addresses) and electronic surveillance in order to spy on 1960s movements. The CIA alone admitted to photographing the outside of 2.7 million pieces of first-class mail during the 1960s and to opening almost 215,000. Government agencies also tampered with mail, altering, delaying, or "disappearing" it. Activists were quick to blame one another, and infiltrators easily exploited the situation to exacerbate their tensions.
Dissidents' telephone communications often were similarly obstructed. The SDS Regional Office in Washington, D.C., for instance, mysteriously lost its phone service the week preceding virtually every national anti-war demonstration in the late 1960s.
Disinformation to Prevent or Disrupt Movement Meetings and Activities: A favorite COINTELPRO tactic uncovered by Senate investigators was to advertise a non-existent political event, or to misinform people of the time and place of an actual one. They reported a variety of disruptive FBI "dirty tricks" designed to cast blame on the organizers of movement events.
In one "disinformation" case, the [FBI's] Chicago Field Office duplicated blank forms prepared by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam ("NMC") soliciting housing for demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention. Chicago filled out 217 of these forms with fictitious names and addresses and sent them to the NMC, which provided them to demonstrators who made "long and useless journeys to locate these addresses." The NMC then decided to discard all replies received on the housing forms rather than have out-of-town demonstrators try to locate nonexistent addresses. (The same program was carried out when the Washington Mobilization Committee distributed housing forms for demonstrators coming to Washington for the 1969 Presidential inaugural ceremonies.)
In another case, during the demonstrations accompanying inauguration ceremonies, the Washington Field Office discovered that NMC marshals were using walkie-talkies to coordinate their movements and activities. WFO used the same citizen band to supply the marshals with misinformation and, pretending to be an NMC unit, countermanded NMC orders.
In a third case, a [Bureau] midwest field office disrupted arrangements for state university students to attend the 1969 inaugural demonstrations by making a series of anonymous telephone calls to the transportation company. The calls were designed to confuse both the transportation company and the SDS leaders as to the cost of transportation and the time and place for leaving and returning. This office also placed confusing leaflets around the campus to show different times and places for demonstration-planning meetings, as well as conflicting times and dates for traveling to Washington.
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2005-03-06 20:05 | User Profile
Yes, it's back... :ph34r:
Articles
The Return of COINTELPRO? In-Depth
Special to The Dubya Report
June 6, 2002
"I can't say for sure that there wasn't the possibility that we would have come across some lead that would have led us to the hijackers," FBI Director Robert Mueller told journalists last week. Evidence had emerged that FBI headquarters
dismissed speculation by an agent in Minneapolis suggesting that French-Moroccan flight student Zacarias Moussaoui might be planning to "fly something into the World Trade Center," failed to connect the Moussaoui lead with a July report from Phoenix suggesting that Osama bin Laden might be attempting to infiltrate U.S. flight schools, and failed to share either piece of information with the interagency Counterterrorism Security Group. But the next day, Attorney General Ashcroft announced he was loosening guidelines that restrict the Bureau's surveillance of political and religious organizations. "The government is rewarding failure," said Laura W. Murphy, director of the national office of the ACLU. "It seems when the FBI. fails, the response by the Bush administration is to give the bureau new powers, as opposed to seriously look at why the intelligence and law enforcement failures occurred....These new guidelines say to the American people that you no longer have to be doing something wrong in order to get that FBI knock at your door."
Critics denounced the new guidelines as "another step by the Bush administration to roll back civil-liberties protections in the name of improving counterterrorism measures." At the press conference announcing the changes, Ashcroft was unable to provide a definition of the terrorism his new guidelines were intended to combat. "Well, obviously, terrorism has definitions," he said. Nor could Justice Department officials provide a working definition of terrorism, referring reporters to those already found in case law and a series of government rules and regulations.
The guidelines Ashcroft overturned were originally written by President Gerald Ford's attorney general, Edward Levi, after disclosures that the Bureau had engaged in a program of domestic surveillance, monitoring organizations and individuals ranging from the Ku Klux Klan to the Rev. Martin Luther King. They were subsequently revised by Ronald Reagan's attorney general, William French Smith. The Center for National Security Studies (CNSS) has observed that many of the criticisms leveled against the current guidelines are the criticisms originally leveled at the Levi guidelines, which the Smith modifications were intended to correct. The Justice Department fact sheet distributed at the Ashcroft press briefing stated that the Levi guidelines "generally barred the FBI from taking the initiative to deter and prevent future crimes. Actually, the Smith guidelines state, "In its efforts to anticipate or prevent crimes, the FBI must at times initiate investigations in advance of criminal conduct." An investigation may be opened, whenever "acts or circumstances reasonably indicate that two or more persons are engaged in an enterprise for the purpose of furthering political or social goals wholly or in part through activities that involve force or violence and a violation of the criminal laws of the United States." The Bureau can also open an investigation when it receives any information "whose responsible handling requires some further scrutiny."
Critics took issue with an official's assertion that the old guidelines would have prevented agents from searching the Internet for information about biological warfare. "Nothing in law or logic prohibits the FBI from opening investigations based on public source material.... The FBI opens investigations based on any credible source, including news reports," a CNSS report asserts. For instance, the FBI opened its investigation of the Rodney King case as soon as officials had viewed the broadcast of the videotape of his apprehension. A key purpose of the Smith guidelines was to balance First Amendment protections with the FBI's need to investigate the advocacy of violence. According to the CNSS, as of 1995 the FBI was conducting approximately two dozen full terrorism investigations per year -- nearly two thirds of them initiated before a crime had been committed: "When ... statements advocate criminal activity or indicate an apparent intent to engage in crime, particularly crimes of violence, an investigation under these guidelines may be warranted ...." Operating within the Smith/Levi guidelines, the Bureau has nonetheless established entire sections devoted to groups such as Hamas and al-Qaeda, and has been able to prevent numerous terrorist attacks, including the Millenium bomb plot that targeted Los Angeles airport.
"To be a Black Panther was not against the law," former U.S. attorney Zachary Carter said. "To be a Black Panther and conspire to kill policemen or blow up buildings was against the law," noting that investigations of the Panthers historically did not always maintain that distinction. In the absence of the Levi guidelines "law enforcement authorities could conduct investigations that had a chilling effect on entirely appropriate lawful expressions of political beliefs, the free exercise of religion and the freedom of assembly." As Senator Patrick Leahy noted during debate on the so-called USA Patriot Act:
During the height of antiwar protest and urban unrest in the late 1960's, Army intelligence joined the FBI in monitoring domestic political activity. National intelligence agencies such as CIA and NSA received extensive reporting from the FBI and the military, as well as from their own intelligence gathering on critics of government policy. Other law enforcement agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service were used to selectively investigate organizations based on their political views. Under Presidents of both parties, these agencies disseminated information to the White House about the lawful political activities and opinions of critics of Administration policy--all under the rubric of protecting the national security. The scope of intelligence gathering swept up environmental groups, women's liberation activists, and virtually any organization that mounted peaceful protest demonstrations.
During this unfortunate period in our history, the government did more than just gather information about protest and dissent. The FBI developed a systematic program to disrupt domestic groups and discredit their leaders, known as "COINTELPRO." The FBI's efforts included the selective sharing of information from its investigations to deny people employment and smear their reputations. Beginning with Communist and socialist groups, the FBI's COINTELPRO operations spread in the 1960s to the Klan, the "new left," and black militants. Elements of the civil rights and antiwar movements were targeted for disruption because of suspicion that they were "influenced" by communists; others because of their strident rhetoric. When some targets were suspected of engaging in violence, the FBI's tactics went so far as to place lives in jeopardy by passing false allegations that individuals were government informants.
The most notorious case was J. Edgar Hoover's vendetta against Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Church Committee documented the FBI's effort to discredit Dr. King by disclosing confidential information that was obtained from wiretaps and microphones targeted against him. The wiretaps were justified to the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations on the grounds that some of Dr. King's advisors were Communists, but this excuse allowed the FBI to mount continuous political surveillance to undermine Dr. King's effectiveness. The FBI disseminated allegedly derogatory information not only within the government, but to media and other private organizations including efforts to deny Dr. King the Nobel Peace Prize. Most vicious of all was the FBI's preparation of a composite tape recording that was sent to him anonymously with an apparent invitation to commit suicide. During the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City where the greatest controversy involved seating the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegates, the FBI provided the Johnson White House a continuous flow of political intelligence from the wiretaps on Dr. King's telephones in Atlantic City.
These methods of domestic political surveillance and covert manipulation and disruption have no place in a free society. They are lawful for the CIA to use against terrorists abroad, under Presidential authorization and oversight by the Intelligence Committees. In the United States, however, such surveillance activities by our government offends our fundamental First Amendment rights of speech and association, and undermines our democratic values. Since the Church Committee investigation, one of the main reasons for maintaining barriers between domestic criminal investigations and foreign intelligence operations has been a concern that the no-hold-barred methods used abroad must not be brought back into this country.
The Church Committee recommended a series of safeguards to restrict the collection of information about Americans by the CIA, the National Security Agency, and other U.S. intelligence agencies. The Attorney General issued guidelines for FBI investigations and Presidents issued Executive Orders requiring procedures approved by the Attorney General for the collection and retention of information about Americans by U.S. intelligence agencies. These guidelines and procedures have served for the past 25 years as a stable framework that, with rare exceptions, has not allowed previous abuses to recur. (The Patriot Act, which was rushed through Congress in October 2001, granted the government a wide array of powers, nominally to facilitate the war on terrorism, including latitude in monitoring electronic communications.)
Some of the Ashcroft guidelines address the relationship of FBI headquarters to its field offices. These appear to be in response to complaints from agent Coleen Rowley of the Minneapolis field office. Rowley's 13-page memo of May 21, 2002 to FBI Director Robert Mueller asserted that headquarters had repeatedly held back agents from investigating Zacarias Moussaoui, and noted that the Minneapolis office had not been informed of the Phoenix memo concerning possible bin Laden associates in Arizona. Under the new guidelines field offices can initiate counterterrorism investigations on their own; headquarters will review such inquiries within 180 days. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch noted, however,
Mr. Ashcroft has been extraordinarily resourceful in turning the devastating critique of Special Agent Coleen Rowley into a justification for his new guidelines. Ms. Rowley's memo was proof that the Justice Department had been misleading the country for months about what the FBI knew before the Sept. 11 attack. Now, the memo is part of the Ashcroft brief for revising the guidelines, even though Ms. Rowley's complaint had nothing to do with restrictions on when the FBI can initiate an investigation. Among the most sensitive guidelines that have been modified are those concerning use of undercover agents in public meeting places. The CNSS commentary above notwithstanding, the FBI has apparently interpreted its current guidelines to mean that it must have probable cause, or information that a crime has been committed, before sending undercover agents into churches, mosques, or political rallies. A full investigation of this sort requires approval by the attorney general. The new guidelines lift those requirements, as well. Eric Holder, former deputy attorney general, observed, "It's a difficult thing to try to strike the balance between the increased vigilance that we clearly need and at the same time not fall back on the patterns that led to the reforms of the 1970s."
Rep. John Conyers, the leading Democrat on the House Judiciary committee, called the new guidelines a "step backwards for civil liberties in this country." "The administration's continued defiance of constitutional safeguards seems to have no end in sight," he wrote. "This decision decimates the Fourth Amendment." David D. Cole, law professor at Georgetown University, disagreed. "There is no Fourth Amendment constitutional problem with the government surfing the Web or going into a public space or attending a public event," he said, referring to the constitutional limits on governmental intrusions. "But there are significant First Amendment concerns. There is a real cost to the openness of a free political society if every discussion group needs to be concerned that the F.B.I. is listening in on its public discussions or attending its public meetings."
As has been the case with other Bush administration encroachments on civil liberty, criticism was not confined to Democrats. Speaking on the CNN program "Novak, Hunt and Shields," Representative James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin said, "I get very, very queasy when federal law enforcement is effectively ... going back to the bad old days when the FBI was spying on people like Martin Luther King.... Merely having the FBI go in and investigate political expression which might not be approved by a majority of the people, but which is protected by the First Amendment, comes awful close to the edge." Sensenbrenner observed that no one has demonstrated that the FBI guidelines contributed to the September 11 terrorist attacks. "They have been extensively reviewed by Congress, as well as by the Carter, Reagan, first Bush and Clinton administrations. And none of these presidents and their attorneys general decided that we needed to have a significant modification of those guidelines."
Others noted that, not only was there no evidence that the 1970 guidelines had hindered the FBI in its pursuit of terrorists, but there was not evidence that any of the hijackers had said anything about their undertaking at any mosques or meetings of Islamic fundamentalists in this country. James X. Dempsey, the deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, observed "Not a single one of the 19 guys, or 20 if you count Moussaoui, did anything overtly political," he said. "Not one of them said, I support Palestinian rights' orI hate America' in a public way." Dempsey predicted that the new guidelines could stifle public debate in a way that might encourage more violent protest. "Allowing people to freely and openly advocate, say, Palestinian rights in the hope of persuading others creates the crucial safety valve that keeps people from turning to violence to force change."
Jason Erb of the Council on American-Islamic Relations voiced concern that the Bureau would waste resources on wide-ranging inquiries that threatened civil rights, rather than focusing on evidence of crimes. Speaking to the Washington Post and the New York Times, Erb suggested that the measures could threaten religious freedom and limit political dissent. "It starts to erode some of the trust and good will that exists in these institutions if you're afraid they have been infiltrated by an undercover agent," he said.
Some observers suggested that the new regulations would actually exacerbate problems at the FBI. "The problem with the 9/11 investigation was a failure to analyze and act on relevant information," said Gregory T. Nojeim of the ACLU. "And their solution is to gather exponentially more information that they have no possible way to properly analyze."
As The Economist commented in its June 1 issue, "Americans deeply resent the idea of their government being able to snoop on them. A post-war attempt to set up a domestic security agency was killed by that famous liberal, J. Edgar Hoover, on the grounds that it would be an American Gestapo." Apparently concerned that Americans may awaken to the fact that their liberties are being systematically eroded, the Bush administration has tried to make "the most draconian policy changes sound seductively innocuous," as the editorial writers of the New York Times wrote recently. Attorney General Ashcroft described the changes as nothing more than allowing agents to attend public gatherings and surf the Internet. "That is profoundly misleading," the Times said. "In reality Mr. Ashcroft, in the name of fighting terrorism, was giving F.B.I. agents nearly unbridled power to poke into the affairs of anyone in the United States, even when there is no evidence of illegal activity."
... [I]f agents were routinely to do searches for Web sites and chat room comments critical of the war in Afghanistan, and follow up with personal visits, the rights of law-abiding Americans would be infringed. Similarly, the government wants more freedom to use "data mining," even without probable cause. That could mean that F.B.I. agents will show up at the doors of people who order politically unpopular books on Amazon.com or make phone calls to organizations critical of the government.
Lifting the ban on monitoring religious institutions raises similar issues. Houses of worship need not be off-limits to F.B.I. investigators, any more than public meetings of secular organizations should be. But there will be an inevitable temptation to target organizations ââ¬â whether mosques, synagogues or political groups ââ¬â simply because of government antipathy. Loosening the rules for recruiting confidential informants, another step announced yesterday, could easily lead to a resumption of questionable practices. At his press conference, Ashcroft claimed that the new rules would be implemented with "scrupulous respect for civil rights and personal freedom," but without providing any specifics. Critics pointed out that Ashcroft & Co. had already ordered military tribunals for non-U.S. citizens involved in terrorism, railroaded the Patriot Act through congress, and revoked attorney client privileges. Appearing before the Senate Judiciary committee in December to discuss the tribunals, Ashcroft refused to be specific about who would be tried, whether only war crimes would be considered or " violations of the laws of war and other applicable laws" as the order stated, the circumstances under which a death sentence could be imposed, and whether members of the administration could overrule an acquittal. He sought to justify his decision to monitor certain attorney-client communications by quoting from what he said was an al-Qaeda training manual, noting "they are directed to take advantage of any contact with the outside world to 'communicate with brothers outside prison and exchange information that may be helpful to them in their work.'" His performance prompted Salon.com's Jake Tapper to write, "if determined elusiveness was [the] yardstick, Ashcroft did indeed take home the gold." Ashcroft also equated opposition to administration policies with aiding the enemy.
To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil.
... [F]anatics ... seek to extinguish freedom, enslave women, corrupt education and to kill Americans wherever and whenever they can."
Many of these fanatics are still in our communities plotting, planning and waiting to kill again. They enjoy the benefits of our free society even as they commit themselves to our destruction. They exploit our openness -- not randomly or haphazardly -- but by deliberate, premeditated design. Pressed by Senator Russ Feingold to clarify if he was referring to the Judiciary Committee when he said "Your tactics only aid terrorists," Ashcroft said he was referring to news organizations who had described his monitoring of attorney-client communications as "eavesdropping." This he described as a "gross misrepresentation," saying that prisoners would be informed ahead of time that their calls were being monitored.
Senator John Edwards pointed out extensive loopholes in the military tribunal rules, including provisions for unlimited detention, application of the death penalty based on a 2-1 vote of judges, no definition of the burden of proof, and no appeals process. Senator Hatch read a statement by Franklin Roosevelt's attorney general, Francis Biddle, in support of tribunals, substituting "al-Qaeda" for "Nazis" and "terrorists" for "saboteurs." "History shows the driving force behind" those tribunals, Senator Leahy responded, "was to cover up the mistakes of J. Edgar Hoover. Two saboteurs had to beg the FBI to arrest them!"
The ACLU's Nojeim suggested that the Privacy Act of 1974 offered one legal basis from which to attack the new guidelines. Part of the heritage of the Watergate era, the law prohibits the government from keeping records "describing how any individual exercises rights granted by the First Amendment," except where authorized by statute, where the individual consents, or where the information is "pertinent to and within the scope of an authorized law enforcement activity." While the FBI would presumably argue that the last exemption applied to its new guidelines, Nojeim doubted that the Bureau would be able to authorize its own activity.
The Bush administration is not the only national government to use the events of September 11 to limit the rights of citizens. "[T]he environment for human rights activism changed sharply after 11 September in some parts of the world, setting back the gains of many years," Amnesty International's 2002 Annual Report states.
In the UK, the government derogated from Article 5(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights and introduced legislation to detain foreign nationals indefinitely without charge or trial. In Zimbabwe, political opponents of the government and those who published articles critical of the government's human rights record were accused of supporting "terrorism". At the end of 2001 the Zimbabwean government was in the process of introducing legislation to create a new crime of "terrorism", punishable by death; to punish with terms of imprisonment non-violent civil disobedience, criticism of the President and disturbing the peace; and to criminalize all journalism by those not licensed by the state. In India, a new ordinance was promulgated which gave the police wide powers of arrest and provided for up to six months' detention without charge or trial for political suspects. "Mr. Ashcroft has invented a fictional lesson from 9/11 to topple restrictions that were grounded in the very real lessons of Mr. Hoover's abuses. COINTELPRO didn't lead to prosecutions or make the nation safer. It's doubtful that Mr. Ashcroft's more benign version will be any more successful. Chasing phantom dangers risks our liberty without securing our safety," the St. Louis Post-Dispatch observes. Amnesty International's report notes the widespread racist attacks against Muslims, Arabs, Sikhs, and others of Middle Eastern or Asian origin in the aftermath of 9/11. Unfortunately the same groups are likely to be victimized disproportionately by ethnic profiling in the name of counterterrorism. The legal conflict has already begun. Five men from minority ethnic groups are suing major airlines for refusing to take them as passengers. The Guardian'sJulian Borger predicts "Case by case, the cause of everyday freedoms will put up a struggle against the new security requirements of the terrorist age, and they will doubtless emerge diminished but not entirely defeated. The fact that battle will be so hard-fought says a lot of good things about this country. America's vulnerability lies in its virtues. ÷ Environment
÷ Appointments
÷ Economic Policy
÷ So-called Foreign Policy
÷ Health and Human Services
÷ Education
÷ Competence, Character and Credibility
÷ Political Parties, Campaigns and Elections
÷ Civil Rights and Liberty
÷ Editorials
References: "Chasing phantom fears" Editorial. St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 2 Jun. 2002 "Where gumshoes fear to tread" The Economist 1 Jun. 2002 "Key Republican blasts new FBI guidelines" CNN.com 1 Jun. 2002 Borger, Julian "Shamed FBI's snooping powers increased" The Guardian (UK). 31 May 2002 York, Anthony "Ashcroft eases domestic spy rules" Salon.com. 31 May 2002. "An Erosion of Civil Liberties" NY Times 31 May 2002 Miller, Bill "Ashcroft: Old Rules Aided Terrorists" Washington Post 31 May 2002 Lewis, Neil A. "Ashcroft Permits F.B.I. to Monitor Internet and Public Activities" NY Times 30 May 2002 Van Natta Jr., Don "Government Will Ease Limits on Domestic Spying by F.B.I." NY Times 29 May 2002 Report 2002 London: Amnesty International, 2002. Tapper, Jake "Ashcroft terrorizes Senate panel" Salon.com 7 Dec. 2001 Congressional Record (Senate) 25 Oct.2001 : S10990-S11060 The FBI Domestic Counterterrorism Program Washington, DC: Center For National Security Studies, 26 Apr. 1995.
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Questions or Comments
2005-03-09 03:19 | User Profile
Howard Campbell, Jr.,
Yes I fear it is coming back. We should all be very careful in our actions and words.
2005-03-10 17:22 | User Profile
[url]www.ardemgaz.com/ShowStoryTemplate.asp?Path=ArDemocrat/2005/03/10&ID=Ar01201&Section=National[/url]
[CENTER][B]Informant tells how missing heiress died[/B][/CENTER] THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
CHICAGO ââ¬â A federal informant has said a millionaire candy heiress who mysteriously disappeared 28 years ago was beaten and shot and her body was dumped in an Indiana steelmill furnace. The informantââ¬â¢s account, contained in court documents filed Tuesday, alleges that horse swindlers beat the 65-year-old Helen Brach at her suburban home in early 1977. He said they stuffed her into a car ââ¬â still alive and wrapped in a blanket ââ¬â and he was ordered to shoot her when she moaned as she was being transferred to another vehicle. The informant, [B][I][U]granted immunity from prosecution[/U][/I][/B], confessed to shooting Brach twice and saw her body being dumped in the steel mill in Indiana, according to the statement, recorded in October by a U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent. The court documents, which do not identify the informant, were filed by defense lawyers seeking a new hearing for a longtime suspect in the case. The Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times said in Wednesdayââ¬â¢s editions they were not reporting the manââ¬â¢s identity because he has not been charged with a crime. Federal agents have said they believe the informantââ¬â¢s story is truthful. But Cook County prosecutors said there are several unanswered questions about the account.
[CENTER]This story was published Thursday, March 10, 2005[/CENTER]
2005-03-13 15:37 | User Profile
Here's an excellent introduction to COINTELPRO's history and dirty tricks methods from a Progressive source:
A Short History of FBI COINTELPRO
by Mike Cassidy and Will Miller
The FBI and police used secret and systematic methods of fraud and force
[Editor's note: More information on COINTELPRO in the Bari case is available at the Monitor Judi Bari index. Much of the following was taken from Brian Glick's book War At Home: Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About It, (South End Press; Boston, 1989), a source for detailed and documented information on the history of domestic covert action against movements for social change.]
In early 1971, the FBI's domestic counterintelligence program (code named "COINTELPRO") was brought to light when a "Citizens Committee to Investigate the FBI" removed secret files from an FBI office in Media, PA and released them to the press. Agents began to resign from the Bureau and blow the whistle on covert operations. That same year, publication of the Pentagon Papers, the Pentagon's top-secret history of the Vietnam War, exposed years of systematic official lies about the war.
Soon after, it was discovered that a clandestine squad of White House "plumbers" broke into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office in an effort to smear the former Pentagon staffer who leaked the top-secret papers to the press. The same "plumbers" were later caught burglarizing the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee. By the mid-1970's Senate and House committees launched formal and lengthy inquiries into government intelligence and covert activities. These investigations revealed extensive covert and illegal counterintelligence programs involving the FBI, CIA, U.S. Army intelligence, the White House, the Attorney General, and even local and state law enforcement, directed against opponents of government domestic and foreign policy. Since then, many more instances of these "dirty tricks" have been revealed.
When congressional investigations, political trials and other traditional legal methods of repression failed to counter the growing movements of the 1950s, '60s and '70s, and even helped fuel them, the FBI and police moved outside the law. They used secret and systematic methods of fraud and force, far beyond mere surveillance, to sabotage constitutionally protected political activity. The purpose of the program was, in FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's own words, to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit and otherwise neutralize" specific groups and individuals. Its targets in this period included the American Indian Movement, the Communist Party, the Socialist Worker's Party, Black Nationalist groups, and many members of the New Left (SDS, and a broad range of anti-war, anti-racist, feminist, lesbian and gay, environmentalist and other groups). Many other groups and individuals seeking racial, gender and class justice were targets who came under attack, including Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, the NAACP, the National Lawyer's Guild, SANE-Freeze, American Friends Service Committee, and many, many others.
The Reagan Administration reinvigorated covert action
The public exposure of COINTELPRO and other government abuses resulted in a flurry of apparent reform in the 1970s, but domestic covert action did not end. It has persisted, and seems a permanent feature of our government. Much of today's domestic covert action can also be kept concealed because of government secrecy that has been restored. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a source of major disclosures of COINTELPRO and other such activities, was drastically narrowed in the 1980s through administrative and judicial reinterpretation, as well as legislative amendment. While restoring such secrecy, the Reagan Administration also reinvigorated covert action, embracing its use at home and abroad. They endorsed it, sponsored it, and even legalized it to a great extent.
Much of what was done outside the law under COINTELPRO was later legalized by Executive Order 12333 (12/4/81). There is every reason to believe that even what was not legalized is still going on as well. Lest we forget, Lt. Col. Oliver North funded and orchestrated from the White House basement break-ins and other "dirty tricks" to defeat congressional critics of U.S. policy in Central America and to neutralize grassroots protest. Special Prosecutor Walsh found evidence that North and Richard Secord (architect of the 1960s covert actions in Cambodia) used Iran-Contra funds to harass the Christic Institute, a church-funded public interest group specializing in exposing government misconduct.
North also helped other administration officials at the Federal Emergency Management Administration develop contingency plans for suspending the Constitution, establishing martial law, and holding political dissidents in concentration camps in the event of "national opposition against a U.S. military invasion abroad." There were reports of similar activities and preparations in response to the opposition to the Gulf War in 1991. Even today, there is pending litigation against the FBI involving alleged misconduct in connection with the near-fatal bombing of Judi Bari.
Domestic Covert Action Methods
Although covert action will be adapted to changing social and technological conditions, only a limited number of methods exist. A study of COINTELPRO revealed four basic approaches.
First, there was infiltration. Agents and informers did not merely spy on political activists. The main purpose was to discredit and disrupt. Their presence served to undermine trust and scare off potential supporters. They also exploited this fear to smear genuine activists as agents.
Second, there was psychological warfare from the outside. 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 agents, and manipulated or strong-armed parents, employers, landlords, school officials and others to cause trouble for activists.
Third, there was harassment through the legal system, used to harass dissidents and make them appear to be criminals. Officers 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.
Fourth and finally, there was extralegal force and violence. The FBI and police threatened, instigated and conducted break-ins, vandalism, assaults, and beatings. The object was to frighten dissidents and disrupt their movements. In the case of radical Black and Puerto Rican activists (and later Native Americans), these attacks, including political assassinations, were so extensive, vicious, and calculated that they can only be accurately called a form of official "terrorism." For details, along with many examples of each of these methods, read Glick's well-documented and heavily footnoted "War At Home."
reprinted with permission Mike Cassidy is a civil rights attorney and Will Miller is a Professor of Philosophy at U. of Vermont
2005-03-15 18:53 | User Profile
“From Vigilante Violence to Revolutionary Terror: FBI Operations against the Ku Klux Klan, 1964-1971”
(copy write John Drabble, 2003)
In the 1960s, African Americans aspired to convince sympathetic Southern whites to imagine spiritual connections that could transcend racialized notions of community, region and nation. To break out of their prescribed caste-status, civil rights activists launched militant struggles to achieve social integration, voting rights, and equal protection under the law. Aspiring to maintain restrictions on the possession of full citizenship to their exclusively defined racial community however, Ku Klux Klansmen perpetuated acts of vigilante violence to maintain white supremacy. Opposition to Klan violence by whites in the Deep South remained soft during the early Cold War, but the breakdown of law and order that occurred during the early 1960s, ended that toleration. By mid-decade, as Southern politicians and law enforcement officials began to proscribe vigilantism, Southern juries began to convict the most violent perpetrators.1
Federal politicians and bureaucrats, meanwhile, came to view Klan “terrorism,” as a matter of internal security. They argued that federal prosecutions, and harassment by law enforcement agencies could suppress the Klan, and help bring the South into the national community.2 The goal of these operations, according to former Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, was to bring to an end “the Klan's criminal conspiracy of violence that scourged the South."3 In his testimony before the Senate Committee on Intelligence, which investigated COINTELPRO in 1975, Katzenbach explained:
You cannot do a criminal investigation of any organization properly without having some disruptive influence. . . . Where you have reason to know that the [Klan] organization and its members are engaged in acts of violence, then by George, you want to disrupt those acts of violence. . .4
He acknowledged that domestic security operations, because they aim to thwart conspiratorial violence, may violate normal criminal investigation procedures and undermine Constitutional liberties:
I have no doubt that the Bureau's investigation of the criminal activities of the Klan was tough, intensive, harassing and thorough. I expected nothing less, the President asked for no less and the nation deserved no less. . . .Klansmen in Mississippi - the Klan leadership - were not ordinary citizens. . . they were lawbreakers of the most viscous sort - terrorists who intimidated, bombed, burned and killed, often under the watchful and protective eyes of their brethren in the local law enforcement agencies.5
Since they violated the civil rights of others, according to this logic, Klansmen forfeited some measure of their own civil rights.6 Katzenbach concluded, "To equate [domestic security operations] with surveillance or harassment of persons exercising constitutionally guaranteed rights is in my view unmitigated nonsense."7
The FBI then, was charged not merely with investigating civil rights violations for use by Justice Department prosecutors, but was challenged to prevent Klan violence and granted license to harass Klan members.8 In response to these exigencies, the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched a domestic covert action program against Klan groups called COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE, in September 1964.9 Thus, as William Keller has pointed out, "the liberal conviction that internal security policy should be transferred to professional administrators who could be depended on to act in the public interest rather than from political motivations," in addition to "an apparently limitless tolerance of pervasive official secrecy in internal as well as national security affairs" allowed FBI bureaucrats to "insulate their operations."10
Previous scholarship on COINTELPRO has focused on the operations against civil rights, anti-war, and Black-nationalist organizations, demonstrating that political repression played a significant role in the decline of organized resistance to racial oppression and the Vietnam War in the late 1960s.11 To “encourage thinking outside the dualistic paradigm of oppression versus resistance,” however, my research has focused on FBI operations that targeted Klan and other racist-right groups.12
Between September 1964 and April 1971, FBI agents and their clandestine informants circulated discrediting information about Klan leaders, among rank and file members. I have argued that these operations were successful. Agents-provocateurs, snitch jackets, and poison-pen letters fostered animosity between Klansmen and facilitated factional splits within and between Klan organizations, causing expulsions and defections. Many high-ranking Klan officers were purged or quit. This brought about disillusionment, frustration and fear among rank and file Klan members, prompting mass resignations and the breakup of local Klan units (Klaverns). In combination with concurrent criminal prosecutions, COINTELPRO brought about drastic reductions in Klan membership rolls, and the disbanding of most local Klan units across the South.13
Examining the countersubversive discourses of Klan and FBI anticommunism, I have also analyzed relationships between violence and community belonging, both as expressed by Klansmen, and by the FBI bureaucrats who worked to suppress Klan violence. I have argued that between 1924 and 1971, FBI agents worked to nurture a coalescing community of ‘professional’ law-enforcement officers. After 1964, these professionals would work to suppress Klan violence and restore “tranquility” to the national community.14 The Bureau did this, by secretly coordinating efforts to discredit Klan organizations before local Southern communities that continued to tolerate vigilante violence. Intelligence information on Klansmen and Klan activities, provided discretely by the FBI to Southern journalists, politicians and other molders of public opinion, helped those white Southerners who were opposed to Ku Klux Klan activity to transform their private dismay into public rebuke and criminal convictions. Central to these operations, were efforts to associate Klan activity with immorality, and by extension, with “subversive” and “extremist” ideologies such as Communism, Nazism, and Black Power.15
Another association that Bureau agents attempted to nurture in political discourse, one that I have only touched upon in my publications, was to associate the Ku Klux Klan with criminal activity. The Bureau accomplished this, by using intelligence to facilitate arrests of Klansmen on non-federal charges, and informing journalists who were eager to publicize them.16 To convince law enforcement authorities and local communities that vigilantism was criminal, in effect, required transforming attitudes about the legitimate use of violence to defend the community-heretofore defined as the white community. The FBI and its allies promoted a view that defined vigilantism as disruptive to society given the struggle against Communism, both abroad and at home.
The FBI had been collecting information on civil rights activities, as well as Klan bombings, shootings, assaults, intimidation, and harassment, before COINTELPRO was launched.17 They continued to do so, and issued alerts to headquarters on “possible outbreaks of racial violence,” after September 1964.18 In August 1964, for example, FBI executive A. Rosen requested authority to conduct a microphone surveillance of NAACP leader Robert Hayling, and St. Augustine Klan leader Halstead Manucy, arguing that “in view of the tense racial situation and the possibility of future violence . . . [surveillance] may possibly be instrumental in saving lives as well as obtaining the necessary information to fulfill the Bureau’s responsibilities in racial matters.”19 I have found that information acquired through FBI intelligence operations, as well as the testimony of FBI agents and informants in Southern courtrooms, played an instrumental role in obtaining convictions for civil rights violations in the Federal Courts. Moreover, State and local prosecutions also succeeded in areas where law enforcement agencies and local juries became inclined to view Klan vigilantism as criminal, because of information that the FBI provided to state and local law enforcement.20
One question that has continued to plague me while pursuing this project however, is whether COINTELPRO operations had any effect on criminal prosecutions of Klan vigilantism/terrorism.21 In this paper, I propose to examine relationships between criminal prosecutions and covert action against the Klans. Such an analysis, I argue, should help us to further understand how relationships between “violence and community belonging,” as considered by Klansmen, residents of Southern communities, and FBI agents, changed during the late 1960s. The questions raised in this paper, then, are substantive: Did COINTELPRO operations attempt to disrupt or prevent Klan violence? If so, did they succeed? While I cannot yet offer definitive answers, especially to the second question, I wish to provoke discussions about the relevance of these questions as well as the utility of the evidence that I have acquired and incorporated into my arguments so far.
The Logic of Domestic Security Operations with Reference to Preventing Violence
The first communication from FBI headquarters that alerted Special Agents in the field to the launching of COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE demanded that agents endeavor to penetrate Klan "action groups," and neutralize the activities of "violence-prone" Klansmen:
. . . these [action] groups have been described as the relatively few individuals in each organization who use strong-arm tactics and violent actions to achieve their ends. Often these groups act without the approval of the Klan organization or membership. The Bureau considers it vital that we expose the identities and activities of such groups and where possible disrupt their efforts. These groups should be subjected to continuing counterintelligence action . . . Counterintelligence action directed at these groups is intended to complement and stimulate our accelerated intelligence investigations.22
An executive level memorandum dated August 1965, approximately one year after COINTELPRO began, asserts that field office agents "have used some of our informants to control the potential for Klan violence in certain areas, for example [four lines deleted].23 In August 1966 communication to the field, FBI executives re-iterated that the prevention of violence remained a central COINTELPRO objective:
Our objective in counterintelligence is to reduce membership in the Klan and hate organizations and to prevent potential violence. Insure that Special Agent personnel handling this area of counterintelligence afford our objectives continued and enthusiastic attention.24
I have found that the expulsion of "potentially violent" and "dangerous" individuals is sometimes cited as a "tangible result" of operations in monthly reports from field offices.25 In January 1967 for example, the Miami field office reported that the "area has been reduced to a non-violent status."26 Finally, in his July 1970 recommendation for continuation of the White Hate program, FBI executive C. D. Brennan asserted that COINTELPRO "has been effective in toning down Klan violence."27
A few months before COINTELPRO began, Jacksonville Florida field office agents requested authority to conduct microphone surveillances in the home of St. Augustine Exalted Cyclops Holstead Mauncy’s, the office and home of NAACP activist Robert Hayling, and the rented cottage of Martin Luther King. Citing the “volatile” racial situation in St. Augustine, where the County sheriff had deputized local Klansmen to control desegregation demonstrators, FBI executives argued that “technical coverage may be possibly be instrumental in saving lives as well as obtaining the necessary information to fulfill the Bureau’s responsibilities in racial matters.28 The first counterintelligence action that appears in the file- launched a month before COINTELPRO was formally institutionalized-did concern preventative counterintelligence. In June 1964, FBI executives demanded immediate alerts from its Alabama agents of any outbreaks of violence, and demanded complete coverage of all Klan meetings.29 During the first week of July 1964, when informants furnished information that the United Klans of America (UKA) was planning to interfere with the desegregation of Montgomery Alabama theaters and restaurants, the FBI’s local Special Agent in Charge (SAC) notified the Montgomery Police Department, which "acted very promptly and effectively, disbursing Klansmen who had gathered in the danger area and making it quite clear that no unlawful activity or interference with the enforcement of the 1964 Civil Rights Act would be tolerated." The police action was so demoralizing to Klansmen, that when the public schools were desegregated in the fall, "Klansmen did not even appear in the vicinities of schools and took no action of any kind anywhere, to interfere."30
A number of COINTELPRO operations attempted to target violent activity which was conducted publicly. Thus, it was "considered significant" by the Birmingham SAC that "although there were numerous instances of racial demonstrations by pro-integration groups in the Birmingham Division, neither the UKA, the NSRP, or the American States Rights Party nor any other group caused any trouble or disturbance in [the] demonstrations" of Spring 1966.31 A field office report on the racial situation in Polk City Florida, asserted that the "focus is upon prevention of further violence and riot." In Tampa, where Klan and National States Rights Party activity had encouraged white rioting that threatened public order,32 agents informed local police of planned public activities by the UKA in order to "prevent racial confrontations and violence."33 George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party, was pursued because “the garish and theatrical demonstrations staged by this group are intended deliberately to provoke breaches of the peace and riotous action. . . . [and because] the pseudo military nature of this group, the fanatic and psychotic following, and the presence of firearms in party headquarters all indicate that this is a potentially dangerous organization.”34
In Montgomery, informant information was combined with inquiries made of neighbors and employers, in order to determine which Klansmen were "the most potentially violent." Open surveillance was conducted at their homes, and they were followed whenever they got into their automobiles. The "fear" of surveillance and potential prosecution was thus used, according to field office reports, as "an effective deterrent" to violence.35 Similarly, in North Carolina, agents interviewed all known Klansmen, this "to have them realize they will be under suspicion if violent activity develops."36 In Bogalusa Louisiana, where shootings and vandalism, as well as intimidation and harassment of civil rights workers and supporters occurred with the support of law enforcement officers and public officials, FBI investigations enabled the Justice Department to secure injunctions against Klan activity, even as COINTELPRO disrupted the local Klan from within.37
Memphis based agents "periodically contacted" a "high ranking West Tennessee Klan official," to "inflate his ego to the point where he will talk and brag concerning his activities." They reasoned that
periodic contacts will tend to deter him from engaging in or condoning any acts of violence. Likewise, the mere presence of FBI agents with [Bureau Deletion] from time to time will undoubtedly come to the attention of lesser-ranking Klansmen and tend to deter some of their activities since there will always be some doubt in their minds as to just how much [Bureau Deletion] is talking with the FBI about Klan activities."38
The Miami FBI field office also targeted a "tough Klan unit which must be exposed in order to prevent violence," because several individuals with criminal records had joined the newly organized group. The Miami field office circulated a leaflet, which caused its target to threaten another Klan officer with whom he had been having trouble. Two Klansmen quit over the controversy, and Klavern activity declined.39
FBI Headquarters authorized Jackson, Mississippi field office agents to threaten the leadership of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan that if they do not "rescind orders to violence they will be subject to 24 hour surveillance."40 The White Knights, the most violent Klan group operating in the United States, were neutralized though a combination of aggressive investigations, federal and state prosecutions, strong arm police tactics, and covert action.41 I have found some evidence, which indicates that during the period from indictment to prosecution (in murder and federal civil rights cases), FBI agents refrained from launching covert operations. During the trial arising from the murder of Vernon Dahmer, for example, the FBI suspended counterintelligence against Samuel Bowers, the Imperial Wizard of the Mississippi White Knights, and other defendants, "so as not to jeopardize chances for their conviction and prejudice the government's case against Bowers."42 Similarly, one Miami field office communication to FBI headquarters explained that "no counterintelligence program is being suggested regarding this group of [Klansmen] since Miami is conducting an investigation looking towards possible prosecution."43 In one instance, Tennessee based agents postponed making anonymous calls to employers identifying their employees as Klansmen, until after interviews of Klansmen, related to a bombing case, had been completed. Klansmen might otherwise have figured out that the calls were "an FBI tactic."44 I have not found enough cases like these, however, to judge whether these constitute isolated cases or references to an institutionalized procedure.
Some Klan organizations were not targeted by COINTELPRO at all, evidently because their members did not engage in violent activities. If the Association of South Carolina Klans were neutralized, Savannah field office agents reasoned, it "would be replaced with [the] more activist UKA."45 In January 1966, the Little Rock SAC reported that:
interviewing agents have been received in a friendly manner by Klansmen and have generally stated that they were glad to have been interviewed by the Agents. They have expressed a cooperative attitude and have generally stated they would cooperate with the Bureau in keeping down violence.
He concluded that counterintelligence "would serve no useful purpose." Headquarters concurred that there was "some justification," given the "relatively quiet racial picture in Little Rock."46 In keeping with such thinking, the Richmond office advised refraining from actions against a particular Klan leader because “he has held down violence" and it was therefore "not in the best interest to remove him.47
Militant organizations were another matter entirely. According to the Cincinnati SAC, prosecution of one group of nightriders would not only neutralize their own activities, and work to the discredit of the organization with which they were affiliated, but also discredit Klan organizations in general:
since the Klan is just getting organized in Ohio, it is an excellent time to discredit it with Federal prosecution of some of its members. It would also be an extremely disruptive measure for the Klan and its potentially dangerous members in Georgia. A Federal Grand Jury indictment . . . and the attendant publicity resulting in a large scale arrest of Klansmen in Georgia and Ohio would undoubtedly have a most salutary effect against the NKKKK and the UKA."48
Counterintelligence and prosecution of individual crimes, in this scenario, would combine to disrupt and neutralize Klan activity. Convictions, moreover, were to be published through "friendly press contacts," so as to work "to the detriment of the Klan and the Klan's reputation."49
Florida Klan leader Charles B. Riddlehoover became a prime COINTELPRO target because he had discussed "commission of acts of violence such as burnings of automobiles and cross burnings." COINTELPRO also targeted Riddlehoover however, because agents hoped to expose him in order to discredit Klan groups in general:
The UKKKK is not a powerful Klan organization, however, the general public does not make the distinctions we do. Therefore, and in the event [Riddlehoover] is convicted, mass media coverage of same would mitigate against all Klan organizations.50
FBI officials tipped-off local police about a prior felony conviction that Riddlehoover had received in Georgia. When police officers pulled him over and found a revolver in his automobile, Riddlehoover was charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
Police also arrested Miami Exalted Cyclops Harold "Jack" Grantham and seized Klan material in the stop. The Sheriff proceeded to issue a press release which "exposed" the identity of all fifteen of the organization's officers.51 When the UKKKK held a rally, journalists were alerted that Riddlehoover was scheduled to speak, so that publicity might "adversely influence the court's decision to affirm or reverse [Riddlehoover's] conviction." After agents forwarded copies of resulting news clippings, and furnished photographs to "appropriate Dade County authorities," Riddlehoover canceled a scheduled second rally. Within two months, the UKKKK "disintegrated,"52 Of note for our purposes here, is that these domestic security operations facilitated not only selective enforcement of the laws, but attempts to influence the judicial process.
The use of selective enforcement was not a novel tactic. In the early 1920s, federal agents called in by Louisiana’s Governor, had found evidence implicating the Louisiana Klan in a series of murders. When local juries refused to return convictions, Imperial Kleagle Edward Y. Clarke was convicted on a federal morals charge, resulting in a $5000 fine.53 During the Brown Scare of the 1930s, the FBI collected intelligence on domestic fascists, anti-Semitic agitators and isolationists, a group of whom were prosecuted on federal Sedition charges.54 Immediately after the war, a federal tax investigation led to the disbandment of the remnants of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the nationwide franchise operation that had held together the Klans since the early 1920s. In the early 1960s, the Kennedy administration used the Internal Revenue Service to investigate “Radical Right” anticommunist groups.55 Finally, the FBI solicited tax returns of Klan leaders and Klan organizations from the IRS, for use in its COINTELPRO operations.56 The FBI also forwarded tax information to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, to use in its 1965-1966 hearings on the Klans.57
COINTELPRO also facilitated prosecutions and convictions of Klansmen who violated federal laws under the jurisdiction of the Alcohol and Tobacco Unit of the Treasury Department (ATTU). Mitch Louisiana Klavern leader Howard M. Lee, for example, held a license to sell firearms, but he allowed other Klansmen to sell hundreds of weapons from his stockpile. The FBI notified the ATTU and the Secret Service, about these sales. The ATTU arrested Lee and charged him with violating the Federal Firearms Act. The agency compiled a list of persons who had bought weapons from Lee, and provided it to the FBI. FBI agents then interviewed the purchasers to cause suspicion and infighting among Klansmen.58 The Treasury Department liaison was not restricted to pursuing investigations of gun running. In Tennessee,
information developed through daily Klan investigations concerning moonshine operations [was] immediately disseminated to [Bureau Deletion] Memphis, as well as to interested law enforcement officials in neighboring counties.
The Memphis ATF Agent in Charge then contacted the Bureau before securing warrants for the arrests "to insure that maximum utilization will be made of publicity through local news media." As a result of this combined operation, a feud developed in the Haywood County area. One Klansman lost his beer license, and the arrests "prompted" Brownsville citizens to "have the UKA Headquarters "ousted from the community." After the Exalted Cyclops of the Shelby Klavern resigned, and the unit disbanded, only 25 people showed up for a subsequent UKA rally in West Tennessee.59
Other COINTELPRO operations used intelligence to facilitate prosecution on state and local charges. According to one document in the COINTELPRO file concerning violations of state revenue laws, the Bureau maintained
a continuing program designed to bring the United Klans of America, Inc., under the examination of local and state laws. It is believed, through the proper enforcement of local and state laws, organizations such as the United Klans of America, Inc., can be significantly retarded.60
Some of these violations involved violent assaults and acts of intimidation, such as cross burnings.61 In Virginia, however, FBI executives also worked to "make sure that action is taken to cause the UKA to comply" with state tax laws, so as to "irritate” Klan leaders.62 In August of 1966, moreover, a representative of the office of the Maryland State Police Intelligence Unit requested assistance from the Bureau in acquiring information on anti-mask laws in other states, as well as court decisions concerning such laws. The Maryland Attorney General's office had already met with the State Police, and was interested in preparing for the introduction of such a measure in Maryland during the next legislative session.
The FBI forwarded two copies of the Virginia code pertaining to the prohibition of wearing masks in public, along with information regarding similar laws and a court decision in Illinois, and Kentucky to the Baltimore SAC. FBI executives directed him to pass this information along to the State Police, but, sensitive to allegations among conservatives that federal law enforcement operations threatened to undermine States Rights, the SAC was directed to:
give no opinion as to whether such legislation would be of a benefit to the State of Maryland. . . This is strictly a local matter which should be left to the discretion and judgment of the Attorney General of the State of Maryland and the Maryland legislature. . . you may point out that there is a Federal law dealing with persons who go in disguise on a public highway or on the premises of another with the intent to prevent the free exercise of rights secured under the United States Constitution.
FBI executives noted that "the Bureau has primary jurisdiction in enforcing this section," but added that "Prosecutions' however, under this statute are extremely limited."
They emphasized, therefore:
The existence of this law is brought to your attention merely for the purposes of background and information and it is not intended to be a substitute for state legislation. You are to refrain from offering any opinion that because there is such a Federal law that state legislation is unnecessary.63
Agents also assured that relatively minor or non-Klan related transgressions, such as illegal posting of literature, failure to acquire proper building permits, serving alcohol to minors, alligator poaching, check forgery, and bigamy were brought to the attention of local authorities.64 To cite one final example, the FBI alerted city authorities that a city employee was "promoting Klan activities while on the [Bureau Deletion] payroll." The Mayor subsequently instructed his City Manager to conduct an investigation and informed journalists that the employee in question "will be asked to resign" if his activities "conflicted with municipal policy."65
Each of these covert actions involved discrete relationships between the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies, as well as trusted state law enforcement officers, Governors and journalists. The extralegal and illegal nature of many COINTELPRO operations, however, ensured that the Bureau would not cooperate with individuals who could not assure complete confidentiality. In June 1967, for example General Intelligence Division Inspector Joseph Sullivan recommended that the Bureau consider assisting victims of Klan terrorism in a civil suit against Klansmen accused of murder.66 Civil Rights Movement attorneys had made inquiries in the Natchez, Mississippi area concerning the financial status of the accused murderers in the Ben Chester White case. They wanted to ascertain whether the accused had any assets which would be subject to attachment to compensate the victim’s family. Sullivan argued that the Bureau should help, by providing evidence for a civil suit:
. . . [the] scope of inquiry might be spread beyond the individuals immediately accused of the crime of murder to the organization which they represented, the Ku Klux Klan and the accused murderers' community supporters. . . .the import of [this] suggestion may be defined in the following conditions. . . .
The racial hostility which resulted in the WHITE murder is a by product of hatreds generated and agitation stimulated by the activities of the KKK and other segregation type groups. This is an induced product of the activity of these groups. . . .
Support of the action of the murderers may be shown in the manner in which the defense of the accused has been supported. . . .justification for the murder appeared in the propagandizing done by the Klan. Covert and directly slanderous attacks were made on the victim in justification for the murder. . . .any time there is any probability of a financial pinch arising in Klan type activities the organization immediately abates the nuisances it is creating. If civil responsibility could be charged, even in establishing cases such as those described above, motives for accelerating Klan activity would be severely diminished.
Sullivan suggested that the FBI engage in discussions with the Justice Department to see if suggestions could be made to "civil rights sources" that
civil suits of the type suggested herein might have a beneficial effect in reducing the vehemence of radically segregationist organizations like the Klan. . . .offices involved in the individual cases might suggest the possibility of civil suits against the Klan and offenders to the victims of appropriate cases of racial violence."67
Sullivan’s argument was in keeping with Katzenbach’s view of security investigations. Another COINTELPRO agent had made a similar point, when he argued that Klan leaders “deny they condone violence, but through inflammatory methods used, can only lead to the commission of violence.” 68
FBI executives, however, denied Sullivan’s proposal, arguing that
While the survivors of Klan violence would do well to initiate legal action, advice or participation by the Department could complicate criminal prosecutions or appeals, which could prove embarrassing. It could be embarrassing to the Bureau if it became known that the government was making available information in civil litigation where the Government was not a legitimate party in interest. The Bureau does not desire to solicit civil action in these cases or become involved in any action which could result in demands for our personnel to act as witnesses in civil cases. . . .the risks outweigh any potential benefit to the Bureau."69
Presumably, the phrase ‘potential benefit’ refers to the disruptive effect such a prosecution might have had on the Klan organization to which the accused belonged.70
As the operations against Bruno and Riddlehoover also illustrate, prosecutions sometimes also had a counterintelligence function. Aside from the examples discussed in this paper however, the COINTELPRO WHITE-HATE file does not contain much more evidence that preventing violence was a central aim of COINTELPRO itself. In this context, it should also be mentioned that when COINTELPRO created such tension that violence broke out between and among Klansmen and Klan groups- in Virginia and the Carolinas for example,-FBI agents viewed this as a positive result, and endeavored to aggravate the factionalism.71
In general, COINTELPRO focused on disrupting organizations and exposing and neutralizing effective Klan leaders, administrative officers, and recruiters. The FBI worked to fragment and destroy Klan organizations by disabling the Klan leadership, creating internal disruption and exposing Klan activity. Prosecutions were facilitated with this larger goal in mind.72 The Attorney General wanted the FBI to penetrate the Klan for the purpose of prosecuting and preventing Klan violence. COINTELPRO thus transcended Attorney General Katzenbach’s vision of internal security operations, in that disruption and neutralization of Klan organizations became the primary goal. Katzenbach recognized this, when he characterized anonymous phone calls to Klansmen’s wives accusing their husbands of adultery as an "improper technique."73
This combination of prosecution and counterintelligence constituted a "use of federal powers to repair a breach in internal security," according to William Keller. Klansmen, he argued, threatened “the state's monopoly on the legitimate use of violence to achieve its ends."74 FBI historian Sanford Ungar was one of the first to argue that COINTELPRO and "strong arm tactics" had a "deterrent effect" on Klan violence. He cited a statistical chart prepared by the Jackson Mississippi field office, which showed that while there were 175 acts of violence (civil rights-connected shootings, beatings, bombings and burnings) in Mississippi in the last seven months of 1964, and 294 during 1966, there were only 70 in the twelve months ending in September 1970.75 My own research has confirmed that this assessment applies not only in Mississippi, but in Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia.76
I have also found, however, that the domestic security/covert action strategy had an additional consequence, influencing the direction that white supremacist ideology would take in the post-COINTELPRO period. For our purposes here, three operations among many I have discussed in my other work, will suffice to exemplify this strategy.77 As discussed above, decisions about whether to target particular Klan groups for COINTELPRO, could depend on the relative militancy of the group’s leaders. FBI intelligence operations determined that the Dixie Klans, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (DK,KKKK) was a relatively non-violent group.78 Klansmen affiliated with the Chattanooga Klavern (local unit) had reportedly been responsible for five bombings between July and August 1960, but civil rights demonstrations and school integration had proceeded peacefully, in a majority of schools and public facilities during 1962-1963. Imperial Wizard Jack Brown, according to FBI intelligence sources, had instructed his Klansmen to stay away from civil rights demonstrations and refrain from vigilante violence. As late as July 1965, there had been no discussion or acts of violence among Dixie Klan members for the previous three and one half years, and no COINTELPRO operations had been launched against it.79
In September 1965, however, a number of Blacks were beaten in isolated incidents in East Chattanooga, near where recent race riots had occurred. Agents determined that a "large number" of younger Dixie Knights, as well as young teenagers who frequented the Klan's recreation hall were involved in these beatings. They had been encouraged by a militant Klan leader named John Mayhew. Mayhew was described in FBI memoranda as "mentally ill, belligerent and dangerous;" as a Klansman who had a "propensity for violence." The Bureau disseminated information on Mayhew to the Secret Service and "other interested agencies," evidently because he had made threats against President Johnson.80 Agents also provided information to the police that Mayhew was driving with an out of state driver’s license. Police threatened Brown that he must "clean up the elements around his hall" or else it would be closed down. The FBI and local police conducted "obvious surveillance," and interviewed between forty and fifty Klansmen, including some who had never attended a Klan meeting. Klansmen, who had thought that their Klan membership was secret, became upset and "surveilled one another" as a result. DKKKKK members searched the Klan meeting hall for recording and broadcasting devices. Brown began checking membership cards to prevent entrance of unauthorized persons into the hall.
After Jack Brown died, agents endeavored to "either prevent [Mahew] from becoming Imperial Wizard through exposure, or exposing him as mental case once he achieved the position.” Through "agitation by racial informants. . . resentment of elected leaders or officers was stirred up in opposition to the apparent takeover of [Mayhew] to the leadership." Many veteran DKKKKK members had long opposed to Mayhew’s candidacy. The fact that Brown had permitted him to schedule and hold public demonstrations, without approval of membership had led one Klan leader to "become so disgusted that he unofficially resigned prior to Brown's death." Mayhew was stripped of all authority by the older members, but he retained the backing of the younger members and "with those most likely to favor violence and violations of the laws." Mayhew began to consider forming a new Klavern or a new organization under his control by another name if the election did not go his way. The Bureau now endeavored to expose him as a "threat to safety and well being" of the citizens of Chattanooga."81 Intelligence material on Mayhew was disseminated to HUAC, local intelligence agencies and the Secret Service82 Mayhew was forced to resign in December due to publicity about his criminal record and his previous confinement in a mental hospital. Five of the ten DKKKKK officers left with him to form a new Klan organization. Throughout the month of March 1966, those Klansmen who sided with Mayhew were singled out for interviews and the organization was never formed.83
In the second example, another militant, Joseph Robert Bruno of NKKKK Klavern #6, Cleveland Ohio, had advocated formation of a "black squad to kill and beat informants and Negroes." He had called for bombings and offered firearms to his followers. His wife, however, had been prevailing upon him to sever relations with the Klan ever since his activities had been exposed through articles in the Cleveland Press. When Bruno chose not attend a picket of the newspaper-at his wife’s insistence and because of fear of the police,-an FBI agent handler instructed an informant in Bruno’s Klavern to raise the issue of his non-attendance. Before long, the Cleveland SAC reported that Bruno was in a "tenuous position," and was predicting his "downfall."84
The term ‘downfall’ however, is ambiguous. It is not clear to this researcher whether it refers to Bruno’s standing within the National Knights, or his general standing among Klansmen and other racist right activists. This distinction is important, because although COINTELPRO reduced Klan membership and disrupted Klan operations, a number of militant and effective Klan organizers survived to reorganize in the 1970s. In September 1970 for example, the Maryland Realm of the United Klans of America was "in a state of disarray," due to the recent ouster of its leader. Effectively, control of the organization had passed to FBI informants. Evidently, the Bureau considered the possibility of attempting to reduce violence in Maryland, but it is not clear whether this strategy was ultimately adopted:
Baltimore informants will be in a position to suggest and influence to a limited extent the choice of the Klansman who will take over from [Tony LaRicci]. Efforts will be directed to selection of someone who will be the least militant, or one who may stir up continued argument among the membership.85
Since there are no more references to Klan activity in the in the Maryland field office subfile, further research will be necessary to determine whether Klan activity waned over the next 19 months, (after which COINTELPRO ended).86
Watchdog groups like the Anti-Defamation League have pointed out that Tony La Ricci-like many other UKA defectors-would prescribe paramilitary strategy in the 1970s, organizing a KKK "Green Beret." In March 1977, LaRicci shared a Klan rally platform with William Marx Aitcheson who advocated paramilitary counterrevolution against Communist takeover:
We're going to have a little Bolshevik America unless we keep our powder dry, clean our weapons, and get ready to go into the streets. I tell you something. You got this robe, but it don't mean a thing unless you've got something to back it up. I mean a good weapon, a rifle, a good pistol. And ammunition . . . thousands of rounds, not hundreds. The next war is going to be a big one and it's going to last a long time. The only way this country can ever revive its laws, can ever revive the laws of God, is going to be through violence."87
Three members of LaRicci's group, moreover, were convicted of plotting to bomb a synagogue in Lochearn, Maryland.88
The third example concerns the Florida UKA, which by 1969 had been torn apart as a result of COINTELPRO, leaving rank and file Klansmen to their devices.89 In January, 1969 Tampa Klansman Andrew Budnick and two others contacted Matthias Koehl, heir to assassinated American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell. Koehl sent Nazi activist Robert Lloyd to obtain sponsors for Nazi activities, and established a fund so that Nazi-sponsored telephone message recordings could be set up on the West Florida Coast. Tampa field office agents wanted to give information on Budnick's past activities to his employer, but FBI executives denied their proposal. Since there was no organized American Nazi Party in Tampa, they instructed:
contact by you in this matter is harassment and not counterintelligence. . . . If you determine that American Nazi Party activity is initiated in the Tampa territory and [Budnick] is a leader or is instrumental in initiating this activity, you may wish to resubmit your request as it pertains to the Nazi party.90
For FBI executives overseeing security operations then, the fact that former Klansmen had contacted Nazis was not an issue, unless the American Nazi Party began to organize in the area.
"White Hate Groups" were the target of the COINTELPRO; that is, counterintelligence aimed to expose, disrupt and neutralize organized white supremacist activity. Klan, National States Rights Party and American Nazi Party leaders were targeted. Freelance Christian Identity preacher and racist agitator Connie Lynch was also targeted "as though he were one of the leading officials of a group such as the NSRP or the Klan." 91 COINTELPRO did not target ideological mentors, such as Gerald L. K. Smith, Wesley Swift, however, nor members of their (political and religious) organizations, unless they also held Klan affiliations. Rank and file white supremacists were targeted with reference to how harassment might help to neutralize the organization to which they belonged. Covert operations were deemed successful when individuals "dropped out" or were banished from the Klan. After 1971, when COINTELPRO ended, indications are that the FBI (and State and local police intelligence agents) continued to collect intelligence on Klan groups if indications of violent activity or plans arose. If the work of Klan informants in North Carolina is indicative of the trend elsewhere, informants seem to have played a major role in providing this information.92
In his final report for 1966, the Charlotte SAC had described the "primary aims" of COINTELPRO as "cutting down membership" and "curtailing violent activities and views of the organization."93 These two goals were deemed compatible in the sense that "in some cases," the "substantial dropout rate" by new members was a result of the fact that "there is less 'action' than the new members had expected." The agent also observed, however, that “in most units there continues to be a ‘hard core’ of devoted members who stay on in spite of almost anything that can happen.”94 Three years later, FBI executives were alerting field offices to a “marked increase in violent acts throughout US on part of individuals not affiliated with the Klan or other white hate type organizations,” and broadening intelligence investigations to include “unaffiliated extremists.”95
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, many Klansmen came to see the FBI as one of their primary enemies. They constructed a historical memory of white-community victimization, engineered by a decadent, corrupt, and conspiratorial Federal government. Paid informers, according to these narratives, had corrupted the judicial system and framed dedicated patriots in politically motivated trials, even as agents provocateurs created dissention and committed acts of violence that were blamed on effective Klan organizers. Emphasizing this victimization theme, hard core Klansmen who survived COINTELPRO began to infuse white-supremacist ideology with the revolutionary discourses of conspiracist anti-Semitism and Christian Identity hermeneutics.96 During the 1970s, many Klansmen would embrace neo-Nazism and paramilitary strategies. Since the national community was increasingly being re-defined in multicultural terms, they began to reject the equation of national citizenship and white community. Calling for white cultural solidarity in the face of government repression, they made alliances with racists of very different ideological stripes, forging a revolutionary, trans-national “white power” movement.97
Unreconstructed white supremacists were bound to become alienated from a political and legal system and society that began to take steps toward recognizing racial minorities as full citizens. Given the failure of Christian Americanism and vigilante violence to stem the tide of rising voter registration, increased social integration, and moves toward legal equality among racial minorities, Klansmen began to fish around for new ideologies to make sense of their predicament. That the revolutionary doctrine of the neo-Nazi vanguard, the anti-Semitic conspiracism of the National States Rights Party, the hermeneutics of Identity, and the paramilitary strategies of the Minutemen should appeal to an increasingly small and isolated group of alienated white supremacists is perhaps unsurprising. That the ‘White Power!’ activists of the 1970s and 1980s focused their anger on federal law enforcement, however is attributable not only to successful prosecutions of Klan terrorists, but is also due to the fact that COINTELPRO circumvented traditional notions of Federalism as well as legal and constitutional norms that most Americans have cherished since the early twentieth century.98 It was by exploiting this latter issue, arguing that white supremacist convicts were victims of ‘frame-ups’ by ‘Paid Pimps of the FBI,’ and that the proper way to fight the ‘Zionist Occupation Government’ is with a strategy of leaderless resistance and ‘propaganda of the deed,’ that some White Power activists managed to gain sympathy among members of the much larger Christian Patriot movement in the 1980s and 1990s.
Governor Moore had created a special Law Enforcement Committee in January 1966, to suppress Klan violence and publish secret Klan membership lists. Composed of representatives from the State Bureau of Investigation, the State Highway Patrol, the State Revenue Office, and the State Attorney General’s Office, the Committee was headed by Malcolm Seawell, who had been the chief prosecutor of Carolina Klansmen in the early 1950s.99 The United Klans of America, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Inc., had been chartered as fraternal organization in the State, but the elections, Malcolm Seawell contended, demonstrated that it was actually operating as a secret political (and paramilitary organization), and should therefore be outlawed. The FBI secretly provided some information to help Seawell’s Committee in it’s bid to revoke the UKA Charter, but the effort ultimately failed after political controversy erupted between Seawell and the SBI, as well as Secretary of State Thad Eure. Seawell and William O’Quinn, a staff member in the Attorney General’s office, complained that the SBI had withheld reports concerning Klan income and possession of illegal weapons. SBI director Walter Anderson denied this, asserting that only informant identities and the times and manner of intelligence acquisition had been withheld, this in keeping with the Bureau’s intelligence sharing agreement with the FBI. Assistant Attorney General Ralph Moody supported Anderson. In June, he ruled that the Klan was not a paramilitary group, that State had no authority to outlaw the Klan, and that it was restricted to prosecuting individual members. Seawell resigned in protest.100
Add: Seawell-Eure Moore controversy over whether political and paramilitary., from NC, Plus Seawell in 1/66 says “We’re through playing games with the Klan.” “The [law enforcement committee] intends to first prevent violence and second to see that every resource will be used in tracing down and bringing to justice persons responsible for violence in North Carolina.” Seawell Commision planned to know and make public names of Klan members. Look into financial structure to determine where charitable money I s coming from and going. Determine if political, because General Assemb made it a misdemeanor to be a member of a secret political or military organization.101 But by June, Moore advocated a more cautious approach-said “Crime is not committed by organizations or groups but by individuals.”102 Disagreed that secret political society cause Klansmen who ran in elections run openly as Klan members.103
Also: all the stuff from NC on Jones is non-violent but remove him anyway, plus informant reports from FIOA request.104 Kept track of violent statement s and plans in klavern meetings.105
2005-03-18 16:36 | User Profile
During the first week of July 1964, when informants furnished information that the United Klans of America (UKA) was planning to interfere with the desegregation of Montgomery Alabama theaters and restaurants, the FBIââ¬â¢s local Special Agent in Charge (SAC) notified the Montgomery Police Department, which "acted very promptly and effectively, disbursing Klansmen who had gathered in the danger area and making it quite clear that no unlawful activity or interference with the enforcement of the 1964 Civil Rights Act would be tolerated." The police action was so demoralizing to Klansmen, that when the public schools were desegregated in the fall, "Klansmen did not even appear in the vicinities of schools and took no action of any kind anywhere, to interfere."30
...a notable footnote.
2005-08-10 07:00 | User Profile
A good article on the US government's marxist treason!