Branko Narcotic — The FBI’s Secret War

COINTELPRO, short for “Counter Intelligence Program,” was the name given to a series of programs initiated by the Bureau between 1956 and 1971 aimed at undermining and eradicating groups, movements, and individuals — almost all of which were part of the Left — it viewed as threats to national security and social order.…

As the Church Committee, a congressional committee set up in 1975 to analyze the excesses of US law enforcement and intelligence agencies over the preceding decades, put it, what followed was “a secret war against those citizens it considers threats to the established order.”…

List of outrageously "dirty tricks," including framing.

Particularly shameful was the episode involving the actress Jean Seberg, who donated money to the Black Panthers. As well as wiretapping and following her, the FBI decided to destroy her reputation by circulating gossip that her unborn baby had been the product of an affair with a member of the Black Panthers. The LA Times and Newsweek both ran the made-up story.

When Seberg read it, she attempted suicide, resulting in the stillbirth of her baby. According to her partner, she attempted suicide every year near the anniversary of the baby’s death, eventually succeeding on August 30, 1979.

 in Seberg’s case, the media was complicit in the FBI’s operations. Much like the intelligence officials today who leverage the anonymity granted to them by reporters to make a raft of claims that go unchallenged, the FBI regularly relied on friendly newspapers and publications to disseminate these lies.…

Of all the FBI’s COINTELPRO operations, none were as vicious as those carried out against various civil rights organizations.

Of all the movements of this period, the FBI viewed civil rights organizers as the greatest threat of all. According to an internal FBI document produced in 1963, civil rights protests were a threat to the “established order,” and Martin Luther King Jr a dangerous radical who had to be stopped.…

Interesting how US history is punctuate with assassinations by a lone perp under circumstances that where never explicated satisfactorily — JFK, RFK, MLK Jr., Malcolm X, Karen Silkwood.

Now it is not just the FBI but DHS. And the president now has virtually unlimited power to order the assassination of American citizens without judicial review or legal representation.

Jacobin
The FBI’s Secret War
Branko Marcetic