McKINNEY Takes "COINTELPRO" to UN Human Rights Commissioner
http://www.truthout.com/0563.McKinney.CON.UN.htm
McKinney Raises US Government¹s "COINTELPRO" program with UN Human Rights Commissioner
DURBIN, SOUTH AFRICA -- 09.02.01 | Today, in a meeting with United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney presented Robinson with two documents as evidence of the US governments violations of both US and international law and, in particular, specific violation of the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The first document given to Robinson was confidential memorandum 46, written by National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski on March 17, 1978 and it details the federal government's plan to destroy functioning black leadership in the United States. This document provides a critical insight into the federal government's concern at the apparent growing influence of the African American political movement. The second document is a report entitled "Human Rights in the United States [The Unfinished Story- Current Political Prisoners- Victims of COINTELPRO]" and it was compiled by the Human Rights Research Fund, headed by Kathleen Cleaver. This document provides an overview of the counterintelligence program which, from the 1950s to the 1980s, was run in the United States against political activists and targeted organizations. The excesses of the counterintelligence program were first exposed in 1975 by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, known as the Church Committee. "From as early as the 1950's and right up until the 1980's the US government directed the machinery of state against the African American political movement and, in so doing, effectively put an end to the civil rights movement inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King. COINTELPRO was in clear violation of the US Constitution and a wide range of US laws, as well as, in clear breach of internationally accepted standards for human rights and fundamental freedoms. That our government would turn its full resources against its own law abiding citizens is unforgivable and ranks us among those rogue nations of the world who have chosen to kill hope and sow misery in its place," stated McKinney.
Also see: http://www.house.gov/mckinney/news/index.htm The following paper was presented to the WCAR in Durban, S. Africa yesterday.
From: Paul Wolf <paulwolf at icdc.com>
COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story
Compilation by Paul Wolf with contributions from Robert Boyle, Bob Brown,
Tom Burghardt, Noam Chomsky, Ward Churchill, Kathleen Cleaver, Bruce Ellison, Cynthia McKinney, Nkechi Taifa, Laura Whitehorn, Nicholas Wilson, and Howard Zinn.
A longer and annotated version of this document is available online:
http://www.house.gov/mckinney/news/index.htm
Table of Contents TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page #
Overview 1 Victimization 4 COINTELPRO Techniques 6 Murder and Assassination 8 Agents Provocateurs 18 The Ku Klux Klan 18 The Secret Army Organization 23 Snitch Jacketing 26 The Subversion of the Press 27 Political Prisoners 32 Leonard Peltier 32 Mumia Abu Jamal 35 Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt 35 Dhoruba Bin Wahad 41 Marshall Eddie Conway 46 Justice Hangs in the Balance 47 Appendix: The Legacy of COINTELPRO 50 CISPES 54 The Judi Bari Bombing 56 Bibliography 64
Overview
We're here to talk about the FBI and U.S. democracy because here we have this peculiar situation that we live in a democratic country - everybody knows that, everybody says it, it's repeated, it's dinned into our ears a
thousand times, you grow up, you pledge allegiance, you salute the flag, you hail democracy, you look at the totalitarian states, you read the history of tyrannies, and here is the beacon light of democracy. And, of course, there's some truth to that. There are things you can do in the United States that you can't do many other places without being put in jail.
But the United States is a very complex system. It's very hard to describe because, yes, there are elements of democracy; there are things that you're grateful for, that you're not in front of the death squads in
El Salvador. On the other hand, it's not quite a democracy. And one of the things that makes it not quite a democracy is the existence of outfits like the FBI and the CIA. Democracy is based on openness, and the
existence of a secret policy, secret lists of dissident citizens, violates the spirit of democracy.
Despite its carefully contrived image as the nation's premier crime fighting agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has always functioned primarily as America's political police. This role includes not only the collection of intelligence on the activities of political dissidents and groups, but often times, counterintelligence operations to
thwart those activities. The techniques employed are easily recognized by anyone familiar with military psychological operations. The FBI, through the use of the criminal justice system, the postal system, the telephone system and the Internal Revenue Service, enjoys an operational capability surpassing even that of the CIA, which conducts covert actions
in foreign countries without having access to those institutions.
Although covert operations have been employed throughout FBI history, the
formal COunter INTELligence PROgrams (COINTELPRO's) of the period 1956-1971 were the first to be both broadly targeted and centrally directed. According to FBI researcher Brian Glick, "FBI headquarters set
policy, assessed progress, charted new directions, demanded increased production, and carefully monitored and controlled day-to-day operations.
This arrangement required that national COINTELPRO supervisors and local FBI field offices communicate back and forth, at great length, concerning
every operation. They did so quite freely, with little fear of public exposure. This generated a prolific trail of bureaucratic paper. The moment that paper trail began to surface, the FBI discontinued all of its
formal domestic counterintelligence programs. It did not, however, cease its covert political activity against U.S. dissidents."
Of roughly 20,000 people investigated by the FBI solely on the basis of their political views between 1956-1971, about 10 to 15% were the targets
of active counterintelligence measures per se. Taking counterintelligence
in its broadest sense, to include spreading false information, it's estimated that about two-thirds were COINTELPRO targets. Most targets were never suspected of committing any crime.
The nineteen sixties were a period of social change and unrest. Color television brought home images of jungle combat in Vietnam and protesters
and priests burning draft cards and American flags. In the spring and summer months of 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967 and 1968, massive black rebellions swept across almost every major US city in the Northeast, Midwest and California. Presidents Johnson and Nixon, and many others feared violent revolution and denounced the protesters. President Kennedy had felt the opposite: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
The counterculture of the sixties, and the FBI's reaction to it, were in many ways a product of the 1950s, the so-called "Age of McCarthyism." John Edgar Hoover, longtime Director of the FBI, was a prominent spokesman of the anti-communist paranoia of the era:The forces which are most anxious to weaken our internal security are not always easy to identify. Communists have been trained in deceit and secretly work toward
the day when they hope to replace our American way of life with a Communist dictatorship. They utilize cleverly camouflaged movements, such
as peace groups and civil rights groups to achieve their sinister purposes. While they as individuals are difficult to identify, the Communist party line is clear. Its first concern is the advancement of Soviet Russia and the godless Communist cause. It is important to learn to know the enemies of the American way of life.
Throughout the 1960s, Hoover consistently applied this theory to a wide variety of groups, on occasion reprimanding agents unable to find "obvious" communist connections in civil rights and anti-war groups. During the entire COINTELPRO period, no links to Soviet Russia were uncovered in any of the social movements disrupted by the FBI.
The commitment of the FBI to undermine and destroy popular movements departing from political orthodoxy has been extensive, and apparently proportional to the strength and promise of such movements, as one would expect in the case of the secret police organization of any state, though
it is doubtful that there is anything comparable to this record among the
Western industrial democracies.
In retrospect, the COINTEPRO's of the 1960s were thoroughly successful in
achieving their stated goals, "to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the enemies of the State.
Victimization
The most serious of the FBI disruption programs were those directed against "Black Nationalists." Agents were instructed to undertake actions to discredit these groups both within "the responsible Negro community" and to "Negro radicals," also "to the white community, both the responsible community and to `liberals' who have vestiges of sympathy
for militant black nationalists simply because they are Negroes..."
A March 4th, 1968 memo from J Edgar Hoover to FBI field offices laid out the goals of the COINTELPRO - Black Nationalist Hate Groups program: "to prevent the coalition of militant black nationalist groups;" "to prevent the rise of a messiah who could unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement;" "to prevent violence on the part of black nationalist groups;" "to prevent militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining respectability;" and "to prevent the long-range growth of militant black nationalist organizations, especially among youth." Included in the program were a broad spectrum of civil rights and religious groups; targets included Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, and Elijah Muhammad.
A top secret Special Report for President Nixon, dated June 1970 gives some insight into the motivation for the actions undertaken by the government to destroy the Black Panther party. The report describes the party as "the most active and dangerous black extremist group in the United States." Its "hard-core members" were estimated at about 800, but
"a recent poll indicates that approximately 25 per cent of the black population has a great respect for the BPP, incuding 43 per cent of blacks under 21 years of age." On the basis of such estimates of the potential of the party, counterintelligence operations were carried out to ensure that it did not succeed in organizing as a substantial social or political force.
Another memorandum explains the motivation for the FBI operations against
student protesters: "the movement of rebellious youth known as the 'New Left,' involving and influencing a substantial number of college students, is having a serious impact on contemporary society with a potential for serious domestic strife." The New Left has "revolutionary aims" and an "identification with Marxism-Leninism." It has attempted "to infiltrate and radicalize labor," and after failing "to subvert and control the mass media" has established "a large network of underground publications which serve the dual purpose of an internal communication network and an external propaganda organ." Its leaders have "openly stated their sympathy with the international communist revolutionary movements in South Vietnam and Cuba; and have directed others into activities which support these movements."
The effectiveness of the state disruption programs is not easy to evaluate. Black leaders estimate the significance of the programs as substantial. Dr. James Turner of Cornell University, former president of
the African Heritage Studies Association, assessed these programs as having "serious long-term consequences for black Americans," in that they
"had created in blacks a sense of depression and hopelessness."
<<end excerpt
This document is available as a .doc file online at: http://nativenewsonline.org/archive3_01.coinwcar2.doc
A longer and annotated version of this document is available online: http://www.house.gov/mckinney/news/index.htm
http://www.jeffberry.com/Cynthia/