<HTML><HTML>In a message dated 5/12/05 1:33:54 PM Eastern Daylight Time, lbo-talk-request@lbo-talk.org writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">There's someone on the WBAI producers list denouncing me as a racist and a cop for suggesting that we need to broaden our audience a bit. He's invoked Cointelpro. As I recall, provocateurs were often the most hypermilitant, and often the ones who invoked race to set groups against each other. Do other people know more about this? Doug </BLOCKQUOTE> Back in the early 70s, I was a member of something called the New American Movement, which I believe was subject to provocation by COINTELPRO, the local (Philadelphia) police, or both. I never found out for sure, but the events took place at the height of COINTELPRO operations. The need to broaden our base was about the last thing a COINTELPRO operative would have suggested. They rather seemed to want to create an atmosphere of mutual suspicion within the group. At one point my roommate found an electronic transmitter on top of a doorframe in my apartment. At first we thought it was a real listening device, but were told by someone who knew that the cops/FBI had much more sophisticated equipment, which could have been more clevelry concealed. Conclusion: it had been planted in order to be discovered. A member of our group also got an anonymous letter in the mail falsely accusing another member of being a cop. I think this fits in with FBI tactics against the Panthers as well. A favorite ploy of the FBI was to insinuate that other leftists were FBI agents. This can be your retort, although I doubt that those accusing you are agents. Cop baiting and race baiting have always been the standard fare of leftist faction fights, and I understand they are particularly favored by the people now in charge at WBAI.  </HTML>