Lessons for Today: The Fascist Bureau of Investigation

The FBI has served the U.S. ruling class as a national fascist police force ever since its inception in 1908. Its use as a tool of political repression reached its height in the Counterintelligence Program (COINTEL) in the 1960s and 1970s, although Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon and Kennedy all made use of FBI surveillance activities. Although the Senator Church Committee supposedly tried to rein in COINTEL, its tactics have continued to this day.

In the late 1960s, fascist-in-chief FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover ordered his agents to “expose, disrupt, misdirect or otherwise discredit” many militant, left-wing, anti-war, antiracist and communist groups, including the Progressive Labor Party. In a letter dated July 5, 1968, Hoover told all his special COINTEL agents that, “There is a definite hostility among SDS [Students for A Democratic Society] and other New Left groups towards…the Progressive Labor Party. This hostility should be exploited wherever possible” (Letter to SAC, Albany and all Field Offices re: Counterintelligence  Program, # 100-449698).

Among other attacks against PLP, the FBI forged a racist leaflet, attributed to PLP, and sent it to a black nationalist group in Los Angeles attempting to provoke the latter into violently assaulting the Party. It also circulated forged internal bulletins designed to foment dissension within the PLP leadership and membership. The goal was to “increase factionalism, cause disruption and win defections.”

There is every reason to believe that the FBI is continuing these anti-communist tactics today. 

Hoover’s letter further ordered “instigating or taking advantage of personal conflicts…existing between New Left leaders; creating impressions that certain New Left leaders are informants for the Bureau; use of articles from student newspapers and/or the ‘underground press’ to show the depravity of New Left leaders and members… [and] advocation of the use of narcotics and free sex…to send to university officials…and parents of students who are active in New Left matters.” Such letters could be signed “A Concerned Alumni” or “A Concerned Taxpayer.”

According to attorney Brian Glick’s book “War at Home,” the FBI’s COINTEL’s four main methods included:

1. Infiltration:…Not merely spy on political activists…[but] discredit and disrupt….to undermine trust and scare off potential supporters.

2. Psychological warfare:….myriad ‘dirty tricks’… Plant false media stories and publish bogus leaflets and other publications in the name of targeted groups….Forge correspondence, send anonymous letters and make anonymous telephone calls….Set up pseudo movement groups run by government agents, and manipulate or strong-arm parents, employers, landlords, school officials and others to cause trouble for activists.

3. Legal harassment:….Abuse the legal system to harass dissidents and make them appear to be criminals….[Law officers give] perjured testimony and present fabricated evidence as a pretext for false arrests and wrongful imprisonment….

4. Illegal force:...Conspire with local police departments…to conduct illegal break-ins…to search dissidents’ homes; and commit vandalism, assaults, beatings and assassinations….

Assassinations of Black Panther Party Members

The racist FBI also conspired with police departments of many cities (San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Philadelphia, Chicago) to encourage repeated raids on Black Panther homes — often with little or no evidence of violations of laws — which resulted directly in the racist police killing of many members of the Black Panther Party, most notably Chicago Chairman Fred Hampton on December 4, 1969. 

To eliminate antiracist black leaders, they targeted specific individuals, accusing them of crimes they did not commit, suppressing exculpatory evidence that would’ve proved their innocence and falsely incarcerating them. Black Panther leader Elmer Pratt was imprisoned for 27 years until a California Superior Court vacated his murder conviction. An FBI agent testified he believed Pratt had been framed because both the FBI and the Los Angeles Police Department knew he had been out of the area at the time of the murder (CNN, 11/18/2010).

In another instance in San Diego, the FBI financed, armed and controlled an extreme right-wing group of former Minutemen, transforming it into a group called the Secret Army Organization which targeted groups, activists, and leaders involved in the Anti-War  Movement for both intimidation and violent acts (Noam Chomsky, “Triumphs of Democracy”).

The Church Committee reported that FBI tactics included, “anonymous attempts to break up marriages, disrupt meetings, ostracize persons from their professions and provoke target groups into rivalries that might result in deaths.” Further, in a memo dated July 3, 1968, Hoover directed COINTEL head W. C. Sullivan to, “Be alert for opportunities to confuse and disrupt New Left activities by misinformation. For example, when events are planned, notification that the event has been canceled or postponed could be sent to various individuals.”

Massive ‘Sophisticated Vigilante Operation’

“Between 1965 and 1975, the FBI opened more than 500,000 intelligence files on more than one million Americans” in a “sophisticated vigilante operation’ against anti-war, antiracist and left-wing organizations.” These included extensive files on Albert Einstein and Martin Luther King, Jr., among others.

In that decade, the FBI employed 5,000 secret undercover informers in Chicago alone, costing $2.5 million (David Kaplan, California’s Center for Investigative Reporting).

Actually COINTEL “coincided with a broader federal effort to prepare military responses for urban riots, and began increased collaboration between the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency and the Department of Defense”( Enemies: A History of the FBI, Tim Weiner, 2012).

Weiner revealed how widespread this program was: 

Some 1,500 army intelligence officers in civilian clothing undertook the surveillance of some 100,000 American citizens. Army intelligence shared all their reports over the next three years [1967-1970]. The CIA tracked antiwar leaders and black militants who traveled overseas, and reported back to the FBI. The FBI, in turn, shared thousands of selected files on Americans with army intelligence and the CIA. All three intelligence services sent the names of Americans to the National Security Agency for inclusion on a global watch list; the NSA relayed back to the FBI hundreds of transcripts of intercepted telephone calls to and from ‘suspect’ Americans.”

So much for the “war” between the FBI and CIA. One example that these tactics did not end with the Church Committee Report is the fact that the FBI tracked Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam for more than two decades afterwards (Associated Press and Toronto Star, 11/7/2008). Halberstam, a NY Times writer had exposed many Pentagon lies about the Vietnam war.  

Such are the lengths that the racist U.S. ruling class will go to counter domestic opposition to its fascist and war policies in order to maintain their top-dog position among their imperialist rivals. But one factor these capitalist butchers don’t have on their side is millions of workers who suffer because of this surveillance state. These rulers may attack PLP and other militant pro-communist and anti-capitalist forces, but they cannot keep us from organizing to send them to their graves.