COINTELPRO: The Sabotage of Legitimate Dissent

COINTELPRO was the FBI's covert program to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize domestic political organizations the Bureau considered a threat. Launched in 1956 and kept secret until 1971, it targeted civil rights groups, black nationalist organizations, the anti-war movement, student activists, and the people who wrote about them. The files collected here come from the Bureau's own paper trail, from the Congressional inquiries that exposed the program, and from writers who documented how it worked.

16 files in this collection

• Actual FBI COINTELPRO Documents
• COINTELPRO: Spying and Disruption (Brian Glick)
• The Brian Glick History of COINTELPRO
• If An Agent Knocks
• The Black Panther Coloring Book
• The FBI and Hollywood
• The Smearing of Jean Seberg
• The Career of Jean Seberg
• Mumia's COINTELPRO File
• COINTELPRO and Qubilah Shabazz
• The Bari/Cherney Bombing
• In Defense of Paranoia
• US Domestic Covert Operations
• US Domestic Covert Operations (Part 2)
• Federal Bureau of Intimidation (Howard Zinn)
• A Rough, Tough, Dirty Business (Omar V. Garrison)

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Great Moments in the History of the FBI

"[Your information is] too precise, too complete to be believed. The questionnaire plus the other information you brought spell out in detail exactly where, when, how, and by whom we are to be attacked. If anything, it sounds like a trap."

FBI response to the top British spy, Dusko Popov (code named "Tricycle") on August 10, 1941, dismissing Popov's report of the complete Japanese plan for the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Pearl Harbor: The Verdict Of History by Gordon Prange, appendix 7 published in 1986. Based on records from the JOINT CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Nov 15, 1945 to May 31, 1946.

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FBI Tries to keep the lid on J. Edgar Hoover's "lifestyle"

From 1943, a letter instructing a field agent how to respond to emerging rumors regarding Hoover's sexuality.

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The FBI announces a suspect in the Atlanta Bombing

Remember how the network anchors tried to pin this on the militias?

From Reuter's:

        Guard Suspect in Olympic Bomb  
        The Atlanta Journal reports in a special edition that a  
security guard who alerted police to the bomb at Atlanta's 
Olympic Centennial Park is a prime suspect in the case. Two 
people died and 110 were injured in the explosion. The paper 
reported that the guard, Richard Jewell, is a suspect. Jewell 
was on hand to help evacuate a crowd of concert goers packed 
around the stage where the bomb exploded early Saturday morning. 
Jewell had been recognized as a hero following the bombing. This 
morning he appeared on with Katie Couric on NBC's 'Today 
Show.' An FBI spokesman in Atlanta says nobody has yet been 
charged in the bombing and declines comment on the newspaper 
article.