Anyone else old enough to remember when COINTELPRO was murdering citizens by the dozen?

American members of AIM during the 1970s.

Frank Olson

Know your BFEE: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ford Covered Up CIA Murder of American Scientist


Dorothy Lagarreta

Know your BFEE: American Children Used in Radiation Experiments


Karen Silkwood

You think I contaminated myself, you think I did that?

you name above seem to have been targeted or exploited by other federal agencies and/or private entities:

Olson - CIA Operation Artichoke LSD experiments
Lagarreta - AEC, and later DOE
Silkwood - Kerr McGee Corp. or its security contractors

COINTELPRO, granted, has become a generic term for dirty tricks operations against dissidents and whistleblowers. In that sense, you are right to include these names, but we would have to vastly expand the list of casualties.

My intention was precisely that -- demonstrate that members of the national security state have committed murder and who knows what else to maintain power, COINTELPRO run by FBI just being one instrument. Other programs, as you know, include CIA's CHAOS, developed after the Domestic Operations Division was formed in 1964, contrary to the agency's charter.

I truly appreciate you setting things straight for the record, my Friend. Author Seth Rosenfeld provides something most relevant about our favorite managed democracy that seems to have dropped from consciousness:

Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals, and Reagan's Rise to Power

It's almost weird how the dot things connect, despite MOCKINGBIRD's best efforts.

Did they never watch Get Smart?

One has to wonder why the Tea Party and militias never seem to have been infiltrated.

Guy is the real deal, a brave agent who stepped forward. Among his assassination-connected work, FBI Special Agent Don Adams interviewed racist Joseph Adams Milteer, a guy an FBI informant had taped detailing a pre-Dallas plot in Miami.



He wrote a book on the experience:

http://adamsjfk.com/?page_id=30

A rabid right-wing racist who was tape-recorded by FBI detailing the assassination of JFK "with a high-powered rifle from a high-rise office building," then a couple of weeks later appears in photographs in Dealey Plaza should make the front page and lead every broadcast, but it doesn't, for some reason.

...to the assassination, people who denied being there (Nixon) or claimed they couldn't remember where they were (Poppy Bush).

Speaking of Milteer, the circumstances of his death in March 1974 at the age of 72 were a bit hazy. His stove had exploded several weeks before his death resulting in burns to his legs. While undergoing treatment for his burns, which were healing, he appears to have died suddenly. Loose end, perhaps? Any thoughts?

George Herbert Walker Bush was in Dallas that day, according to what he told the FBI.



Professor Donald E. Wilkes, Jr. has more on Milteer:

"Everything ran true to form.  I guess you thought I was kidding you when I said he (Kennedy) would be killed from a window with a high-powered rifle."

http://www.law.uga.edu/dwilkes_more/jfk_4did.html

started an investigation, but somehow never passed the information along to the detail assigned to guard Kennedy in Dallas. Curiouser and curiouser. http://www.law.uga.edu/dwilkes_more/jfk_4did.html



Interesting. I'll have to look closer. Thnx.

keyword hijacking

as all that. All the alphabet governmental orgs and business groups PROBABLY worked together and, at the very least, shared info.

....Unless they stumbled across another intel agency's operation they rarely knew they were spying on the same people. Sometimes they infiltrated the same groups and didn't even know they were in the same meetings.

that many undercover operations have SEVERAL levels where ONLY THE PEOPLE AT THE TOP KNOW EVERYTHING THAT'S GOING ON! That's the whole premise behind "need to know".

Frankly it's all speculation on our parts, BUT because of the things that HAVE come out from FOIA requests, at least there's an element of education to the speculation.

I am familiar with their shameful history - but thought it was mostly illegally surveying and harassing people. A short review finds they encouraged radical groups to go to war with each other, and also encouraged police raids that lead to deaths. Since they acted through other, the media might not have seen the pattern (then again, they might have been encouraged not to see the pattern).

Bryant

There's a new book out called "Subversives", by Seth Rosenfeld, based on over 20 years of FOIA lawsuits about the FBI's actions during the Free Speech and anti-war movements in the 60's.

Hoover and CIA director McCone considered many Bay area reporters, and the Hearst Family as "assets, and leaked classified defamatory information to discredit people like Robert Scheer, Mario Savio, etc. They clandestinely backed Ronald Reagans campaign for Governor.

After an innocent construction worker was shot and killed, by police, on a rooftop observing the Peoples Park protests, scumbag Ed Meese said in a recent interview, that he deserved to die.

An ex-Army informant for the FBI, Richard Aoki, admits to his role in arming and training the Black Panther Party in firearms.

Same shit is going on today.

Local TV had an interview with horrified emergency room doctors who had removed double-ought buckshot from Rectors heart. They had the bullets in their hands for the camera to see.

Reagan went on TV and said the shooting had been done by protesters, not the cops.

At the time Rector was shot, I was a block away on Telegraph Avenue, running for my life and dodging bullets. The guy running next to me fell into the street, his back peppered by buckshot.

It's hard to describe the shock we felt as volley after volley of shots rang out from the lines of police. Things immediately changed at that point. There was no place to hide.

I learned that night what a facile, reassuring, pathological liar Reagan was.

....but the man behind the curtain was pulling the strings....Poppy Bush.

helping the panthers get arms in the context of being a panther supporter.

the information that he was an informant came out after his death, and even former members dispute the meaning.

I was stabbed nine times in Central America. Had I NOT been a U.S. citizen, who knows where I would have disappeared to.

They would just shoot you at the checkpoints, back then. This even happened to the son of one of the generals in El Salvador, mistaken for a leftist and executed beside the road.

on Nov. 2 1963......because it was going to be held in the usual place in Philadelphia. The game was only played in chicago once in 1923. It was normally played on the Sat after Thanksgiving, in 63 its was played on Dec 7th because of JFK's death.

Here's what Abraham Bolden, the first African American to serve on the White House Secret Service detail, had to say:



Who cares what teams? The point is JFK was under threat and changed plans. What bothers me more than how few know about these things is how many seem to think the assassination 50 years ago doesn't matter for our present political situation.

For those interested in learning more about the Chicago plot, an excellent article by Edwin Black:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/49710299/The-Chicago-Plot-to-Kill-JFK

...but you won't find one of those kinds of committees today. Just think what they would have done to GW & Dick and their whole entire cabal. "Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end...." when politicians were all Americans and all knew knew right from wrong.

just like "w" and cheney..g h bush was in the CIA and eventually ran it. Their rw world vision is embodied in organizations like this.
I can't imagine that this organization was ever disbanded.

politicians, organizations, people..anyone that threatened the existing status quo of America. The status quo is a rw greed machine that promotes war and inequality. Exactly like the CIA does (supposedly outside of our borders) IMO, to think that the CIA operates only non-domestically, is rather naive. The 2000 "election" is a perfect example of how the CIA has manipulated the leadership of Latin American countries for decades.
The people who participate in these operations propagate an extreme rw agenda, as shown by their actions. IMO, they are people (just not as elite as bush and cheney) with very similar world and domestic agenda's.
I am confused about how you thought I was writing about the Church Commission, a body made to cover-up the Kennedy assassination facts.

I was a young adult with a mountain of responsibility sitting on my shoulders when all this was going on and was not really plugged into anything but myself and my children. Then came 1984. Literally. I knew something was definitely akilt when I heard what was coming out of Reagan's mouth. Went to the library and started studying history. I went all the way back to the beginning and came forward in time. I see that I need to go back to cointelpro and brush up. Thank you for straightening my thinking out. Is there a definitive source you can recommend to get me started? One replete with full index and bibliography? Thanks a bunch for replying to my confusing question.

Howard Zinn"s, History of the United States is a must read and covers cointelpro.

warren commission was 'a body made to cover up the kennedy assassination facts'


The Church Committee was the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church (D-ID) in 1975. A precursor to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the committee investigated intelligence gathering for illegality by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after certain activities had been revealed by the Watergate affair.

I worked at PETA at the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#Post-COINTELPRO_operations

Like or dislike PETA, that's your prerogative, but what happened there in 2005 was just wrong. I was nothing more than a web designer, mostly padding my resume for future gigs, but I believed in some of what PETA is trying to do and to be targeted because PETA didn't disavow ALF (Animal Liberation Front) and would sometimes give bail money to ALF-accused activists, is wrong IMO. When we aren't allowed to dissent without being investigated, that's something I take issue with because I've been through it personally.

I don't know, because of my past history with PETA, if I'd ever be able to get any kind of job that needs security clearance, because I don't know what, if anything, is in my FBI file.

Not challenging you, but curious to hear the details of what happened. Yes, PETA was (is?) a COINTELPRO (type) target.

but it's always been a concern in the back of my mind since it's within my employment history and specifically because of the illegal investigation by the FBI while I was employed there.

They did with me. That happened at two (short-lived) jobs in a row about ten years ago after DU Front-paged my series, "How US Counterterrorism Failed on 9/11": http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/02/09/26_failed.html

horrifying.

Not the first time I had received similar treatment.

In college, I studied with Howard Zinn for several years. One of my class assignments was to organize a peaceful demonstration at Reagan's First Inauguration. I must have talked to every liberal left trouble-maker on the East Coast from Congresswoman Bella Abzug to the NYC Yippies. We ended up part of a larger coalition that filled several dozen protest buses with students from schools in Boston and New England.

I learned several things from that experience. A rather dismissive Nov. 1, 1980 Harvard Crimson article is still on-line about a press conference I put together. Twenty people showed up, which isn't bad for such events. But, the reporter harped on how we had expected a better turnout. http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1980/11/4/coalition-for-peace-ptwenty-people-attended/ That told me a lot about the attitude of some elitist media and institutions. They don't like agitators, particularly outside agitators (I went to another university on the "wrong side" of the Charles River -- the one with Howard Zinn on the faculty -- but dared to also organize students at Harvard and MIT where Howard's buddy, Noam Chomsky, taught).

It also taught me that gatekeepers of mainstream organizations discourage grassroots organizing. It taught me that the media isn't really so "liberal," even at the collegiate level. The people who are worth following and keeping in one's heart are often the least concerned about protocol and pecking orders, and I learned why Noam Chomsky seems to hate The New York Times so much.

Affirmation of that insight also came after my own college newspaper declined to publish an article I wrote about the lessons of nonviolent civil resistance at the Seabrook nuclear plant occupation on October 6, 1979. After the school editor told me, "we've already covered that event enough," I took it elsewhere. The Boston Globe published it on the Op-ed page.

Howard gave me an A. That was most gratifying.



During that time, I had an interesting encounter with the Boston FBI while I was involved with the Clamshell Alliance organizing anti-nuclear protests. A strange, little homeless man showed up at a meeting and attached himself to me. He was very persistent, but friendly. One afternoon, we were alone together in a side room at the Clamshell offices and he spotted a pile of computer print-outs with names and addresses, what seemed to be the org's mailing list. He suggested that we should take them. I asked why I would to do such a thing, and he said we could sell them or I could use the list for my own organizing. I didn't take him up on either suggestion, and said we should leave. As we walked down a Back Bay side street, I turned around and spotted a man following about 100 feet behind us - he suddenly stopped and looked in a store window for no apparent reason. A bit further down the street, I looked over my shoulder, and the figure darted away down an alley. I didn't see the little homeless man again after that.

I can only speculate about how my life would have changed if I had followed the man's suggestion. Classic agent provocateur - classic attempt at recruitment by entrapment.

Perceiving that you're being followed doesn't necessarily mean the FBI is on your tail. But, it soon became perfectly clear that's exactly who I was dealing with. Shortly thereafter my step-father received a telephone call at home. My step-father was at the time a mucky-muck Supergrade federal executive. A man who identified himself as a Special Agent with the Boston FBI Office said he wanted to discuss my activities. Whether it was an attempt at intimidation or just a courtesy call between two federal employees, it didn't work - I didn't care much for my step-father or his politics or job, and he divorced my mother shortly thereafter. Not entirely because of me.

But, those incidents taught me something about the FBI. They really are the national political police, and have been for a long time. I also learned a thing or two about the way the FBI deals with dissent - there are many ways to try to put a cork in it. Some more forceful than others. I got the easy treatment, and the Inaugural protest in 1981 was peaceful. Everyone was cheerful -- it was a beautiful, unseasonably warm day in Washington. Everyone seemed to be in a Springtime mood, except Vice President George H.W. Bush, who popped up out the sunroof of his armored limo as it passed the demonstrators standing in the designated protest area in the shadow of the J. Edgar Hoover Bldg a series of sharp, sideways jabbing thumb gestures. I still remember his smirk - his son inherited that same expression of masked hostility and adolescent Tom Foolery. What a classy family.

Professor Zinn taught non-violent resistance with a genuine smile.

I have been an "activist" for over 40 years, and as long as I can remember, police, or others infiltrated our organizations. Many times inciting violence.
After a while, we had to have our meetings less public, so that the infiltrators, who we knew about, wouldn't know.

This was in NYC around the time of the Viet Nam War protests, and the first environmental demonstrations.

They probably have 339 Lafayette St. bugged permanently.

But, then again, just about everybody else is over the age of 12, these days. Total Information, Groundbreaker, and all that.

Because Obama is doing it, the Republicans will now "investigate" it.

http://www.adn.com/2013/01/11/2749217/william-fulton-miller-bodyguard.html


Now I am no fan of miller but I think it is a bit strange that an FBI informant had such an impact on an election. Remember, this guys action got miller national notoriety and help sink miller.

So the question I have is, what other politicians is the FBI spying on?

if they have any importance at all.

yeah, ssdd.

Most of the burglaries were simply intimidation to let the members know the Feds were watching, and not afraid to break the law.

thx for the spelling. i wasn't active, but many friends were.

let me think: Ahhh. Yep, yepper.:

yes the US through the CIA and proxies is responsible for many deaths.

But the Obama Admin is saying it has the legal justification to do so now and even on American soil.

IF it was wrong when it was being done secretly, it becomes no less wrong now.

And yes I agree the right's outrage is selectively timed and convenient.

Ours should not be.

What people did in the past doesn't not excuse what people are doing now.

I think a lot of things have been grossly exadurated as the various networks try to fill up 24 hrs a day!

I clearly remember the "paranoia" of a lot of movement people in the late 60's, early 70's. Every phone was imagined to be tapped. We KNEW we were infiltrated.

I remember walking over to the wall phone (remember those) in one commune house where I lived for a while, picking up the receiver & saying "Hi, put me through to J. Edgar, please." Nobody else thought it was funny.

I also remember, after returning to the STates after Vietnam, having Army Intelligence guys going around circulating pictures of demonstrations, asking if we could identify anybody (e.g. soldiers demonstrating while out of uniform).

even as a little kid he scared the shit outta me. Then, I remember well the targeting of peaceful individuals in the 60's. Yep, I think we have much the same going on today. The US boasts about civil liberties, peace and all, but when you stand up for civil liberties and peace you end up on a list. Way back then it was the commies, today it's the terrorists. Yet the RW crazies in the US often get a free pass. And OWS is smeared by the political machine.

Certain business deals are subject to "approval" by our government, and when the dealing doesn't go the way it's supposed to, there is trouble for the person responsible.

I will NEVER forget how society is infiltrated against the constitution's right to free assembly and free speech. It's just that, now, we have the internet. It's amazing how little we had to work with in the 60's and 70's, but got a lot done. No cell phones, internet, home printers. And yet, now, we organize less. Go figure!

Nobody likes to talk about that.

It wasn't that long ago. Was it?