Beyond Surveillance: What the FBI's Own Files Show About COINTELPRO

For 15 years, the FBI did more than watch political groups. It mailed forged letters, planted rumors, and tried to turn rivals against one another. The Bureau's own memos show where investigating ended and covert interference began, and how often it crossed that line.

The FBI's public records site states the basic facts plainly. "The FBI began COINTELPRO—short for Counterintelligence Program—in 1956 to disrupt the activities of the Communist Party of the United States." The program later expanded to the Ku Klux Klan, the Socialist Workers Party, the Black Panther Party and other groups. "All COINTELPRO operations were ended in 1971." Then comes a concession: COINTELPRO "was later rightfully criticized by Congress and the American people for abridging first amendment rights and for other reasons" (FBI Records Vault, "COINTELPRO," archived Jan. 1, 2026).

So the program's abuses aren't just an accusation from the Bureau's critics. The FBI itself calls the criticism "rightful." But the same sentence also minimizes. It opens with "Although limited in scope," and says the program took up "about two-tenths of one percent of the FBI's workload over a 15-year period."

That figure measures effort, not harm. The Senate investigators who studied the files counted "more than 2,000 approved COINTELPRO actions," and 2,370 in total (Church Committee, Book III, COINTELPRO report, pp. 3, 8).

What COINTELPRO was, and what it wasn't

The Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, known as the Church Committee after its chairman, Sen. Frank Church, drew the key distinction in its first sentences on the subject. In COINTELPRO, it wrote, "the Bureau went beyond the collection of intelligence to secret action designed to 'disrupt' and 'neutralize' target groups and individuals" (Book III, p. 3). The committee said "covert action," the term used for secret efforts to influence political outcomes, was "a more accurate term" than "counterintelligence" (Book III, p. 4).

Collecting information and investigating specific crimes are one thing. Secretly acting to damage a group's reputation, membership, alliances or leadership is another. COINTELPRO was the second. The committee also found the boundary blurry inside the Bureau. FBI witnesses agreed there was "a large grey area between 'counterintelligence' and 'aggressive investigation,'" and a New Left program supervisor called the COINTELPRO label partly "an administrative device to channel the mail" (Book III, p. 12). So not every abusive FBI action of the era was formally COINTELPRO, and not everything filed under the label was a dramatic operation.

The first formal program, against the Communist Party, began in August 1956 with Director J. Edgar Hoover's approval. It formalized what an FBI official described as tactics already in use, "divide, confuse, weaken in diverse ways, an organization" (Book III, p. 16). FBI witnesses blamed Supreme Court rulings that made prosecuting Communists difficult, though the committee noted the key Smith Act decisions came in 1957, after the program began (Book III, p. 10, note).

Who was targeted, and why the differences matter

The committee identified five domestic programs: the Communist Party, USA (1956–71); the Socialist Workers Party (1961–69); "White Hate Groups" (1964–71); "Black Nationalist–Hate Groups" (1967–71); and the "New Left" (1968–71) (Book III, p. 4). The quoted titles are the FBI's labels. The committee warned they "should not be accepted uncritically."

The targets were not alike:

• The Socialist Workers Party was a small Trotskyist party that ran candidates for office. The committee reported that the Bureau "has conceded that the SWP has never been engaged in organizational violence." It was targeted, the committee found, "for its rhetoric" (Book III, p. 18).
• The Ku Klux Klan program began September 2, 1964, amid pressure on the Bureau over Klan involvement in the murder of civil rights workers. It aimed "to expose, disrupt, and otherwise neutralize" Klan and "hate" groups. The committee found it "very precisely targeted," mostly limited to the groups originally named (Book III, pp. 16, 18–19).
• The Black Panther Party became the main focus of the "Black Nationalist" program by July 1969. The committee's staff counted 233 of 295 authorized actions in that program against it (Book III, Panther report, p. 188).
• The "New Left" program was the vaguest. FBI officials couldn't define the term "except as 'more or less an attitude.'" One protest was targeted for its "obvious disregard for decency" (Book III, pp. 4, 7).

The memo that launched the "Black Nationalist" effort is dated August 25, 1967. It ordered field offices "to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist, hate-type organizations." It also listed groups for "intensified attention," including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Martin Luther King Jr.'s organization (FBI Director to SAC, Albany, "Personal attention to all offices," Aug. 25, 1967, memo pp. 1–2, in the FBI Vault's COINTELPRO "Black Extremist" file, Part 1, PDF pp. 3–4). The committee noted that "the nonviolent Southern Christian Leadership Conference was labeled as a Black Nationalist 'Hate Group'" (Book III, p. 4). The head of the FBI section in charge was asked why, and said: "I cannot explain it satisfactorily" (Book III, p. 21).

Some targets were violent. Others, by the FBI's own admission, were not. The program's design didn't depend on the difference.

How disruption worked: two documented operations

The letter to a gang leader (Chicago, 1969). The Blackstone Rangers were a Chicago street gang that police linked, with rival gangs, to about 290 killings from 1965 to 1969. The committee calls them "well-armed and violent" (Book III, Panther report, p. 195 and note). In late 1968 the Black Panthers were courting the Rangers, and the gang's leader, Jeff Fort, was resisting. The Chicago FBI office proposed an anonymous letter to Fort. It read in part: "The brothers that run the Panthers blame you for blocking their thing and there's supposed to be a hit out for you." It was signed "A black brother you don't know" (p. 197).

The office stated its goal in writing. The letter "may intensify the degree of animosity between the two groups and occasion Forte to take retaliatory action which could disrupt the BPP or lead to reprisals against its leadership." It chose not to send a matching letter to the Panthers because they were "not believed as violence prone as the Rangers" (Chicago field office memo, Jan. 13, 1969, quoted in Book III, p. 197).

Hoover authorized the letter on January 30, 1969. The committee's staff wrote that it "could find no evidence linking this letter to subsequent clashes between the Panthers and the Rangers," though "the Bureau's intent was clear" (p. 198). The proposal, the stated goal, and the approval are documented. A result is not.

The cartoons (San Diego, 1969–70). In Southern California, the Panthers and a rival group, the US Organization, were already in a deadly feud. On January 17, 1969, two Panthers were killed by US members at UCLA (Book III, Panther report, p. 190). A month later, the FBI's San Diego office asked permission to mail cartoons ridiculing the Panthers, made to look as though US had produced them. "The purpose of the caricatures is to indicate to the BPP that the US organization feels that they are ineffectual, inadequate, and riddled with graft and corruption" (p. 190).

On March 27, the office learned the local Panther leader had pledged not to "hold a grudge" over the killings. That same day, it asked headquarters to approve three more cartoons, and it mailed them about a week later (p. 191). After a confrontation between the groups, the office reported that the "FBI cartoons in actuality" were "really shaking up the BPP" (p. 191). That June, headquarters also authorized an inflammatory letter to Panther headquarters over the forged signature of a San Diego Panther (p. 192). In September, after Panther Sylvester Bell was killed by US members, the office wrote: "Shootings, beatings, and a high degree of unrest continues to prevail in the ghetto area of southeast San Diego. Although no specific counterintelligence action can be credited with contributing to this overall situation, it is felt that a substantial amount of the unrest is directly attributable to this program" (pp. 192–193).

That is a field office crediting itself while admitting no single action can be credited. The committee likewise said individual incidents "cannot be directly traced to efforts by the FBI." But it found "beyond doubt" that "high officials of the FBI desired to promote violent confrontations" and "condoned tactics calculated to achieve that end" (pp. 188–189).

Across the programs, the committee documented anonymous letters meant to break up marriages, falsely labeling members of violent groups as informants (the "snitch jacket"), and contacting employers to get targets fired (Book III, pp. 3, 8).

The campaign against Martin Luther King Jr.

The FBI's campaign against King is the best-known chapter, and the most often mislabeled. The Church Committee found that from December 1963 until his death in 1968, King was "the target of an intensive campaign by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to 'neutralize' him." The campaign included wiretaps on his home phone and, by the FBI's own acknowledgment, microphones hidden in his hotel rooms on 16 occasions (Book III, King case study, p. 81).

For most of that period, it was not formally COINTELPRO. The investigation ran under a different FBI manual provision, COMINFIL ("communist infiltration"), based on the Bureau's concern about two of King's advisers. The FBI told the committee it never had evidence that King himself was a communist (pp. 84–85). The committee wrote that rather than discredit the alleged communists, "the Bureau adopted the curious tactic of trying to discredit the supposed target of Communist Party interest—Dr. King himself" (p. 85).

The committee dates the formal programs later. "The FBI elevated its activities against Dr. King and his associates to the status of formal counterintelligence programs (COINTELPRO)" in 1966–68. A March 1968 expansion of the Black Nationalist program named King as a target and listed among its goals: "Prevent the rise of a 'messiah' who could unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement" (pp. 179–180).

The most notorious act came earlier, in November 1964. William Sullivan, who ran the FBI's Domestic Intelligence Division, testified that he was told Hoover wanted a tape from the hotel bugs mailed to Coretta Scott King. In the committee's summary, the aim was "to precipitate their separation, thereby diminishing Dr. King's stature." An agent flew to Miami and mailed the package on November 21, 1964 (pp. 158–159). King's aide Andrew Young, later a congressman, testified that a letter came with it, and that the tape itself was "personal conversation among friends," with nothing about crime or communism (p. 159).

The FBI gave the committee a draft letter found in Sullivan's office files. It ended: "King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do (this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite practical significance)" (p. 160). Young said the final paragraph matched the letter King received. Young and Ralph Abernathy took it as urging King to take his own life. Young testified: "I think that the disturbing thing to Martin was that he felt somebody was trying to get him to commit suicide" (pp. 159–160).

The FBI's intent is disputed. Sullivan said he couldn't recall the letter and suggested it might have been "planted" in his files. He said that as far as he knew, the goal was to get King to resign. Another FBI official said the "34 days" pointed to Christmas (pp. 160–161). The committee itself called the letter something "Dr. King and his advisers interpreted as a threat to release the tape recording unless Dr. King committed suicide" (p. 82).

The committee warned readers not to accept the FBI's allegations about King on their face, calling them part of "a shameful chapter in the nation's history" (p. 86).

Documented harassment is not evidence of murder. The Church Committee did not investigate King's assassination, but said it "came across no indication that the FBI was in any way involved" (p. 86). The House Select Committee on Assassinations later "found there was no evidence that FBI personnel took intentional action to accomplish or facilitate Dr. King's assassination." It also faulted the Bureau's campaign against him as a gross abuse of its authority (HSCA findings, National Archives).

How it came out

On March 8, 1971, someone broke into the FBI's small office in Media, Pennsylvania. The stolen documents were "widely circulated and published by the press." Because some carried the unfamiliar caption "COINTELPRO," NBC reporter Carl Stern sued under the Freedom of Information Act for more (Book III, p. 3, note). In 2014, three people publicly said they had been part of an eight-person group of antiwar activists who carried out the break-in and mailed files to journalists. Their identities were published in Betty Medsger's book The Burglary (NBC News, Jan. 7, 2014).

The burglary didn't produce the Church Committee by itself. The Senate's own history traces the committee to the Watergate investigation and to Seymour Hersh's 1974 New York Times report that the CIA had spied on antiwar activists (U.S. Senate Historical Office).

What the committee found, and the FBI's defense

The committee's conclusions were severe. For 15 years, the Bureau had run "a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association" (Book III, p. 3). In its main report, the committee said that "whatever opinion one holds about the policies of the targeted groups, many of the tactics employed by the FBI were indisputably degrading to a free society" (Church Committee, Book II, PDF p. 26).

The FBI's defense deserves a full hearing. Every Bureau witness said the programs aimed to prevent violence. George C. Moore, chief of the FBI's Racial Intelligence Section, told the committee: "There were policemen killed in those days. There were bombs thrown." He argued that no one can measure "what lives were saved" by sowing suspicion in a group (Book III, p. 22). FBI Director Clarence Kelley told the committee there were "some substantial" abuses. He argued that government "may well be expected to depart from its traditional role" to "meet an imminent threat to human life or property" (Book III, p. 14).

The counterargument comes from the records themselves. The threats COINTELPRO addressed, the committee wrote, "were not imminent." The programs aimed to prevent violence "indirectly," by shrinking groups. A Black Nationalist supervisor explained: "Obviously you are going to prevent violence or a greater amount of violence if you have smaller groups" (Book III, pp. 6, 14). That logic doesn't cover a nonviolent party targeted for its rhetoric, or a civil rights organization the section chief couldn't explain. It also doesn't cover a letter meant to provoke a violent gang. Asked whether anyone had discussed the programs' constitutionality, one official answered: "No, we never gave it a thought" (Book III, p. 11, note).

What ended, and what that doesn't prove

COINTELPRO was formally terminated on April 27, 1971, "for security reasons," less than two months after the burglary (Book III, p. 3, note). The termination order had an exception: "In exceptional circumstances where it is considered counterintelligence action is warranted, recommendations should be submitted to the Bureau under the individual case caption." The committee found three instances of "COINTELPRO-type" activity after the termination. It said it could not determine the full extent of any continuation, because the Bureau had more than 500,000 case files (Book III, p. 13).

So both overstatements fail. The records don't show that improper disruption ended in 1971, and they don't show an identical program running today. Formal termination is not the same as reform.

The line

The lesson isn't that every investigation of political activity is sinister. Some targets were violent, and the FBI had real work to do. The lesson is in the August 1967 memo, which told agents to frustrate efforts "to recruit new or youthful adherents." Once an agency's goal moves from stopping crimes to shrinking movements, the methods follow: forged letters, false informant labels and anonymous mail meant to break up marriages.

As with our MKULTRA investigation, the common thread is not the method but the secrecy. The programs were run on the assumption that no one outside would ever check. They were exposed only because someone broke in, someone sued, and a Senate committee read the files.

Timeline

Book III page numbers are the printed page numbers of the Government Printing Office edition. Book II citations use PDF page numbers because printed numbers are not legible in the online copy.