COINTELPRO: The FBI's Secret War on Political Freedom

by Nelson Blackstock

Describes the decades-long covert counterintelligence program code-named Cointelpro directed against socialists and activists in the Black and anti-Vietnam War movements. The operations revealed in the documents cited in this book many of them photographically reproduced provide an unprecedented look at the methods used by the FBI, CIA, military intelligence, and other U.S. police agencies. Despite their authors intentions, these documents also record pieces of the history of efforts to build the communist movement in the United States. Introduction by Noam Chomsky, graphic reproductions of FBI documents.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Conspiracy Theories, American History, Race

221 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

Reviews

[Manny]

Now that America's secret police have come out in favor of Donald Trump, I can't help thinking it's time to stop and consider what a Trump presidency would look like. Trump takes pride in getting even with anyone he believes has slighted him. He's said openly that he's going to change the law so he can stop the press writing things he doesn't like. He tells us he's going to make the women who revealed that he's sexually assaulted them regret they'd ever said it.

Of course, it's possible that that FBI will reconsider and not create a Stalinist police state after all. Even though Trump has said more than once that he admires Vladimir Putin, we don't know for a fact that any journalist who dares criticize Comrade Donald will be picked up, tortured to death and dumped a few days later by the side of the road. But on the other hand, it's certainly possible that that will happen. With unsubstantiated innuendo being the new black, how can I not write this post? Dozens of people have said they'll unfriend me unless I take action now.

No, I'm sure you understand. I'm in an impossible position, damned if I do and damned if I don't. Really, I had no choice.

[Cwn_annwn_13 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This documents various dirty (and illegal) tricks that the FBI pulled with political activists who were doing nothing that was against the law in the 60's and 70's. This was the first thing that came out that caused the American public to lose respect for the FBI. The faults with this book are there is a huge left wing bias, not that I condone anything the FBI was doing but the people that wrote this book act like its all a big "right wing" FBI against the left. They talk about Fred Hampton but what about Kathy Ainsworth? I'd also say this book is outdated. Much more has come out since this was published and even though they stopped the official cointelpro program reality is they never stopped using the exact same tactics against activists from all over the spectrum. You still get plenty of good info in this though.

[Randall Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

americans need to read about cointelpro to understand the danger what the government can do to it's people and why the people must remain vigilant. there are a few books of this subject - this is the first one i've finished. next i'll read the ward churchill one. anyway this great. i guess i didn't give it a five because it's an old book and it looks that way.

noam writes a great intro

this book talks FBI involvement in the gestapo-like political assassination of fred hampton.
this confirms noam's claim that evidence shows that the war in vietnam was in fact FIRST a US war of aggression carried out against the rural society of SOUTH vietnam and north vietnam only entered later. few americans have learned this critical fact - the war gone wrong was outright aggression from the start.

more great facts: palmer of the palmer raids was actually a progressive
the red scare was funded by business groups
the greatest threat to power is protest by groups that escape control of the political leadership.
throughout the past century and FBI, etc, have worked to keep those social change groups attacking each other to keep them from getting together from gaining strength
cointelpro shows that watergate's crimes were not original
fred hampton was killed not because he was violent - but because he was NON-violent and was also a community organizer
this book is about the problems when the state starts attacking the people it is supposed to protect.
if any black person feels a sense of hopelessness or depression - this book will help explain why that person feels a large amount of that weight on his shoulders. the organizations fighting for him/her were destroyed by the state.

this book has a bunch of great stuff and i don't want to give it all away so let me leave you with one more cool thing from this book: see the late vietnam war also this way - you simply can't draft 30,000 young kids a month without bringing in some serious draft resisters hell bent on ending the war. and those kids spread out through the armed forces and see they brought it down (look at the great film "sir, no sir" which discusses HUNDREDS of anti armed forces newsletter being printed WITHIN the armed forces.) that's why it finally ended - mutiny in the armed forces and and this book shares one of the pieces of the puzzle so buy it and read it, and never mind the boringish cover - what you learn will be worth it.

[Casey Wagner · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short book was published in 1975 soon after the first wave of FBI documents was forcefully released to the public via the 1971 Media, Pennsylvania FBI office break in, the subsequent barrage of Freedom of Information Act requests, and the lawsuit by the Socialist Workers Party. It covers the known information about the FBI's secret Counter-Intelligence Program's (COINTELPRO), in which the J. Edgar Hoover directed bureau targeted groups and individuals that the FBI deemed subversive, including feminist organizations, the Communist Party USA, anti–Vietnam War organizers, activists of the civil rights movement, environmentalist and animal rights organizations, the American Indian Movement (AIM), independence movements (such as Puerto Rican independence groups like the Young Lords), and a variety of organizations that were part of the broader New Left.

This book is an excellent introduction to the program, although with so much newer information being available on sites like Wikipedia, I feel the usefulness of this book has diminished with time. My use for this work primarily sits in its direct reprinting of various FBI files related to the operation. These files vary from the infamous MLK suicide letter, to programs targeting local kindergarten teachers who had socialist tendencies while in college. The breadth of illegal surveillance on US citizens for the most minor political stances is sickening, and these pages contain consistent attempts by the FBI to actively ruin political opponents lives by harassing them and their families, visiting workplaces and pressuring bosses to fire them, sending fake correspondence to distances themselves from friends. You really have to read it to believe it.

I recommend this book to those who have a cursory knowledge of the program, and want to read about it in the FBI's own words.

[B Sarv · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now, with much more sophisticated methods, in this current climate, they will be working to consolidate their strangle hold on freedom of thought, freedom of speech and freedom of expression. I would be interested in reading about their misdeeds in relation to the Black liberation struggle. Who'd have thought the secret police existed to constrict freedom? Learning.

[Sherrie Miranda · Rating 5 out of 5]

5.0 out of 5 stars
Sadly, this is true
Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2020
As someone who knows many of the people these incidents happened to, I can tell you this book tells the absolute truth about how the FBI follows activists fighting for peace.
This book brought back memories of actual events that I could write about in my 2nd novel.
Thank you for doing the hard work of getting these stories down.
Sherrie Miranda’s historically based, coming of age, Adventure novel “Secrets & Lies in El Salvador” is about an American girl in war-torn El Salvador:
http://tinyurl.com/klxbt4y
Her husband made a video for her novel. He wrote the song too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P11Ch...
Watch for the prequel coming out soon! "Crimes & Impunity in New Orleans" follows the dramatic story of naive, sheltered Shelly going to “The Big Easy” to prepare for El Salvador, but has no idea she will encounter sexism and witness racism as well as illegal activities by government agents.

[Ross Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

In its time (1975), this was probably a breakthrough book. However, there is so much more that came out after the Church Committee hearings that same year that it feels pretty dated now. It also focuses fairly tightly on incidents that involved the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) which the author is a member of. That said, that still means he got FOIA information on the Black Panthers, the Free Speech Movement, the Civil Rights leaders and more.

More recent books have done analysis and put the bigger picture together. This early work mainly wants to provide proof of the FBI's illegal activities, and so about 1/3 of the book are reproductions of actual FBI memos either describing or initiating those activities. The text then describes what happened and often feels redundant.

A better book for people wanting to find out about this might be Tim Weiner's "Enemies: A History of the FBI." It covers more than COINTELPRO, but it gives a much bigger picture and is more up to date.

[Karl Haynes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gives a good glimpse into the story of the reach of what COINTERPRO was and how wide it reached into facets of the American society during its existence. Using documents obtained from the government, the author gives examples of the FBI tried to achieve under the umbrella of the program. While the book shows examples of the activities taken against the socialists in detail, it doesn't seem to go into details about others who were being monitored under the COINTERPRO. Overall, this is a solid read to get an understanding of what happened under the program. There's definitely more to the story.

[Joe Richardson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely phenomenal. Far more shocking and engaging than I initially expected, and filled with actual transcripts of documents. This is worth the time.

[Isaiah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointed! That’s all I can really say.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

if the FBI didn’t surveil you, harass your coworkers about you, or fabricate letters to your wife between 1956 and 1971 then you needed to step it up

[Arturo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Las tácticas y estrategias descritas aquí se empezaron a poner en práctica también en RD sobre todo a partir del 1966.

[David B. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not exactly ground-breaking these days, but of minor interest as an early exposé of the USA's secret political police and a time capsule of the US left in the Cold War era.

Docked a star for excessive Trotskyite blather

[Marc Lichtman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This important book was first published in 1975 and was for a number of years published by a big- business publishing house, which gave it a broader audience. It still sells quite well. It is filled with actual FBI files redacted, but still damning, forced into the open by the (later successful) Socialist Workers Party lawsuit against the FBI. It has an introduction by Noam Chomsky, and the text by Nelson Blackstock is adapted from a series of articles in the 'Militant' newspaper. The preface from 1988 brings it up to date.

While some liberals are having a love affair with the FBI these days, since they and many "leftists" view everything in the world from the results of the last bourgeois presidential election, they remain the enemies of the working class, and of everyone interested in serious social change.

Also, more and more liberals who admit there are "problems" with the FBI are pretending that much of what we know about them today isn't a result of Socialist Workers vs. Attorney General, the landmark lawsuit the Socialist Workers Party filed against the government in 1973 for 50 years of attacks on our democratic rights. It was a political period quite different today, and the federal judge, a Nixon appointee, found for the plaintiffs, and issued a far-reaching permanent injunction in 1987.

Other activists followed suit, so to speak, but most of them ended up settling for money and/or apologies.

Two other important books came out of this lawsuit, FBI on Trial: The Victory in the Socialist Workers Party Suit Against Government Spying and 50 Years of Covert Operations in the US: Washington's Political Police and the American Working Class..

Also of importance is the story of the first Smith Act indictment and trial, which was directed against the Socialist Workers Party on the eve of US entry into World War II. This is found in the book Teamster Bureaucracy, and the testimony of James P. Cannon, founder of the party in Socialism on Trial: Testimony at Minneapolis Sedition Trial.


Don't get taken in by the FBI's current war against Trump. As Leon Trotsky forcefully reminded us in 1939, “‘Under conditions of the bourgeois regime, all suppression of political rights and freedom, no matter whom they are directed against in the beginning, in the end inevitably bear down upon the working class, particularly its most advanced elements. That is a law of history.”

And it's being proved again. around the same time as the invasion of Mar-a-Lago, Cuban solidarity activists in Puerto Rico were being harassed by the FBI. Now there's an indictment against the Black nationalist African People’s Socialist Party and the allied Uhuru Movement.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

In light of how fascinating its topic is, I found this book surprisingly difficult to slog through.

Totally not bad. But not all that much fun, really, either.

I do recommend it, if you're interested in these things, since they're worth knowing about, and this seems to be the main source. However, don't expect an especially good time, that's all I'm saying.


PS Reading about government repression should be FUN!