In June 1957, he discovered that local communists in Cleveland seemed to be catching on to COINTELPRO, whispering among themselves that “the FBI has evidently launched a campaign of ideological harassment through anonymous mailings.” In response, Hoover temporarily called off the use of such letters throughout the country. Over time, his office compiled a list of refinements that would make the mailings less easily identifiable as FBI forgeries: limiting their number of recipients, including spelling errors and typos, using commercial-size paper (eight and a half by eleven inches) rather than
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