COINTELPRO

COINTELPRO refers to the U.S. Counter Intelligence Program, consisting of more than 2,300 covert operations sponsored and organized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), under the directorship of J. Edgar Hoover. COINTELPRO was designed to disrupt, infiltrate, misdirect, and neutralize left-wing organizations such as the Communist Party, the “New Left,” the Puerto Rican independence movement, the Socialist Worker Party, white hate groups, the underground press popular in the 1960s, and virtually all of the important movements and social change organizations associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, especially antiwar, antiestablishment, and student groups. Specific targets of COINTELPRO included the American Indian Movement (AIM), the Black Panther Party (BPP), the Chicano Movement, Students for a Democratic Society, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Revolutionary Action ...