COINTELPRO and Covert Operations

COINTELPRO is the acronym used to refer to counterintelligence programs conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to discredit and neutralize organizations considered subversive to U.S. political stability. These programs were covert and often used extralegal means to criminalize various forms of political struggle and derail several social movements in the United States. Contemporary race relations, political activism, and crime fighting are intimately intertwined in the context of these counterintelligence programs. The story of COINTELPRO is important to the study of race and crime because many Americans, including minorities, were the focus of COINTELPRO operations. This entry discusses early counterintelligence programs that target Puerto Ricans and African Americans involved with the Puerto Rican Independence movement and the Black Liberation movement.

The FBI has acknowledged conducting COINTELPRO operations between 1956 and 1971. These operations were allegedly abandoned after public and legislative scrutiny, though it remains unclear whether such activities have continued. COINTELPROs were initiated against various organizations, including the Communist Party, Socialist Workers Party (SWP), Puerto Rican Nationalists, Black Panther Party (BPP), and American Indian Movement (AIM). Their tactics included intense surveillance, organizational infiltration, anonymous mailings, and police harassment. These programs were exposed in 1971 when the Citizens Committee to Investigate the FBI burglarized an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, stole confidential files, and then released them to the press. More information regarding COINTELPRO was later obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, lawsuits lodged against the FBI by the BPP and the SWP, and statements by agents who came forward to confess their counterintelligence activities.

A major investigation was launched in 1976 by the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities of the U.S. Senate, commonly referred to as the “Church Committee,” for its chairman, Senator Frank Church of Idaho. However, millions of pages of documents remain unreleased, and many released documents are heavily censored. In its final report, the committee sharply criticized COINTELPRO:

According to Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall in their 1990 book on the FBI papers, many COINTELPRO actions were not documented in writing and ex-operatives are now legally prohibited from disclosing them.