GLICKBOOK II: The Web Cointelpro Papers
marco, 11.08.2005 10:04
Here go snippets from Brian Glick's "WAR AT HOME: Covert Action Against
U.S. Activists And What We Can Do About It."
(Most notably the ones that most easily apply to the internet as well)
Part I's at:  http://milwaukee.indymedia.org/en/2005/08/203920.shtml
I recommend getting a copy of this book to keep by your computer and just thumb through it anytime you're wondering what kind of craziness is
happening on the web at any given time. --Cheers...
GLICKBOOK II: The Web Cointelpro Papers
by Marco
Snippets From Brian Glick's "WAR AT HOME: Covert Action Against
U.S. Activists And What We Can Do About It." (Most notably the
ones that most easily apply to the internet as well)
South End Press
ISBN: 0-89608-349-7
Part I of this originated at Milwaukee Indymedia and can be
viewed at: http://milwaukee.indymedia.org/en/2005/08/203920.shtml
Page 39 - Though the details of future covert action will be adapted
to changing social and technological conditions, only a limited number
of basic methods and approaches exist. Like chess masters and military
strategists who hone their skills by replaying old contests, we can
improve our ability to defend against these modes of attack through
close study of recent history. If we hunderstand how the FBI and police
moved in the past, we will be better able to recognize and avoid their
future tricks and traps.
_____________________________
Page 45-49 - False Media Stories: COINTELPRO documents expose frequent
collusion between news media personnel and the FBI to publish false
and distorted material at the Bureau's behest. The FBI routinely leaked
derogatory information to its collaborators in the news media. It also
created newspaper and magazine articles and television "documentaries"
which the media knowingly or unknowingly carried as their own. Copies
were sent anonymously or under bogus letterhead to activists' financial
backers, employers, business associates, families, neighbors, church
officials, school administrators, landlords, and whomever else might
cause them trouble.
One FBI media fabrication claimed that Jean Seberg, a white film star
active in anti-racist causes, was pregnant by a prominent Black leader.
The Bureau leaked the story anonymously to columnist Joyce Haber and
also had it passed to her by a "friendly" source in the Los Angeles
Times editorial staff. The item appeared without attribution in Haber's
nationally syndicated column of May 19, 1970. Seberg's husband has sued
the FBI as responsible for her resulting stillbirth, nervous breakdown,
and suicide.
Bogus Leaflets, Pamphlets, and Other Publications: COINTELPRO documents
show that the FBI routinely put out phony leaflets, posters, pamphlets,
newspapers, and other publications in the name of movement groups. The
purpose was to discredit the groups and turn them against one another.
FBI cartoon leaflets were used to divide and disrupt the main national
anti-war coalition of the late 1960s. Similar fliers were circulated
in 1968 and 1969 in the name of the Black Panthers and the United
Slaves (US), a rival Black nationalist group based in Southern
California. The phony Panther/US leaflets, together with other
covert operations, were credited with subverting a fragile truce
between the two groups and igniting an explosion of internecine
violence that left four Panthers dead, many more wounded, and a
once-flourishing regional Black movement decimated...
Forged Correspondence: Former employees have confirmed that the FBI
has the capacity to produce state-of-the-art forgery. This capacity
was used under COINTELPRO to create snitch jackets and bogus communications
that exacerbated differences among activists and disrupted their work.
One such forgery intimidated civil rights worker Muhammed Kenyatta
(Donald Jackson), causing him to abandon promising projects in Jackson,
Mississippi. Kenyatta had foundation grants to form Black economic
cooperatives and open a "Black and Proud School" for dropouts. He
was also a student organizer at nearby Tougaloo College. In the winter
of 1969, after an extended campaign of FBI and police harassment, Kenyatta
received a letter, purportedly from the Tougaloo College Defense Committee,
which "directed" that he cease his political activities immediately. If he
did not "heed our diplomatic and well-thought-out warning," the committee
would consider taking measures "which would have a more direct effect and
which would not be as cordial as this note." Kenyatta and his wife left.
Only years later did they learn it was not Tougaloo students, but FBI
covert operators who had driven them out.
Later in 1969, FBI agents fabricated a letter to the mainly white organizers
of a proposed Washington, D.C. anti-war rally demanding that they pay the
local Black community a $20,000 "security bond." This attempted extortion
was composed in the name of the local Black United Front (BUF) and signed
with the forged signature of its leader. FBI informers inside the BUF then
tried to get the group to back such a demand, and Bureau contacts in the
media made sure the story received wide publicity.
The Senate Intelligence Committee uncovered a series of FBI letters sent
to top Panther leaders throughout 1970 in the name of Connie Mathews, an
intermediary between the Black Panther Party's national office and Panther
leader Eldridge Cleaver, in exile in Algeria. These exquisite forgeries
were prepared on pilfered stationery in Panther vernacular expertly simulated
by the FBI's Washington, D.C. laboratory. Each was forwarded to an FBI Legal
Attache at a U.S. Embassy in a foreign country that Mathews was due to travel
through and then posted at just the right time "in such a manner that it
cannot be traced to the Bureau." The FBI enhanced the eerie authenticity
of these fabrications by lacing them with esoteric personal tidbits culled
from electronic surveillance of Panther homes and offices. Combined with
other forgeries, anonymous letters and phone calls, and the covert intervention
of FBI and police infiltrators, the Mathews correspondence succeeded in inflaming
intra-party mistrust and rivalry until it erupted into the bitter public split
that shattered the organization in the winter of 1971.
Anonymous Letters and Telephone Calls: During the 1960s, activists received
a steady flow of anonymous letters and phone calls which turn out to have been
from the FBI. Some were unsigned, while others bore bogus names or purported
to come from unidentified activists in phony or actual organizations.
Many of these bogus communications promoted racial divisions and fears, often
by exploiting and exacerbating tensions between Jewish and Black activists.
One such FBI-concocted letter went to SDS members who had joined Black students
protesting New York University's discharge of a Black teacher in 1969. The supposed
author, an unnamed "SDS member," urged whites to break ranks and abandon the Black
students because of alleged anti-Semitic slurs by the fired teacher and his
supporters.
Other anonymous letters and phone calls falsely accused movement leaders of
collaboration with the authorities, corruption, or sexual affairs with other
activists' mates. The letter on the next page was used to provoke "a lasting
distrust" between a Black civil rights leader and his wife. Its FBI authors
hoped that his "concern over what to do about it" would "detract from his
time spent in the plots and plans of his organization." As in the Seberg
incident, inter-racial sex was a persistent theme. The husband of one white
woman active in civil rights and anti-war work filed for divorce soon after
receiving the FBI-authored letter reproduced on page 50.
Still other anonymous FBI communications were designed to intimidate dissidents,
disrupt coalitions, and provoke violence. Calls to Stokely Carmichael's mother
warning of a fictitious Black Panther murder plot drove him to leave the country
in September 1968. Similar anonymous FBI telephone threats to SNCC leader James
Forman were instrumental in thwarting efforts to bring the two groups together.
The Chicago FBI made effective use of anonymous letters to sabotage the Panthers
efforts to build alliances with previously apolitical Black street gangs. The
most extensive of these operations involved the Black P. Stone Nation, or
"Blackstone Rangers," a powerful confederation of several thousand local
Black youth. Early in 1969, as FBI and police infiltrators in the Rangers
spread rumors of an impending Panther attack, the Bureau sent Ranger chief
Jeff Fort an incendiary note signed "a black brother you don't know." Fort's
supposed friend warned that "The brothers that run the Panthers blame you
for blocking their thing and there's supposed to be a hit out for you."
Another FBI-concocted anonymous "black man" then informed Chicago Panther
leader Fred Hampton of a Ranger plot "to get you out of the way." These
fabrications squelched promising talks between the two groups and enabled
Chicago Panther security chief William O'Neal, an FBI-paid provocateur,
to instigate a series of armed confrontations from which the Panthers
barely managed to escape without serious casualties.
_____________________________
52 - In a third case, a [Bureau] Midwest field office disrupted arrangements
for state university students to attend the 1969 inaugural demonstrations
by making a series of anonymous telephone calls to the transportation
company. The calls were designed to confuse both the transportation
company and the SDS leaders as to the cost of transporta-tion and the
time and place for leaving and returning. This office also placed confusing
leaflets around the campus to show different times and places for
demonstration-planning meetings, as well as conflicting times and
dates for traveling to Washington.
60 The FBI's main right-wing beneficiary was the Ku Klux Klan. In 1961,
the FBI supplied the advance information that enabled the Klan to
brutalize freedom riders as they arrived in various Southern cities...
By 1965, some 20 percent of Klan members were on the FBI payroll. Many
occupied positions of power: "FBI agents reached leadership positions
in seven of the fourteen Klan groups across the country, headed one
state Klan organization and even created a splinter Klan group which
grew to nearly two hundred members."
65 People will gain a deeper understanding of the functions and
impact of domestic covert action, and be better able to resist it
if we also address the excuses that government officials offer
when their clandestine operations are revealed.
When COINTELPRO was first uncovered, the FBI and the U.S. Justice
Department claimed it was needed to prevent violence and to defend
the "national security" against totalitarian subversion. Caught
running similar operations in the 1980s, they cited the threat of
"terrorism."
68 The government's secret use of force and fraud to crush political
opposition is antithetical to any accepted concept of democracy.
69 2. Public education: Our goal is not merely to prove what the FBI
and police do, but to get it across to a broad audience. Experiment
with forums, rallies, radio and television, leaflets, pamphlets,
comics, cartoons, film, posters, gurerrilla theater, and any other
avenue that might prove interesting and effective.
76 "In NYC at present, however, [deleted] and his followers are
associating with and using the facilities of, the Workers World Party.
The WWP is a splinter group of the Socialist Workers Party and are
known as Marcyites. In an instance such as this, it is felt that an
opportunity is presented whereby mimeographed flyers could be directed
to various individuals of the different pro-independence groups pointing
out the "intrusion" of the WWP and worded in such a way as to indicate
that the SWP was the originator of the flyer."
80 - 1. Preparation of a leaflet designed to counteract the impression that
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and other minority groups speak
for the majority of students at universities. The leaflet should contain
photographs of New Left leadership at the respective university. Naturally,
the most obnoxious pictures should be used.
6. The drawing up of anonymous letters regarding individuals active in
the New Left. These letters should set out their activities and should
be sent to their parents, neighbors and the parents' employers. This
could have the effect of forcing the parents to take action.
7. Anonymous letters or leaflets describing faculty members and graduate
assistants in the various institutions of higher learning who are active
in New Left matters. The activities and associations of the individual
should be set out. Anonymous mailings should be made to university officials,
members of the state legislature, Board of Regents, and to the press. Such
letters could be signed "A Concerned Alumni" or "A Concerned Taxpayer."
11. Consider the use of cartoons, photographs, and anonymous letters which
will have the effect of ridiculing the New Left. Ridicule is one of the
most potent weapons which we can use against it.
12. Be alert for opportunities to confuse and disrupt New Left activities
by misinformation. For example, when events are planned, notification that
the event has been cancelled or postponed could be sent to various individuals.
OTHER HELPFUL READING ON THE NET:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/COINTELPRO/cointelpro-methods.html
http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-17138.html
http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2003/12/1666652_comment.php
http://www.web.net/~opirgkin/qcacg/strategy.html
http://www.hippy.com/php/article-89.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
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