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Setting Straight the FBI'S Counterintelligence Record
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12331 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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1 / 1987 |
5,744 Words |
| Author
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W. Raymond Wannall
W. Raymond Wannall is a retired assistant director of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation. |
In 1956 the FBI instituted a domestic counterintelligence program, known by the acronym COINTELPRO, against the Communist Party, USA. The program was thereafter expanded to include other Marxist-Leninist groups and violence-prone and revolutionary organizations. No other FBI operation has incurred more intensive attack, much of it directed against J. Edgar Hoover, who headed the bureau from 1924 until his death on May 2, 1972.
It is not my purpose to exculpate or vindicate Hoover but to record what is known about the FBI'S COINTELPROs that has not been sufficiently publicized or has in some instances even been concealed.
COINTELPRO was a series of covert-action programs conducted between 1956 and 1971 and directed at organizations that were subjects of national-security investigations. The object of these counterintelligence programs was to use FBI resources to disrupt certain selected groups in order to counter perceived threats to the national security. These groups were domestic organizations, and their supporters were for the most part U.S. citizens.
The program might have been more aptly named the countersubversion program, or the counterterrorist program, because it had as its targets subversive and terrorist groups, their members, and their advocates. It was designed to apply to domestic subversives and terrorist the type of tactics used to frustrate and disrupt the efforts of foreign intelligence services. Such tactics are usually deceptive in nature, and hoaxes are often used.
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