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COINTELPRO (1956–1971)

The FBI spent fifteen years sabotaging American citizens for having the wrong politics.

COINTELPRO — short for Counter Intelligence Program — was the FBI's secret campaign to surveil, infiltrate, discredit, and disrupt domestic political organisations. Targets included civil rights leaders, anti-war activists, feminist groups, and socialist organisations. Martin Luther King Jr. was surveilled so aggressively that the FBI sent him an anonymous letter suggesting he kill himself. That's not conspiracy theory. That letter is in the National Archives.

The programme was exposed in 1971 when a group of activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, and stole internal documents. Those files revealed the scope of what the Bureau was doing: planting informants in peaceful groups, spreading false rumours to create internal conflicts, sending forged letters, and coordinating with local police to harass organisers. The stolen documents made it to the press, and Congress eventually investigated.

What makes COINTELPRO worth understanding is the method. The FBI didn't just watch people — it actively worked to destroy movements from the inside. It manufactured distrust between allies, created fake organisations, and used the legal system as a weapon. All of it was illegal, and all of it was done in the name of national security.

Dissent isn't a threat to democracy. Secretly crushing dissent is.

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