COINTELPRO (spook speak for Counter Intelligence Program) was a decades-long operation by the FBI to infiltrate and undermine organizations it saw as subversive to the corporate feudal state. During the 40-plus-year operation, the FBI targeted civil rights groups, women's groups, labor organizations, anti-war groups, environmental groups, congressmen, judges, journalists, celebrities and anyone else it deemed dangerous to its skewed concept of liberty.
The program was exposed when a group of leftist radicals burglarized an FBI field office in Pennsylvania and gave classified documents to the press. The program faced further scrutiny during the Church Committee hearings a few years later. The FBI supposedly ended the program in the wake of these revelations, but as recent activities indicate, it appears COINTELPRO is alive and well.
COINTELPRO or some similar program was probably responsible for the bombing of Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney. And the FBI continued its surveillance of journalist David Halberstam long after the program had supposedly ended, contributing to speculation that the program continues to this day.
And the recent raids on anti-war activists in Minneapolis and Chicago are clearly part of the same kind of operation, especially considering the efforts of Daniela Cardenas and Karen Sullivan.
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The problem is that Cointelpro never ended - at least not in Seattle. In 1981 the FBI collaborated with Marcos agents to gun down Filipino cannery workers and union activists Domingo and Viernes. Then there was the Seattle postal worker and union activist who was murdered in 1989 - only there was no homicide investigation because US intelligence seized the evidence file from Seattle police. And oh yes, in 1997 the murder of the African American race car driver who publicized the fact that the DEA was laundering cocaine profits via the racing circuit.
I write about my own problems with phone harassment, stalking, and break-ins (as a result of my political activities) in my recent memoir: THE MOST REVOLUTIONARY ACT: MEMOIR OF AN AMERICAN REFUGEE (www.stuartbramhall.com). I current live in exile in New Zealand.
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