Posted on 02/10/2025 7:52:01 AM PST by Eli Kopter
COINTELPRO, counterintelligence program conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 1956 to 1971 to discredit and neutralize organizations considered subversive to U.S. political stability. It was covert and often used extralegal means to criminalize various forms of political struggle and derail several social movements, such as those for civil rights and Puerto Rican independence.
COINTELPRO operations were initiated against various organizations, including the Communist Party, Socialist Workers Party (SWP), Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, Black Panther Party (BPP), American Indian Movement, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Ku Klux Klan. Tactics included intense surveillance, organizational infiltration, anonymous mailings, and police harassment. These programs were exposed in 1971 when the Citizens’ Commission 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 1975 by the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, 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:
(Excerpt) Read more at britannica.com ...
From the article:
“Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that.…The Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence”. DOGE might uncover the current version of COINTELPRO.
I remember well the Church Committee hearings. It was then that a member of Congress characterized the FBI as “jack-booted thugs.” Sen Church was a democrat btw, so I guess it all comes down to which side you’re on. When Bill Clinton re- weaponized the FBI in the 90s to harass and persecute republicans, not a word was said by the media.
Basically destroying the US' immune system against Communist extremism.
I was on a Church Committee once. The sausagemaking process is bloody treacherous! You would never think it from good Christian men and women...
Oh wait, not that kind of church committee? Nevermind...
The FBI and the CIA had turned into insane renegade organizations.
Commies did not do that.
The FBI and CIA did it to themselves.
Did it to us. Themselves is us.
But its methods - "covert, extra-legal" - left an opening for abuse. Sure enough, the system was highjacked, and the extralegal abuse redirected against political enemies.
Does the end EVER justify the means?
They're doing exactly what the Democratic Party Blob wants them to do.
Have they gone rogue to actually remove anti-American Communist regimes like Venezuela's? No - here is they do:
a) concoct "intel" to support whatever any admin wants to hear;
b) push DEI, trans lunacy and fund fake media to support the Blob.
c) make sure agency "retirees" and NGOs receive fat "consulting" contracts and grants so they can cash in
Item (c) was already visible in the Bush admin: Why was Valerie Plame's ex-CIA husband given a fat consulting contract to find out what was happening with Niger's uranium? How is it possible that no one already working for CIA was not watching the exports of the most important basic component of a nuclear weapons program?
Plame’s ex-husband was never CIA. He was a career State Department leftist - Ambassadorial rank.
We are talking about the Church Committee.
The year was 1975.
Remember COINTELPRO?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
Remember MKULTRA?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra
Remember Mockingbird?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
I do.
Ok, thanks for the correction. But that still leaves open why he was hired.
That is an age-old question. The simple answer is no. But are there exceptions to every rule? That is how good men are lured into bad decisions.
The abuse reflected two things operative at the time:
a) the assumption by the US government of unparalleled and broad powers during the Depression and, especially, during WWII in pursuit of national security. Even during the 1930s, the Army would go into cities like Baltimore, round up the unemployed homeless, and impress them into the Civilian Conservation Corps.
b) an unfounded confidence in the ability of science and newly discovered pharmaceuticals to achieve the stated aim of the programs, and that running them would have minimal and/or reversible side effects on the subjects. After all, the program run at McGill was run by a world-renowned psychiatrist who had actually participated at the Nuremburg Trials.
I'm not excusing the abuses and certainly not advocating a return to them. But I do not see them aiming at creating a one-party Dem state like the programs being run at USAID. I don't think I've even read of journalists being targeted by MKULTRA, and they would have been one of the primary groups to go after it that were the case. As USAID shows, it was always easier to simply buy the coverage you wanted than trying to use high-tech pharmaceuticals.
The dirty little secret is that after the Church Committee process the FBI and CIA just took these projects and buried them deep in special access compartmented programs—which continue to this day.
They used private contractors to circumvent FOIA.
Hopefully this administration will be able to fight through the layers of secrecy and uncover these evil programs and call those administering them to account.
The Musk team’s monitoring of checks/direct deposits cut to contractors will give them some bread crumbs to follow....
“ I was on a Church Committee once. The sausagemaking process is bloody treacherous! You would never think it from good Christian men and women...”
You had to decide what carpet color for the church entry way?
He was hired in theory because of his past diplomatic contacts with Niger. In reality it was because his entitled bitch wife was in charge of who got picked! There were others with equivalent diplomatic contacts, but they weren’t sleeping with the decision maker.
This corruption apparently didn't even cause an eyebrow to be raised by the Bush administration. I guess when you get to a certain level of our government, it's like you're a made man in the mob: you cannot be touched, lest all the other top-level grifters' feathers get ruffled.
Now just imagine how much was stolen when State gave away billions to the ayatollahs. It must have been sticky fingers all the way down.
I don’t blame Bush too much on this. Who was doing the choosing I’m sure this was below his optic. She was a master of using “I am woman hear me roar” tactics. Plus, a hot late 20-ish blonde often turns a 50+ year old male to mush. She was a master of that too.
In MK ultra people were unwittingly given LSD. A few died. Numerous others were mentally destroyed. It wasn’t an attempt to understand Soviet brainwashing. It was that they thought brainwashing was possible. But the Manchurian candidate was bad fiction.
The truth is that North Koreans and Chinese just brutally abused our men until they signed a bullshit lie.
But by doing so, many made sure we knew they were alive.
Bud Mahurin was especially badly treated by the pop sci idiots back in DC who weren’t tortured.
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