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| | Location: Home » Crime » 1945 - Present » The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States (South End Press Classics Series) | January 9, 2009 |
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| The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States (South End Press Classics Series) | 
 enlarge | Authors: Ward Churchill, Jim Vander Wall
Publisher: South End Press
Category: Book
List Price: $22.00
Buy New: $13.63
You Save: $8.37 (38%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (6 reviews)
Sales Rank: 115586
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 500
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 8.7 x 6 x 1.3
ISBN: 0896086488
Dewey Decimal Number: 363.232
EAN: 9780896086487
ASIN: 0896086488
Publication Date: November 1, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Readers anxious about the future of civil liberties under George W. Bush can trace the lineage of political repression meted out by the FBI in the last half century. The original FBI memos reproduced here expose the Bureau's secret, systematic, and sometimes savage sabotage of progressive political activity. The authors examine the treatment of the left from the 1950s Communist Party through the 1980s Central America solidarity movement.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 Wild Book, Strange Author February 21, 2007
1 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is an interesting book by an even more interesting author. In fact, the actions of the author tend to make me doubt the whole idea of the book.
First the book. This is a reprint of a book first issued in 1990 that proports to show a whole series of documents obtained from the FBI. They show that the FBI went to great lengths, some of them illegal to seek evidence against, and bring scorn against numerous left wing organiztions such as the Communist Party, the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement and others.
In addition to the reprinted portion of the book, Mr. Churchill has written a new preface that makes further allegations against the FBI, particularily in regard to Waco.
Now the author. Some reviews have indicated that he is a fake, having basically made up a lot of what he says. Without repeating all of the material here, Mr. Churchill claims (in this book) to be an Indian. The Indian tribes of which he claims to be amember say he is not. Disciplinary hearings against him at the University of Colorado have recommended his being terminated as a professor.
Do a search on Google and Wikipedia for more information and make up your own mind.
 COINTELPRO papers review January 9, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is a detailed review of available FBI documents relating to subversive and dissident groups as defined in the wake of the McCarren / Mccarthyism era and deemed a threat to the US interest. Alarming material shows how the FBI framed and planted "evidence" in order to control and destroy elements in a supposed free society. A good read for a political and intelligence analysts in the ever changing and modern world.
 Very good but much is left out! November 29, 2006
2 out of 16 found this review helpful
This book reproduces and analyzes cointelpro documents acquired through the FOIA. It is funny how the United States government expects its citizens to obey its laws but yet it goes out of its way to target, harass and persecute people who are not breaking any laws themselves. Which is made even worse when the government is often breaking the very laws they are supposed to uphold in the process.
There are individual chapters in this on black nationalist groups, socialist and communist groups, the American Indian Movement and other left wing oriented organizations. Another plus to The Cointelpro Papers is if you are involved in political activism this book can help you identify tactics that may be used against you or the group you are involved with.
The biggest fault this book has is Churchill is one of these leftists that believes in the psychotic delusion that the US Government is some sort of pro-white/white supremacist entity. Ha ha! Yeah thats why they have made MLK into some sort of holy figure, they have created affirmative action and allow mass immigration to displace white (and black) Americans in the work place. He also more or less ignores the illegal tactics employed against the KKK in the south where they sent a virtual army of FBI agents into southern states when the Klan was resisting integration. Undercover FBI agents were responsible for the murder of the pregnant wife of a Klansman named Kathy Ainsworth not to mention undercover agents perpetrated or instigated much of the violent acts attributed to the Klan. Why wasn't this brought up in this book?!?! While there were many wrongs committed against left wing and non-white political activists the fact that Churchill ignores what was done with the Klan, and in later years with militia groups, as well as white nationalist (and environmental) groups to this very day shows that Churchill has a blatant anti-white agenda and keeps what is a good book, from being great.
ministry of love July 2, 2005
6 out of 10 found this review helpful
In The COINTELPRO Papers, Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall chronicle decades of disruptive and secretive attacks by the FBI on those with whom they do not feel ideologically alignedXnamely, those who are a threat in any way to capitalism or to the current power structures within the United States and abroad. The authors contend that the FBI has launched seemingly countless attacks upon peaceful and law-abiding organizations and their members for no reason other than their philosophical deviance from the political mindset of the American status quo. The authors chronicle case after case after case of the FBI engaging in illegal and unsettling practices and activities in their ongoing efforts to discredit any organization or individual espousing radical or alternative socio-economic views.
Every allegation made by the authors is backed up by copies of original FBI documents and memos chronicling the activities of our nations political police in the words of the agents themselves, lest the authors should be accused of ridiculous and unfounded accusations (as conservative apologists and spinners of propaganda are so apt to maintainXan issue addressed in the introduction to the text). The points argued in this book lend tremendous credibility to a radical elitist stance on American politicsXin that they shine light on the terrible extremes to which conservative authorities will go to eliminate any expression of political opposition.?x
In this book, Churchill and Vander Wall focus heavily on the COINTELPRO (COunterINTELligence PROgrams) operations launched both officially and unofficially against organizations such as the Communist Party, USA (CP, USA), Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the Puerto Rican Independence Movement, the Black Liberation MovementXparticularly the Black Panther Party (BPP), the New LeftXparticularly the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and the American Indian Movement (AIM). The authors focus special attention on the tactics utilized by the FBI during their official COINTELPRO era, which was from the mid-1950s to 1971, and demonstrate that regardless of whether or not the acronym is still in use, the FBI has never abandoned those tacticsXif anything, their COINTELPRO-style tactics have only escalated over the years.
And what are COINTELPRO-style tactics exactly? The most frequently used of those tactics (officially authorized, documented, and bragged about by J. Edgar Hoover himself as well as many other FBI agents throughout the history of the bureau) include the intensification of confusion and dissatisfaction amongst members of targeted organizations through the use of disinformation campaigns (often launched through the cooperation of friendly media, anonymous letters, and the circulation and anonymous mailing of FBI generated political cartoons and fliers purporting to have been generated by members of whichever organizations the bureau sought to divide), the hiring and training of provocateursXpeople hired by the bureau to join targeted organizations and encourage division amongst members through the raising and exaggeration of controversial issues, and to inspire violence on the part of members in response to harassment campaigns launched by the FBI against themXin many documented cases actual acts of terrorism were conceived of by the FBI and the plans for such acts as bombings and assassinations were brought by the provocateurs to those members of an organization they felt were most prone to violenceXall of this in an effort to generate fear of such organizations in the hearts of the status quo.
Also amongst the tactics frequently indulged in by the FBI are frame-upsXmany officially admitted, documented, and declassified and readily available for study through the Freedom of Information ActXin which Federal agents conspired to imprison targeted individuals through the use of falsified evidence and perjured testimony, as well as (one of their more disturbing techniques) efforts to pit violent organizations against peaceful organizations in the hopes that the violent would neutralize the peaceful. One example (of many presented in the book) is that of the FBI attempting to pit the Mafia against the Communist Party, USA through anonymous letters and plays upon newspaper articles, contending that the communists intended to get the thugs out of their unions and clean up the sweatshops which the Mafia was known for running. The bureau hoped that the Mafia would put out hits on key leaders of the Communist Party, and in one memo makes favorable references to the fact that since their campaign started communist offices had suffered bombings, a typical hoodlum technique.
A truly successful example of this same technique as utilized against the Black Panther Party (who were overwhelmingly peaceful despite many efforts by the bureau to inspire them to violence) is that of the FBI sending an anonymous letter, attributed to the Panthers, to the violence prone United Slaves. The letter revealed a fictional plot by the BPP to assassinate US head Ron Karenga. On January 17, 1969, that letter bore fruit in the form of the shooting deaths of two BPP leaders by three members of the US in a classroom at UCLA. The great success of this letter is that with it the FBI was able to pit two Black Liberation organizations against each other, thus neutralizing their effective pursuits of their own causes while significantly weakening the efforts of the others: the winnersXthe FBI and the status quo, the losersXBlack Liberation as a whole.
Also, not entirely uncommon behavior on part of the FBI is the effort to push targeted individuals to take their own lives through blackmail. One particularly disturbing, though unsuccessful, example of this is the case of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. After utilizing mass-media propaganda campaigns pertaining to Dr. Kings supposed communist influences and sexual proclivities, as well as a harassment campaign by the IRS, FBI audio technician John Matter compiled an audio tape of Dr. King allegedly engaged in orgiastic trysts with prostitutes. The FBI then mailed this tape to Dr. King along with an anonymous letter informing King that the audio material would be released to the media unless he committed suicide prior to bestowal of the Nobel Prize. They had hoped that in the wake of all the stress and under the fear of such press Dr. King would follow the advice and take his own life. He didnt, and the tape was subsequently rejected by Benjamin Bradlee of Newsweek. Perhaps it was too flimsy and too poor in taste for even friendly media.
The authors also fly through case after case of punitive prosecution orchestrated by the FBI against targeted individualsXthe point of the prosecution having never been to even imprison, only to keep those they viewed as threats preoccupied with their own legal struggles. During many FBI sweeps in which some of those punitively prosecuted were arrested, it was not uncommon for the agents to completely trash the offices and equipment belonging to the organizations for which those people worked. In one raid on Black Panther offices, police even destroyed bulk food the Panthers were distributing free to ghetto children.
In their operations against organizations such as SDS and AIM, the FBI utilized all of the same aforementioned tacticsXeven after 1971, the year in which COINTELPRO had been officially terminated. The cases chronicled and the supporting FBI documents are downright overwhelming, alarming, and sickening. Ill leave the descriptions of such cases to the authors, who (unfortunately) maintain that even they have hardly scratched the surface in exposing the conservative terrorism perpetrated by the FBI on the American people.
In the concluding chapter of this book, Churchill and Vander Wall illustrate the advent of the word terrorism and its use since 1972 to justify ongoing COINTELPRO efforts on the part of the FBI, though the acronym has been dropped the tactics and the secrecy are all still in place. Though the FBI is no longer fighting communism and has instead found a new enemy in terrorism, the American people are no safer now from their dishonesty and oppressive tactics than they have been since the official formation of
COINTELPRO. As an American, who hears the word terror thrown around by politicians and law enforcement officers on a daily basis, and who has unfortunately found himself aware of such alarming facts as at present, the U.S. enjoys the dubious distinction of having a greater proportion of its population incarcerated than any western industrialized country, I do have to wonder how exactly were going to spread freedom and democracy to the rest of the world when history reveals weve always been afraid of freedom and democracy here.
The facts and quotes about the modern day prison system in this country and its expanding usage of sensory deprivation techniques designed to cause the psychological breakdown of political detainees sounded so Orwellian that Im sure even George Orwell would be shocked. In the FBI weve found our Thought Police and in our prison system weve found our Ministry of Love. And in our own hearts, it seems, were too terrified to react. Perhaps Big Brother is already watching us all.
Sometimes Desert Is Better Than the Meal May 6, 2003
45 out of 48 found this review helpful
Ward Churchil and Jim Vander Wall have done an outstanding and meticulous job in assembling and explaining the FBI's secret war on dissent in America, no wonder America is plagued with criminals, the supposed "good guys" are all out on black bag jobs committing their own crimes!!Since it is a well known historical fact that J. Edgar Hoover, America's semen stained supercop, was blackmailed by the mafia into silence, it stands to reason that he would need a new enemy to focus the attention of the American people. What better enemy than home grown political dissenters who would destroy the genteel American order--white men first. The book focuses upon the FBI's most notorious episodes--the COINTELPRO efforts against the Communist Party USA, Socialist Workers Party, the New Left, the American Indian Movement and the Black Panthers as demonstrative proof of the Bureau's efforts to undermine and destroy the constitutional rights of all Americans. It is, for me, the concluding chapter that ties everything together and offers some real life solutions to the peristent cancer that is the FBI. From 1956 to the "offical end" of COINTELPRO in 1971, the FBI committed: * 2,218 separate actions. *2,305 admitted warrantless telephone taps. *697 "bugs against domestic political targets." *57,486 CIA mail intercepts. "During the various Congressional committee investigations, the Bureau carefully hid the facts of its involvement in the 1969 Hampton-Clark assassinations. Simultaneously, it was covering up its criminal witholding of exculpatory evidence in the murder trial of LA Panther leader Geronimo Pratt." page 303. At the end, the authors offer the inescapable conclusion that priority number one is for the left to develop a strategy to come to grips with the FBI and the escalating power of "law enforcement" as well as the implications and consequences of the merging of the U.S. military and the domestic law enforcement appartus. Churchill and Vander Wall have written an excellent book which recounts history and warns us of the impending scenario we face by ignoring the increased power of the FBI, the US military and law enforcement in general.
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