FBI Launches COINTELPRO: Covert Campaign to Destroy Black Organizations

In August 1956, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover formally launches the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), initially targeting the Communist Party USA. By 1957-1960, the program has expanded to target Black civil rights organizations. Tactics include planting informants, sending forged letters to create conflicts between leaders, providing information to local police who carry out harassment arrests, contacting employers to have activists fired, and sending anonymous threatening letters. The program's exposure in 1971 reveals systematic government destruction of Black political organizing.