trust the tran
Operation POCAM
''Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show how the FBI seeded a news story about jealousy and resentment between the Poor People's Campaign and a friendly group of Quakers, in an attempt to drive the two groups apart.''
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) strove to monitor and disrupt the campaign, which it code-named "POCAM".[60] The FBI, which had been targeting King since 1962 with COINTELPRO, increased its efforts after King's April 4, 1967 speech titled "Beyond Vietnam". It also lobbied government officials to oppose King on the grounds that he was a communist, "an instrument in the hands of subversive forces seeking to undermine the nation", and affiliated with "two of the most dedicated and dangerous communists in the country" (Stanley Levison and Harry Wachtel).[61]
After "Beyond Vietnam" these efforts were reportedly successful in turning lawmakers and administration officials against King, the SCLC, and the cause of civil rights.[62] After King was assassinated and the marches got underway, reports began to emphasize the threat of black militancy instead of communism.[63]
Operation POCAM became the first major project of the FBI's Ghetto Informant Program (GIP), which recruited thousands of people to report on poor black communities.[64] Through GIP, the FBI quickly established files on SCLC recruiters in cities across the US.[65] FBI agents posed as journalists, used wiretaps, and even recruited some of the recruiters as informants.[66]
The FBI sought to disrupt the campaign by spreading rumors that it was bankrupt, that it would not be safe, and that participants would lose welfare benefits upon returning home.[67] Local bureaus reported particular success for intimidation campaigns in Birmingham, Alabama, Savannah, Georgia, and Cleveland, Ohio.[68] In Richmond, Virginia, the FBI collaborated with the John Birch Society to set up an organization called Truth About Civil Turmoil (TACT). TACT held events featuring a Black woman named Julia Brown who claimed to have infiltrated the civil rights movement and exposed its Communist leadership.[69]
''Poor People's Campaign''
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_People's_Campaign
This article is about the 1968 US anti-poverty campaign.
Ghetto Informant Program
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghetto_Informant_Program
''The Ghetto Informant Program (GIP) was an intelligence-gathering operation run by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 1967 to 1973. Its official purpose was to collect information pertaining to riots and civil unrest. Through GIP, the FBI used more than 7000 people to infiltrate poor black communities in the United States.[1]''
Background
After the Watts Riots of 1965, and further unrest in Newark and Detroit in the summer of 1967, the US government mobilized to prepare for urban conflict. Its actions ranged from commissioning a report by the civilian Kerner Commission to mobilizing the army to prepare for martial law in American cities.[2]
The order for GIP program came in a letter from Attorney General Ramsey Clark to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Clark wrote:[3]
We have not heretofore had to deal with the possibility of an organized pattern of violence, constituting a violation of federal law, by a group of persons who make the urban ghetto their base of operation and whose activities may not have been regularly monitored by existing intelligence sources.
And:
As a part of the broad investigation which must necessarily be conducted … sources or informants in black nationalist organizations, SNCC and other less publicized groups should be developed and expanded to determine the size and purpose of these groups and their relationship to other groups, and also to determine the whereabouts of persons who might be involved in instigating riot activity in violation of federal law.
The GIP coincided with COINTELPRO–BLACK HATE.[4]
Scope
The program was targeted at those likely to have information about ghetto happenings. Thus (according to an internal memo) it included people such as "the proprietor of a candy store or barber shop" in a ghetto area.[3] These informants were "listening posts"—tools for blanket surveillance of a community or area.[5] GIP operated with no oversight from courts or Congress.[6]
Informants monitored "Key Black Extremists" such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, Floyd McKissick, Huey Newton, and more.[7] One of the first major projects involving the GIP was Operation POCAM, the FBI's effort to monitor and disrupt the 1968 Poor People's Campaign.[8] Informants were later asked to report on Afro-American bookstores and investigate the existence of subversive literature.[9]
At least 67 informants were members of the Black Panther Party (BPP), tasked with spreading disinformation as well as sending reports to the FBI.[10] Recent disclosures have suggested that photographer Ernest Withers was a paid FBI informant under the GIP.[11]
Termination?
In 1972, the FBI's Inspection Division began to express concern about using African-American informants specifically to investigate civil unrest. A memo dated November 24, 1972, notes that the GIP has produced abundant 'byproduct' information related to activities other than rioting. It suggests that these informants be reclassified as Security, Extremist, Revolutionary Activities, or Criminal, and that civil unrest information continue to be collected as a byproduct from these same informants.[9]
The GIP was terminated in July 1973, and informants were either reclassified or discontinued.[12]
Concerns about FBI surveillance in the style of the Ghetto Informant Program has continued through the present day.[6][13] Senator Patrick Leahy compared Operation TIPS to the GIP in 2002.[14][15]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_People%27s_Campaign
"During project POCAM the FBI marshaled its awesome resources to propagate the thesis that the Poor People's Campaign was instigated by a subversive conspiracy. (POCAM was the code name for the Poor People's Campaign in all internal FBI communications relating to this project, which had initially been identified as the Washington Spring Project. …)
Hoover and his executive officers used every opportunity to intensify the siege mentality gripping the federal government as it prepared for the army of the poor converging on the nation's capital."
COINTELPRO
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
''COINTELPRO (syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program; 1956–1971) was a series of covert and illegal[1][2] projects actively conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic American political organizations.[3][4] ''
FBI records show COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals the FBI[5] deemed subversive,[6] including feminist organizations,[7][8] the Communist Party USA,[9] anti–Vietnam War organizers, activists of the civil rights and Black power movements
(e.g. Martin Luther King Jr., the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party), environmentalist and animal rights organizations, the American Indian Movement (AIM), Chicano and Mexican-American groups like the Brown Berets and the United Farm Workers, independence movements (including Puerto Rican independence groups such as the Young Lords and the Puerto Rican Socialist Party), a variety of organizations that were part of the broader New Left, and white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan[10][11] and the far-right group National States' Rights Party.[12]
In 1971 in San Diego, the FBI financed, armed, and controlled an extreme right-wing group of former members of the Minutemen anti-communist paramilitary organization, transforming it into a group called the Secret Army Organization that targeted groups, activists, and leaders involved in the Anti-War Movement, using both intimidation and violent acts.[13][14][15]
The FBI has used covert operations against domestic political groups since its inception; however, covert operations under the official COINTELPRO label took place between 1956 and 1971. Many of the tactics used in COINTELPRO are alleged to have seen continued use including; discrediting targets through psychological warfare; smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; illegal violence; and assassination.[16][17][18][19] According to a Senate report, the FBI's motivation was "protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order".[20]
''Beginning in 1969, leaders of the Black Panther Party were targeted by COINTELPRO and "neutralized" by being assassinated, imprisoned'', publicly humiliated or falsely charged with crimes. Some of the Black Panthers targeted include Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, Zayd Shakur, Geronimo Pratt, Mumia Abu-Jamal,[21] and Marshall Conway. Common tactics used by COINTELPRO were perjury, witness harassment, witness intimidation, and withholding of exculpatory evidence.[22][23][24]
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover issued directives governing COINTELPRO, ordering FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of these movements and especially their leaders.[25][26] Under Hoover, the agent in charge of COINTELPRO was William C. Sullivan.[27] Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy personally authorized some of the programs,[28] giving written approval for limited wiretapping of Martin Luther King's phones "on a trial basis, for a month or so".[29] Hoover extended the clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for evidence in any areas of King's life they deemed worthy.[30]
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