Resolution resolved: The United States federal government should substantially curtail its domestic surveillance. Violations

COINTELPRO was far more than just surveillance

Wells 4 Christina E. Wells, Enoch N. Crowder Professor of Law, University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law. Ohio Northern University Law Review 2004 30 Ohio N.U.L. Rev. 451 THE TWENTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL LAW REVIEW SYMPOSIUM PRIVACY AND SURVEILLANCE: EMERGING LEGAL ISSUES: Symposium Article: Information Control in Times of Crisis: The Tools of Repression lexis

The FBI's abuse of domestic intelligence-gathering culminated in its now- infamous COINTELPRO operations, which it conducted from 1956 until 1971. Counterintelligence operations such as these ostensibly include "those actions by an intelligence agency intended to protect its own security and to undermine hostile intelligence operations." n144 The FBI's programs, however, went far beyond intelligence-gathering to counter national security threats, instead extending to "secret actions de[signed] to 'disrupt' and 'neutralize' target groups and individuals . . . on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence." n145

As with earlier FBI surveillance operations, the targets of its COINTELPRO operations expanded over time. Beginning with the CPUSA in 1956, n146 the COINTELPRO programs grew to include the Socialist Workers Party, the civil rights movement, White hate groups, Black nationalist groups, [*474] and "new left" groups, a broadly defined category of organizations including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Students for a Democratic Society, and the National Organization for Women. n147 The breadth of the investigations was staggering-over COINTELPRO's life the FBI opened 2,000 separate investigations. n148 It was also indiscriminate. Anything remotely considered to be subversive justified an investigation, even something as trivial as writing a letter to a newspaper supporting protests against censorship. n149

The FBI's COINTELPRO tactics went far beyond surveillance, reliance on informers and illegal searchers, although those familiar techniques were part of its arsenal. COINTELPRO also included actions designed to harass targets, such as:

attempts to disrupt marriages, to stir factionalism within and between dissident groups, to have dissidents fired from jobs and ousted by landlords, to prevent protestors from speaking and protest groups from forming, to have derogatory material planted in the press or among acquaintances of targets, to interfere with peaceful demonstrations and deny facilities for meetings and conferences, to cause funding cut-offs to dissident groups, to prevent the distribution of literature and to get local police to arrest targets for alleged criminal law violations. n150