Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

stayfree - Stay Free! | 14 October 2002

stayfree AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Free, promotional email list for Stay Free! print magazine

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Carrie McLaren <carrie AT stayfreemagazine.org>
  • To: stayfree AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Stay Free! | 14 October 2002
  • Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 21:14:48 -0400

Hi, just added an article from the conspiracy issue to the site (by popular request):

"The Art of the FBI: Fake Letters, bad poetry, and other highlights from the FBI's secret war on dissent"
http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/19/fbi.html



Also, whatever you think of Michael Moore the man, his new movie, Bowling for Columbine, ROCKS. It opens this week in NYC and LA and his distributors will decide how many theaters to put it in based on the first week's numbers so I hereby urge all Stay Free readers in the vicinity to check it out if you can. It's wickedly funny, and, I daresay, important.
http://www.bowlingforcolumbine.com

that's all,

carrie




- - - - - - - -

The Art of the FBI

Fake Letters and Bad Poetry: Highlights from the FBI's Secret War on Dissent

Okay, so the Hollywood fantasy of an FBI agent as a cerebral, calculating genius is exactly that-a fantasy. These guys are more likely to be paper-pushing patsies, sitting behind desks and making their rounds by phone. But just as the typical agent is a fiction so, too, are his villains. For the FBI isn't only concerned with mass murderers, mad scientists, and tall dark men in black: they also routinely target the political opponents of those in power. Most of us like to think that our government allows pacifists, ministers, scholars, and young radicals to all have their say alongside the businesses, politicians, and wealthy people who run the country. Yet government agents have a deep, hidden history of spying, attacking, and destroying groups that don't tow the line.

Among the most egregious assaults on American democracy were carried out under the FBI's Counter-Intelligence Program, a.k.a. Cointelpro. Launched in the Cold War 1950s, Cointelpro was intended to, according to the FBI, "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalists, hate-type organizations and groups, their leadership, membership, and supporters." By the FBI's hazy definition, "hate-type organizations" could include just about anyone who threatened the status quo-the Black Panthers and Communists, of course, but also anti-Vietnam peaceniks, labor leaders, and Native American groups. These "subversives" were to be secretly investigated and their activities disrupted.

Many of the FBI's strategies are familiar to Hollywood audiences: tapping phones, stealing files, and hiring spies to infiltrate groups. But by far its most creative tactic was creating "black propaganda"-that is, propaganda that disguises its source. Faked dirty letters, poems, and satirical comic books were among the FBI's many devices for pitting activists against one another.

Cointelpro was officially sacked in the 1970s when Watergate made domestic surveillance less palatable. But Cointelpro's demise was in name only, for many of its strategies persist. FBI agents have been known, for example, to masquerade as anti-globalization protesters, secretly joining activist groups and later arresting them on conspiracy charges (ironically enough). Reclaim the Streets, an activist group here in New York, is currently listed on the FBI website as an example of a "left-wing terrorist" organization. What has RTS done to earn the FBI's wrath? It has thrown impromptu street parties, blocking off parts of the Lower East Side and literally dancing in the streets. (RTS formed to protest the draconian anti-assembly laws in New York, where-in most bars and restaurants-it's actually illegal to dance.) No broken windows, no violence, just savvy civil disobedience.

If you think we're making all of this up, you can see the evidence for yourself. Some of the Cointelpro files have been released under the Freedom of Information Act and published as is in collections such as Nelson Blackstock's Cointelpro and Ward Churchill & Jim Vander Wall's, Cointelpro Papers. Both books come heartily recommended. --Carrie McLaren


Black Panther Coloring Book

In the late 1960s, the Black Panthers started a Free Breakfast for Children program, serving thousands of black and poor kids across the U.S. Concerned that the program would spread anti-white propaganda, the FBI decided to spread their own anti-white propaganda as a pre-emptive strike. The bureau produced a 24-page coloring book, making it appear as if it had been created by the Panthers. Intending to gut public support for the group, the books contained inflamatory pictures, some of which featured young black kids shooting pigs dressed as policemen. The FBI sent copies of the coloring book to the Panthers' white contributors and to businesses that supported the free breakfast program, such as Safeway and Jack-In-The-Box. When copies of the forgery reached the Panthers' national leadership, Bobby Seale destroyed it, saying it "did not correctly reflect the ideology of the Black Panther Party." -Brian Boling

Continued, with images, at
http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/19/fbi.html
http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/19/panther_pix.html




  • Stay Free! | 14 October 2002, Carrie McLaren, 10/13/2002

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page