Death Cab for COINTELPRO

J. Edgar Hoover is adding this to my subversive file

Jan 18

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day to all the Instagram activists who post an out-of-context quote on their stories and nothing more!!!! Today we’re going to be talking about one fraction of Dr. King’s story that involves J. Edgar Hoover, Robert F. Kennedy, and racism.

To start, a fun fact about me (hard segue): I actually used to be neighbors with the FBI Director’s Protective Detail back when James Comey lived in Connecticut. Did I think they moved there after I accidentally clicked on the link that appeared for bomb [dot] com on a Happy Birthday Facebook post when someone referred to the birthday person as, you guessed it, the bomb [DOT] com, and my browser shut down which I thought meant I was now on the FBI watchlist? Maybe.

Did the FBI agents absolutely love my blueberry muffins and chocolate chip cookies that I brought up initially to bribe them into taking me off the watchlist with but ultimately continued bringing up because they actually appreciated my talents, unlike my family who would each eat one cookie and maybe a muffin? 1000%.

This humble brag about my baking skills is a much smoother segue into a conversation about the FBI, COINTELPRO, or Counter Intelligence Program (which is why it’s not the COINTELPRO Program), and how they wire-tapped Dr. King.

What the hell do all of these random letters mean?

COINTELPRO is the umbrella term for a series of covert projects launched by the FBI between 1956–1971. According to the world’s best historian, each of the projects began at the height of America’s second wave of anti-Communist fear and were

aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic American political organizations. FBI records show COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals the FBI deemed subversive, including feminist organizations, the Communist Party USA, anti–Vietnam War organizers, activists of the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power movement (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), 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 right-wing groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the National States' Rights Party.

From the get-go, the FBI was doing too much.

While the agency explained their actions by claiming they were working to maintain national security and the existing world order, in essence, they were just committing crimes to “prevent crimes” that often had yet to be committed— you know, like cops shooting unarmed Black people (is that too on the nose?).

In any case, the tactics frequently used during the COINTELPRO era were “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” which was referred to as neutralization, as if the FBI thought they were the leads on a bad TV cop drama.

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As absolutely unhinged as this all sounds today (although, again, let’s be careful here), it actually was all justified in the minds of so many people who blindly clung to the fear of the subversive in the 1950s. Who is this subversive, you may ask?

Fucking everyone.

Following the end of World War II, and, notably the development and use of the atomic bomb, Americans became preoccupied with stability and normalcy, like anti-maskers who “refuse to succumb to fearing the disease.” Except Americans did succumb to their fear in the 1950s: the rise of the Soviet Union (along with their anger at the US for being super bitchy towards the end of the war)1 and their adoption of Communism literally sent the whole United States up a wall.

There had already been a Red Scare in the earlier years of the 20th century, but “whereas the primary concern during the First Red Scare… had been of an external Communist attack, Americans now feared that subversives had infiltrated society and were determined to bring the U.S. down from the inside.” (It’s me; I’m the source for this one.)

The underlying fear of Communism during the Second Red Scare stemmed from a belief that there were individuals living in the U.S., presenting as everyday citizens while secretly helping facilitate America’s downfall. This belief hinges on the presence of subversives, or individuals who bear any marking of opposition to the existence of America. (x)

The thing was: a subversive could be anyone. Did your co-worker get promoted instead of you? You definitely heard a rumor they were a fellow traveler. Did someone cut you in line at Trader Joe’s? They’re giving off BSE: big subversive energy. Does your upstairs neighbor start vacuuming at 11 pm on a Thursday? Because mine does, and it is the only instance in which I wish anti-Communist fearmongering was still a vibe.

Much like the entirety of the federal government, the FBI completely leaned into the shoot first, question later approach. Because the agency was dominated by its leader, J. Edgar Hoover, a lot of the targeting and accusing of subversives was borne out of his racism and homophobia—hope this doesn’t come as a shock to all of the rabid Hoover-heads reading this.

How Makeup Transformed Leonardo DiCaprio Into 'J. Edgar' – The Hollywood Reporter — Leonardo DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover for marginally better vibes.

“Subversive” was also the label given to those believed to be easily swayed by Communist influences. For instance, the Lavender Scare 2 was so successful because of the widespread belief that members of the LGBTQ+ community “by nature, were subversive because they were hiding their true identities and were thereby susceptible to Soviet influence.” (x)

Similarly, in an article last year for The Atlantic, staff writer Hannah Giorgis wrote about “how the racist belief that Black activists are politically naive has long informed national-intelligence gathering… the FBI’s primary concern in the 1950s was the Communist Party. To the extent that Black leaders such as King initially caught the bureau’s attention… was because government officials believed that Black people as a population were easily susceptible to political manipulation.”

Hoover actively targeted MLK through COINTELPRO, urging the agent in charge of the program to write a memo that read:

In the light of King's powerful demagogic speech [the 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, ]... We must mark him now if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national security.

If you think that was a lot, wait until we get into

The RFK of it all.

Before John F. Kennedy died and became everyone’s pick for “Fuck” in every historical round of “Marry, Fuck, Kill”, he was actually the president. While in office, he played the nepotism card and nominated his brother, Robert, to serve as Attorney General. While at first controversial, Robert ended up being a notably positive pick and was dually committed to advancing civil rights in his professional and personal life.3 However, as Attorney General, RFK had to work in close proximity with the FBI which meant working with Hoover… and which really meant working for Hoover.

While many reports and records show that the FBI “began monitoring Martin Luther King, Jr., in December 1955, during his involvement with the Montgomery bus boycott,” things took a turn. As Giorgis writes, “the bureau was wiretapping a friend of King’s when investigators accidentally discovered that King was having an extramarital affair. Once the FBI stumbled on this detail, they got permission to surveil him.”4

A memo from Hoover states that

in July 1963 Kennedy agreed in October to permit the broad scale tapping of King’s telephones. “On October 7, 1963, a request for authority to place a telephone surveillance on King’s residence was sent to Mr. Kennedy. On October 10, 1963, he authorized this surveillance, and surveillance on any future residence of King, by his written signature.”
What Hoover does not mention in his memo of the record was that fact that tapping King’s telephones was specifically authorized by Kennedy “on a trial basis,” for a month or so. “Bobby thought it was absolute blackmail,” [Deputy Attorney General] Nicholas Katzenbach later observed, “but he felt, he could not, with all of the flood of memos about all his [King’s] Communist associations, then turn the Bureau down on a tap…” (x)

(Hoover also then extended the wiretap clearance, both in time and in scope.)

Through the wiretapping of King’s home and many hotel rooms, the FBI managed to acquire evidence of extramarital affairs (but notably, not even a hint of Communism) which they turned into the World’s Worst Subscription Box: in 1964, “a package that contained the letter and a tape recording allegedly of King's sexual indiscretions was delivered to Coretta Scott King, wife of Martin Luther King Jr., and later to King Jr. himself. Although the letter was anonymously written, Martin Luther King Jr. correctly suspected the FBI sent the package.” The letter also implied that MLK should take his own life which, on top of being wholly disgusting, is just not a creative threat.

The FBI also just kept going: according to a report from the Senate committee created to investigate the FBI’s tactics in the 1970s, just before King’s murder in 1967, the FBI launched a COINTELPRO project titled “Black Nationalist–Hate Groups” (a title so loaded we don’t have time to unpack it all),

which targeted Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King, and other civil rights leaders. King was identified as a target because the FBI believed that he could become a “messiah” who could unify black nationalists “should he abandon his supposed ‘obedience’ to ‘white liberal doctrines’ (nonviolence) and embrace black nationalism.” In the last few months of King’s life, the FBI intensified its efforts to discredit him and to ‘neutralize” SCLC.

And although the FBI launched an investigation to find MLK’s murderer following his assassination in 1968, in 1969 “[FBI] efforts to 'expose' Martin Luther King Jr. had not slackened even though King had been dead for a year. [The Bureau] furnished ammunition to opponents that enabled attacks on King's memory, and... tried to block efforts to honor the slain leader." (x)

All of this hatred just kept festering and growing and became the norm at the time. The only person involved who managed to start redeeming themselves was RFK who, at an impromptu presidential campaign stop before his own assassination in 1968, offered the following speech and is accredited for soothing the people of Indianapolis as riots broke out elsewhere across the country:

But why is this history worth noting today?

Well, for one thing, it reads like a juicy tabloid so no notes there. The second is that it is actually a very inconvenient history for everyone involved, many of us included.

At the time of his death, Dr. King had a public disapproval rating of 75% with “white racial resentment was still a critical factor at that point.” This isn’t an attack on anyone or abstention of my own guilt, but honestly, a majority of the white people reading this would have likely supported the FBI’s actions against King. It’s very easy to think we all would have been above sixty years ago but the truth is that many white people are not even above it today.

But this also isn’t to say Dr. King was always perfect, nor is it to give RFK a medal for being a Good White Person— I’m not pointing any fingers or making any blanket assumptions. It is all to say there are inconvenient truths and histories that we often choose to ignore and the only way to actually be better is to see them, sit with them, and then fix what was wrong with them.

We venerate the FBI and our intelligence agencies without always noting their very human flaws; we idolize heroes like Dr. King and RFK without actually considering the person who exists off our pedestal; we talk shit about J. Edgar Hoover which is fair, actually, because he was truly an awful human.5 These are all things we can recognize in our lives today.

The past is the past and no one is ever going to change it— hope this doesn’t come as a shock to all of the rabid revisionist historians reading this. What we can do is learn about it and from it, and also hold people accountable on Twitter so we don’t fall into the trap of being complacent with it: