Media COINTELPRO
By Tony Palmeri
The J. Edgar Hoover era FBI Counter Intelligence
Program (aka “COINTELPRO”), initiated in 1956 and allegedly ended in 1971,
tried with much success to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise
neutralize" domestic political movements. COINTELPRO harassed mostly left
leaning grassroots activists and prominent leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr.
(former FBI Domestic Intelligence Director William Sullivan said the Bureau had
a “no holds barred” policy towards King when it came to methods of
neutralization.). Tactics included surveillance, infiltration of organizations,
“dirty tricks” designed to intimidate, and even assassination. In 1975 Senator
Frank Church’s Oversight Committee exposed COINTELPRO style abuses throughout
the US intelligence apparatus. The Bureau on its own website minimizes the
Gestapo like nature of COINTELPRO and admits only that the program was
“rightfully criticized by Congress and the American people for abridging first amendment
rights and for other reasons.”
Since the 1970s a range of activists have insisted
that COINTELPRO never ended; in May the FBI’s naming of Assata Shakur (formerly Joanne Chesimard) as
a “domestic terrorist” and the first female “Most Wanted Terrorist” lends
credence to those activists’ charges. Shakur’s attorney Lennox Hinds told the New York Times that “The attempt at this
point by the New Jersey State Police to characterize her as a terrorist is
designed to inflame the public who may be unfamiliar with the facts.”
What are the facts? In the 1960s Shakur joined the
Black Panther Party and later the more revolutionary Black Liberation Army.
From 1973-1976 the government failed to convict Shakur on a range of charges
from kidnapping to bank robbery while holding her under torturous prison
conditions. In 1977 an all-white jury found her guilty of the murder of New
Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster in a May, 1973 New Jersey Turnpike shootout.
The verdict occurred despite the fact that Sundiata Acoli (formerly Clark
Squire) had already been convicted of firing the shots that killed Foerster,
and in spite of there being no forensic evidence tying Shakur to the murder. In
1979 she escaped from prison with the help of BLA allies and eventually fled to
Cuba where she was granted political asylum. Her autobiography Assata is widely read in
African-American Studies and other university programs. In Hip Hop culture
she’s attained almost mythical status as a heroic freedom fighter. (She is the
late Tupac Shakur’s step aunt.).
Sixties radical Angela Davis, herself no stranger to
COINTELPRO persecution, opined on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! program that the FBI’s placement of Shakur on the
Most Wanted Terrorist list itself reflects the “logic of terrorism” because it is
“designed to frighten young people, especially today, who would be involved in
the kind of radical activism that might lead to change.”
Evidence for Davis’ position can be found in the
fact that FBI’s renewed focus on Shakur occurred not long after the hip artist
Common (born Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr.) released “Open Letter Part II,” a rap
that remixed Jay Z’s “Open Letter.” In his recording, Jay Z defends his recent
trip to Cuba with lyrics that present a scathing critique of political
hypocrisy. Common, who’d already gained notoriety in establishment circles for
his year 2000 “A Song For Assata,” reworked “Open Letter” to say this:
My man went to Cuba
Caught in a political triangle, Bermuda
The same way they said she was the
shooter
Assata Shakur, they tried to execute her
I went to Cuba to see her
We should free her, like we should Mumia
Assata Shakur in 1998 composed her own open letter, to Pope John Paul II during his visit to Cuba. American politicians at the time were calling on the Pope to demand the Cuban government extradite Shakur to the United States. She wrote to the Pope:
Assata Shakur in 1998 composed her own open letter, to Pope John Paul II during his visit to Cuba. American politicians at the time were calling on the Pope to demand the Cuban government extradite Shakur to the United States. She wrote to the Pope:
“I advocate self-determination for
my people and for all oppressed inside the United States. I advocate an end to
capitalist exploitation, the abolition of racist policies, the eradication of
sexism, and the elimination of political repression. If that is a crime, then I
am totally guilty.”
For those sensing the continued
existence of COINTELPRO, it is Shakur’s message more than the events of May, 1973
that make her a terrorist. In announcing Shakur’s terrorist designation, FBI
special agent Aaron Ford explicitly argued that her message was central to the
Bureau’s interest: “Openly
and freely in Cuba . . . She provides anti-U.S. government speeches espousing
the Black Liberation Army message of revolution and terrorism.”
Youth tempted by Common and others
to see her as a freedom fighter now have to contend with the possibility that
merely espousing what the Bureau may construe as Shakurian views could land
them in a bureaucrat’s file or something worse. That IS frightening.
What is the mainstream media’s role
in all of this? Virtually all of the reporting on the FBI’s Shakur initiative,
in print and especially on television,
minimized or flat out ignored the COINTELPRO context that has to be part
of any story dealing with African-American rebels. The Associated Press, which
recently and rightly protested in harsh terms the government’s seizure of APjournalists’ phone records (a COINTELPRO style repression) in the name of
“national security,” curiously did noteven mention the history of FBI abuses in its reporting on Shakur.
American journalists should consider
that silence on COINTELPRO is consent to it.
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