Federal COINTELPRO operations deliberately destroyed activist leaders and movements.
Evidence
In the 1960s, the federal government engaged in systematic covert harassment of such activist groups as the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement, and of Martin Luther King, Jr. and other members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, conspiring to ruin the lives of their leaders, set the membership against one another and against other activist groups with whom they might have formed ties, and drive them to despair, ruin, and suicide. The feds also engaged in long-term secret programs to test the effects of radiation on poor people, carrying out medical experiments that sickened and sometimes killed women, prisoners, and even children in state care. — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 78
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: The FBI ran COINTELPRO to sow distrust and undermine activist groups — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 153; COINTELPRO actively sought to destroy Black nationalist organizations; The War on Terror recycled COINTELPRO-era racial policing tactics against Muslims — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 263 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- COINTELPRO actively sought to destroy Black nationalist organizations
#expands(0.98) - The War on Terror recycled COINTELPRO-era racial policing tactics against Muslims
#expands(0.80) — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 263 - Operation Boulder redeployed COINTELPRO counterinsurgency methods to racialize Arab Americans
#expands(0.78) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 249 - Claiming surveillance without evidence diminishes real COINTELPRO harm.
#responds-to(0.75) — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 870