email: timothychilman@yahoo.com

<Come on guys, I would heartily appreciate suggestions of things I could write about.>

One of the most effective things the United States did during the Vietnam War was the Phoenix Program. Counter Spy magazine called it “the most indiscriminate and massive programme of political murder since the Nazi death camps of World War 2.” The United States could do with more of this sort of thing in the counter-insurgencies it keeps finding itself fighting.

In Vietnam, the government ruled by day, but the infrastructure of the Viet Cong ruled by night. Photo: Department of Defense.

Counterinsurgency requires that government forces neutralize not only the military capabilities of an insurgency, but also the infrastructure: the intelligence, recruitment, and logistics functions. In Vietnam, the Viet Cong Infrastructure (VCI) was a shadow government. One CIA veteran who served in Vietnam said, “the GVN may have ruled during the day, but these guys ruled at night.”

The VCI disseminated propaganda and established associations of students, wimmen, and farmers to weaken existing social institutions and make the Communist People’s Revolutionary Party the new focal point of society. The VCI mounted demonstrations and disrupted government efforts toward tax collection and military conscription. One estimate put the number of such people at between 70,000 and 100,000 in 1967.

Legal VCI cadres possessed valid identity documents, such as this pass card. Photo: Bình Giang.

U.S. intelligence divided the VCI into two categories: legal and illegal cadres. Legal cadres were citizens of South Vietnam who possessed legitimate identity papers. While termed “legal,” they operated covertly. Illegals, on the other hand, were generally well known to locals and the GVN. They were obvious targets, and so lived in well-defended areas with armed guards. By the end of the 1960s, it had become difficult for illegal cadres to operate in the hamlets of South Vietnam.

In the early 1960s, the GVN, encouraged by American advisers, instituted programs to counteract the shadow government. The GVN devoted most of its resources to engaging V.C. units, and later the North Vietnamese army, but anti-infrastructure efforts achieved some success.

A leaflet publicizing the Chien Hoi (“Open Arms”) program. Photo: National Archives and Records Administration.

Chien Hoi (“Open Arms”) was launched in 1963, and sought to persuade V.C. and, later, NVA members to defect through offers of amnesty and resettlement. One estimate found that 194,000 “ralliers” were lured between 1963 and 1971. While many were low-level personnel, and few were from the NVA, much valuable intelligence was gained as to the motivation, morale, and organization of the insurgents.

The Census Grievance program saw teams of GVN personnel sent to villages to interview a member of each family under the guise of better understanding the anti-government sentiment of the population, but in reality to collect intelligence on the VCI. Knowing who was related to whom was critical to counterinsurgency, as recruitment at the village level was generally initially based on family ties. Vast quantities of information were gleaned, but before computers were in widespread use, it was time-consuming and difficult to exploit the data.

The Revolutionary Development cadres were a CIA initiative which developed from the inchoate recruitment and propaganda endeavors of the Diem government, such as the Xay Dung Nong Thon (Rural Development) programs. These copied the V.C., sending armed teams of young men to the countryside to live among villagers, spread government propaganda, and recruit for village militias and other organizations. One scholar said, “The R.D. cadres did not accomplish much. When confronted by the V.C., they usually withdrew to safer environs rather than fight.”

While not usually placed in the category of counter-infrastructure measures, the GVN’s strategic hamlet program had that effect. Hamlets were encircled by moats and sharpened bamboo stakes and defended by locally-raised militias, with the intention of denying the V.C. access to the manpower and other resources of the location. The hamlets were no great obstacle to Communist plans in the countryside, but as they grew in number, the politburo in Hanoi became alarmed and gave orders to their commanders to infiltrate and destroy them.

Counter-Terror Teams (CTTs) were, like R.D. cadres, organized, trained, and equipped by the CIA and modeled on V.C. methods. They were trained for small-unit operations deep in V.C.-controlled areas with the aim of capturing or killing VCI members. As was true of the other aspects of pacification, the quality of the CTTs varied from team to team. Sometimes, province chiefs misused CTTs as bodyguards, or to settle personal grievances. President Thieu himself used them to eliminate his political rivals. Arrangements for command and control were inadequate, and the teams acquired a reputation for thuggishness. Press accounts accused them of being death squads.

The CTTs were later rebranded as Provincial Reconnaissance Units, which is rather friendlier. The units became more concerned with apprehending VCI suspects rather than killing them. As John Mullins, an American who advised the PRUs, said, “Prisoner snatches were key. You can’t get information out of a dead man.”

In June, 1967, anti-VCI operations were centralized to afford greater coordination. Ambassador Robert “Blowtorch Bob” Komer secured approval for a CIA plan for a program named Intelligence Coordination and Exploitation (ICEX). An officer of the Rural Development Cadre/Programs won a region-wide competition to come up with a name for the program. His suggestion was Phuong Hoang, the mythical “all-seeing bird” of South Vietnamese culture which represented grace, virtue, peace, and concord, and was similar to the phoenix. The program was known in English as the Phoenix Program.

The Phoenix Program was not a separate body, but instead a structure which brought together the various agencies which combated the VCI, and it was made of civilians rather than soldiers. Most of the Program’s manpower was South Vietnamese: the national police, the special police branch, Chieu Hoi, the R.D. cadres, the Military Security Service, military intelligence, the PRUs, and more.

The PRUs were the principal operational arm of the Phoenix Program. They were active throughout the war, but mostly from 1967 to 1972. There were never more than 5,000 men so employed, and they were essentially an intelligence-driven police force, albeit better trained, equipped, and paid than the South Vietnamese National Police due to their sponsorship by the CIA. The CIA attempted to ensure PRU commanders were generally of good quality. They were at least able to ensure that, in contrast to other elements of the forces of South Vietnam, commanders were not appointed for reasons other than merit. To prevent the PRUs from being used for personal reasons, multiple sources of information were necessary prior to the launching of an operation. Operations were frequently rejected if the U.S. advisers believed the intelligence to be inadequate.

The PRUs served in the provinces from which they hailed, making their knowledge of local conditions unparalleled by other South Vietnamese government agencies, never mind U.S. forces. Although other agencies were supposed to supply the PRUs with intelligence, in practice both South Vietnamese and U.S. agencies were rarely willing to do so, and so the PRUs generally collected and exploited their own intelligence. A CIA study said, “Successful PRUs developed [their] own sources of information, such as defectors, informants, and personal contacts in contested areas.” Major Dang Van Son, who was attached to the Phoenix program, told of an initiative known as Thien Nga – “wild geese” – where beautiful, young high school girls were used to infiltrate the local communist apparatus. Van Son said that when he served in Cantho, nearly all the Communist organizations were neutralized.

An American adviser, Andrew Finlayson, said, “Seventy-five percent of the time, the PRUs did their own targeting: ‘This guy’s sister is pro-V.C. He comes to the market and is buying way too much food,’ etc.” The PRUs used their own family members and friends, giving them informants in almost every village and hamlet. The resultant intelligence was of far superior quality to that provided by either South Vietnamese or U.S. agencies. Another American adviser, John Walsh, said, “What little intelligence we got was virtually useless.” He added that PRU members “knew their territory intimately… We advisers came to rely on their knowledge.”

Sergeant Ronald J. Lauzon was a Marine who was assigned to a PRU in Hue 1967. He said that he read hundreds of intelligence reports from the U.S. and South Vietnamese militaries, and not one was timely or wholly accurate. Clues were the times, dates, and map coordinates. He had taken part in dozens of interrogations and knew that the V.C. gave times as “after a specific event,” “soon,” “pretty soon,” or “now” and they used place names rather than map coordinates. The only reliable intelligence came from the PRUs or the Census Grievance program.

District Intelligence and Operations Coordination Centers were the offices of the Phoenix adviser in each of the 250 districts of South Vietnam. Province Intelligence and Operations Coordination Centers operated at that higher level. These were permanent organizations, rather than committees which met now and then. The CIA tended to operate at the provincial level, as it lacked the staff to man the DIOCCs, even after recruiting numerous contractors. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) was able to make use of the thousands of U.S. officers present in Vietnam to man the DIOCCs. By 1970, in excess of 700 advisers served in the Phoenix Program, and most were special forces officers. At that time, 102 U.S. military personnel and five civilians advised the PRUs. There were between 4,000 and 6,000 Vietnamese PRU personnel between 1967 and 1975.

Jeremy Kuzmarov, assistant professor of history at Tulsa University and author of The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs, spent months examining the files of the Phoenix Program when he worked on another book, Modernizing Repression: Police Training and Nation-Building in the American Century. He said the PRUs indulged in indiscriminate brutality and did not affect the senior ranks of the revolutionaries. The importance of the PRUs to senior CIA personnel in South Vietnam diminished because they felt it was more constructive to concentrate on the higher ranks of their enemy.

"Blowtorch Bob" Komer meeting President Lyndon Johnson

There was much inaccurate reporting under the Phoenix Program. A Phoenix adviser who had served in Czechoslovakia in the Second World War said, “The reports that I would send in on the number of Communists that were neutralized reminded me of the reports Hitler’s concentration camp commanders sent in on how many inmates they had exterminated, each commander lying that he had killed more than the other to please Himmler.” Internal reports stored at the National Archives show that there was widespread corruption among the PRUs, who abused their positions for revenge and extortion: people would be threatened with classification as VCI if huge sums of money were not forthcoming. Bribes were accepted in return for the release of prisoners. Ambassador Robert Komer, the director of the pacification program of MACV, accepted that there were many “phantom kills.” Non-VCI people killed during operations were identified as VCI. Report padding was at its worst in Long An province, where Phoenix adviser, Evan Parker, Jr., said, “the numbers just don’t add up.”

Kuzmarov was certainly correct in saying that most of the VCI neutralized by the PRUs were of low rank. A comprehensive Pentagon study of 1971 found that a mere three percent of Viet Cong personnel neutralized operated above the district level. Regional reports stated that one percent, and possibly less, of the people neutralized held key VCI leadership positions. Ralph McGehee, the CIA chief in Gia Dinh province and the Phoenix adviser there, said in his memoirs that “Never in the history of our work in Vietnam did we get one clear-cut, high-ranking Viet Cong agent.” Communist immunity was vastly aided by penetration of the GVN.

One Phoenix adviser said, “It was common knowledge that when someone was picked up their lives were about at an end because the Americans most likely felt that, if they were to turn someone like that back into the countryside it would just be multiplying NLF followers.” In one well-publicized case, a detainee was held in an air-conditioned room for four years because he feared the cold. His body was later disposed of at sea. K. Barton Osborne, a military intelligence specialist, testified to Congress that he saw acts of torture such as the prodding of a person’s brain through his ear with a six-inch dowel. He was active with the Phoenix Program for a year-and-a-half, and said, “Not a single suspect survived interrogation.”

Many U.S. government-provided statistics concerning the war have been shown to be profoundly flawed, which devalues quantitative estimates, but William Colby said the Phoenix Program caused the deaths of 20,000 V.C., while the GVN put the figure at 40,000. 95 percent of VCI was eliminated in some locations. It has been estimated that 5,000 innocent civilians died. Deborah Nelson and Nick Turse studied hundreds of declassified files held by the National Archives, and found that the army had investigated many claims of atrocities made by veterans and deemed them almost all accurate. The New York Times ran a number of prominent exposes of Phoenix in the early 1970s.

Nevertheless, the effect on the VCI was striking. The Viet Cong required people to collect taxes, spread propaganda, and recruit new members, and these were targeted by the Phoenix Program. A radio broadcast from Hanoi singled out the “Phoenix organization” for targeting in an offensive. After the war concluded, senior North Vietnamese officials testified to the effectiveness of the Phoenix Program. NVA Colonel Bui Tin said the Phoenix Program was “devious and cruel” and accounted for “thousands of our cadres.” General Tran Do, the deputy commander of communist forces in South Vietnam, said the Program was “extremely destructive.” Veteran V.C. leader, Madame Nguyen Thi Dinh, said, “We never feared a division of troops but the infiltration of a couple of guys into our ranks created tremendous difficulties for us.”

Many Viet Cong sympathizers were killed as a result of the Phoenix Program. Photo: Vietnam Center and Archive.

CIA Director, William Colby, said the Communists “attributed their problems to Phoenix, when they really should have attributed them to the growth of self-defense forces and that sort of thing.” The Vietnamese Communists, however, possessed what was possibly the most advanced intelligence apparatus of any insurgency of the twentieth century, and they are unlikely to be in error as to the source of their problems. The PRUs killed or captured approximately 380 cadres for every 1,000 of their men at their peak in 1970. The CIA said that anti-infrastructure efforts led to the capture, killing, or defection of more than 80,000 people. Thomas Thayer, Director of the Southeast Asia Division of the Department of Defense’s systems analysis branch at the time of the war and author of War without Fronts: The American Experience in Vietnam, said, the PRUs were “the single most effective anti-VCI forces. . . . No other force came close to this.”

The typical PRU comprised five teams of 18 men. Operations were usually staged late at night or early in the morning to maximize surprise, and were of short duration: rarely more than a few hours. The units were made of and led by Vietnamese men, but U.S. advisers helped to plan the operations and generally accompanied PRUs to the field. U.S. special forces were also available. This gave the PRUs access to air support, and the ability to summon helicopters to rapidly evacuate wounded personnel. The low level of PRUs casualties, assisted by this latter factor, had a greatly beneficial effect on morale. The presence of U.S. advisers granted first-hand knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of units.

And what kind of man served in the PRUs? The U.S. adviser, Andrew Finlayson, said, “Most were professional soldiers: they liked soldiering, and they were nationalistic. And they had scores to settle with the Communists.” Many were former V.C. or South Vietnamese soldiers. The latter included some from special forces. Some had affiliations which made them natural enemies of the Communists, be it ethnically in the case of Montagnard tribesmen or religiously in the case of Cao Dai and Catholics. Colonel Terence M. Allen, senior military adviser to the PRU program from 1968 to 1970, said the most effective PRU teams were drawn from these groups. The men of the PRUs generally hated the Viet Cong, and it was difficult to infiltrate them.

Warren H. Milberg, the senior CIA officer in Quang Tri province, said that by the middle of 1967, the war was “heating up” and young men of military age were either in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) or the Citizen Irregular Defense Groups (CIDGs), or were farmers. Not many men were available, and Milberg said that those who were recruited had “issues.” He said, “In the end, they became a great group of brave fighters, but they were not unlike a pack of pit bulls.” PRU members often solicited the recruitment of brothers, cousins, and nephews.

Elton Manzione was another American active in the Phoenix program. He said, the PRUs were “a combination of ARVN deserters, V.C. turncoats and bad motherfuckers; criminals the South Vietnamese couldn’t deal with who were turned over to us. Some actually had an incentive plan: if they killed X number of commies, they got X number of years off their prison term.” There were less paroled criminals after 1968.

When DIOCCs were not effective, U.S. advisers said it was primarily due to bureaucratic selfishness: agencies contributing to the project did not wish to share operational leads in case they did not receive credit, and hence budget allocations. Personality conflicts could also be a problem.

PRU teams dressed in the black pajamas worn by the peasants of Vietnam, or tiger-stripe uniforms. Some had V.C. or NVA clothing. The weapons of the PRUs were mostly M-16 rifles, 45 caliber pistols, M-79 grenade launchers, and M-60 machine guns. Other weapons used included M-2 carbines, Swedish K submachine guns, British Bren guns, 38-caliber Colt Cobra revolvers, and Browning 9mm automatic pistols. There was usually no shortage of ammunition.

Viet Cong Weapons. Photo: BrokenSphere.

Many PRUs often made use of their extensive collections of captured enemy weapons. PRUs equipped with AK-47 rifles and RPGs would initially be considered to be friendly by insurgents and would thus gain a tactical advantage. A drawback became evident, however, when the CIA began to interfere with enemy ammunition in late 1967 so that rounds would explode when fired. PRUs could often live with this risk.

Prisoners were held without trial in hundreds of jails and internment camps throughout the country. As a National Security Council report of 1969 said, these prisons were frequently overcrowded. Around 60 percent of prisoners taken in 1968 were later released..

Jane Barton, who monitored the treatment of prisoners for the American Friends Service Committee, said that captives would be chained to their beds with Smith & Wesson handcuffs. When they were tortured, it was by Americans in the late 1960s, and with American advisers present later on. Sidney Towle, the head of district intelligence in Vinh Long, became aware of the mistreatment of prisoners when he heard screams from the room next door, which was an interrogation center. Prisoners were connected to crank telephones with wires. A Pentagon report in 1968 found that electric shock treatment was widely applied to prisoners. A Naval Institute historian said that “the large majority of South Vietnamese interrogators tortured some or all” prisoners, including mere suspects.

Former CIA Director, William Colby, said, “If you torture, you'll get what you want to hear or you'll get something that the fellow invents.” Photo: CIA.

Is torture so bad? Hell, Jack Bauer did it. William Colby, however, said, “If you torture, you’ll get what you want to hear or you’ll get something that the fellow invents.”

The CIA instituted six “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” in March, 2002, for use on the most important and recalcitrant prisoners. These are the attention grab, when the interrogator grabs the front of the shirt of a prisoner and shakes him; the attention slap, where a prisoner is slapped with an open hand; the belly slap, which is a hard slap to the stomach; prolonged standing, one of the most effective techniques; the cold cell, where prisoners are kept in such a room, nekkid, and periodically doused with cold water; and waterboarding. Sleep deprivation and other forms of stress, of course, make memory less reliable. While the CIA claims that enhanced interrogation techniques are not torture, George Washington University professor of law, Jonathan Turley, counters that bank robbery is no more than enhanced money withdrawal.

Ed Peters, a historian at the University of Pennsylvania, said that waterboarding was first used in the 14th century. It is the pouring of water over the face of a subject, over which cloth has been laid. Now, cellophane is used instead of cloth. A sensation of drowning is produced. Waterboarding was originally referred to as “water torture,” “the water cure,” or “tormenta de toca,” which refers to the thin fragment of cloth placed over the mouth of the victim. At the time, it was regarded as cross-examination is today. A doctor would be present.

President Theodore Roosevelt approved of waterboarding. Photo: Library of Congress.

In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt wrote in a letter: “The enlisted men began to use the old Filipino method: the water cure… Nobody was seriously damaged.” The technique was used by the Japanese in the Second World War, U.S. troops in the Philippines, the French in Algeria, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and the British in Palestine. It has in the past been used by U.S. police forces. It was widely employed in the 1970s in Latin America, particularly by the dictatorships of Argentina and Chile, where it was known as “Asian torture.”

The Nazis and Soviets did not make use of waterboarding. They used harsher methods which left permanent scars or caused death. Darius Rejali, a professor at Reed College in Oregon and author of the book, Torture and Democracy, said that democracies prefer waterboarding. CIA officers who underwent waterboarding lasted for an average of 14 seconds before yielding.

In his testimony to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee, Air Force General Thomas Hartmann said, “Torture is prohibited under U.S. law.” When asked if this meant waterboarding was not used, he replied, “No ma’am, I didn’t say that.”

As argument can be made that legal codes prohibiting torture were drafted prior to the rise of terrorism, and these rules are out of date. Stephen Rickard, Washington director of the Open Society Institute, say that this justification has been used for centuries.

Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz, was one to suggest that torture be applied only after a torture warrant has been obtained. But when Israel experimented with “torture lite,” 85 percent of Palestinian prisoners were soon given the harshest treatment permitted. No government has ever successfully calibrated torture. Dubya’s General Counsel of the Navy, Alberto Mora, said that the “ticking time-bomb” justification could be used on every day on every battlefield of every war.

According to a U.S. interrogator, abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was one of the most common reasons given by foreign fighters for fighting U.S. forces in Iraq. Photo: Department of Defense.

Matthew Alexander led a Special Operations interrogation team in Iraq in 2006. He wrote How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq. He said that the primary reason foreign fighters gave for their involvement was the abuse doled out at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. He also said that half of U.S. casualties in Iraq were inflicted by foreigners who joined their cause because of detainee abuse.

A detailed investigation by the New York Times in 2011 found that, contrary to the accounts of CIA chief Leon Panetta and House Homeland Security Chairman, Rep. Peter King, torture “played a small role at most” in the location of Osama bin Laden. The U.S. Army Training Manual’s section on interrogation states that “The use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.” The Intelligence Science Board provides scientific advice to the intelligence community of the United States. Its 2006 study, Educing Information, said that “coercive interrogation methods” have never been proven to be effective in the elicitation of intelligence.

The Phoenix Program was not one of assassinations. True, Tricky Dicky thought so. He said, “We’ve got to have more of this. Assassinations. That’s what they [the Vietnamese Communists] are doing.” William Colby said that if a battle occurred outside a village, the local guerilla chief would often be found dead the next morning. Robert Slater. the chief of the CIA’s Province Interrogation Center Program from June 1967 to 1969, said “The Allies have frequently found out where the District Party Secretaries live and raided their homes: in an ensuing fire fight the secretary’s wife and children have been killed and injured.”

Financially, the Phoenix Program cost little: $4 million from 1968 to 1972, excluding support to operational units. The political price, however, was steep. Negative perceptions saw the United States to be at war with the South Vietnamese people. In 1969, the Lower House of the South Vietnamese Congress held hearings into the Phoenix Program. 86 deputies signed a petition calling for an end to the Program. In 1970, four members of Congress concluded that the Program violated international law and the Geneva Convention. Rep. Ogden Reid said that if the Union had conducted a Phoenix Program against the Confederacy, its targets would have included Jefferson Davis and the mayor of Macon, Georgia. The Phoenix Program left an enduring legacy of suspicion of U.S. power. Official secrecy went some way to encouraging unfavourable estimations of the Phoenix program.

Insurgents in Iraq

The insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan both feature an extensive infrastructure for intelligence, counter-intelligence, media, finance, recruitment, and religious affairs, although not as well-organized as that of the V.C. It will not be difficult to find people who have legitimate grievances against insuragents. CIA selection of commanders would be especially useful in Afghanistan, where nepotism is rampant, and CIA supervision could prevent units from being used for personal reasons. If CIA personnel accompanied units, they could effect even closer supervision and ascertain the effectiveness of units. As for where the U.S. personnel would come from, sources told the Associated Press that soldiers would be put under CIA control so they would not be counted as troops. Torture should not be used, although perhaps a little waterboarding could be gotten away with. The program should be admitted to and explained to obviate false perceptions of it. Now that computers are readily available, more use could be made of the prestigious quantities of data elicited. The use of locals would be attractive at a time when U.S. forces are leaving these countries. At a time of economic hardship, a Phoenix-like program is attractive because it is a dirt cheap. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how to win at counter-insurgency.

Bibliography

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“Does torture work?” Guardian. n.d. 16 February 2012. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/nov/04/2.>

Dozier, Kimberley. “Pentagon may put special OPS in Afghanistan under CIA control to meet 2014 pullout deadline.” Mercury News. 3 March 2012. 13 March 2012. <http://www.mercurynews.com/nation-world/ci_20094901http:/www.mercurynews.com/nation-world/ci_20094901.>
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“Pragmatic approaches to torture.” BBC. n.d. 16 February 2012. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/torture/law/practical.shtml.>
“The Phoenix Program.” Ausvets. n.d. 16 February 2012. <http://ausvets.tripod.com/phoenix.htm.>
“Vietnamizing the War (1969-1973).” PBS. n.d. 16 February 2012. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/series/pt_07.html.>
Fertik, Bob. “Efficacy of Torture.” Www.Democrats.com. 7 February 2009. 16 February 2012. <http://www.democrats.com/efficacy-of-torture.>
Finlayson, Colonel Andrew R. “Marine Advisors with the Vietnamese Provincial Reconnaisance Units, 1966-1970.” History Division, United States Marine Corps. n.d. 16 February 2012. <http://www.tecom.usmc.mil/HD/PDF_Files/Pubs/VN%20Advisors%20Boards_Marine%20Advisors.pdf.>
Hayden, Tom. “Reviving Vietnam War Tactics.” The Nation. 13 March 2008. 16 February 2012. <http://www.thenation.com/article/reviving-vietnam-war-tactics.>
Kuzmarov, Jeremy. “The Phoenix Program Was a Disaster in Vietnam and Would Be in Afghanistan–And the NYT Should Know that.” George Mason University’s History News Network. 6 September 2009. 16 February 2012. <http://hnn.us/articles/116462.html.>
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Turchick, Chuck. “A useful way of looking at torture: the bank robbery analogy.” Minnpost. 21 July 2010. 16 February 2012. <http://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2010/07/useful-way-looking-torture-bank-robbery-analogy.>
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Related posts:

1. They Were Shooting Flying Fish: the Gulf of Tonkin Incident
2. The Scientology Conspiracy
3. Introducing Task Force Orange

by Timothy Chilman

email: timothychilman@yahoo.com

Scientologists touting for business. Photo: MalleableExit

So, what does the faux religion of Scientology entail? Tom Cruise denied it, the website www.scientologymths.info still denies it, and the Church of Scientology has attempted to suppress the story by means of copyright and trade secrecy lawsuits, but it goes like this: after Scientologists have shelled out an estimated $350,000 to reach Operating Thetan Level III, they hear the story of Xenu, the overlord of the 76 planets of the Galactic Confederation. He solved overpopulation by transporting people to the planet Teegeeack – Earth – on spaceships that resembled Douglas DC-8s and destroying them with H bombs. The souls of the dead are called Thetans, which attach themselves to people, and Scientology is largely based on ridding people of them.

Xenu was overthrown by the Loyal Officers, and imprisoned in a mountain on Madeira where he remains to this day. A document handwritten by Hubbard tells the story and Church spokesman Tommy Davis confirmed it. Wikileaks released details of the OTIII procedure. The official Scientology line is that anybody reading the story of Xenu without undergoing the appropriate preparation could die of pneumonia.

L. Ron Hubbard in 1950, admittedly some time before the events described here

The Snow White Program was devised by the founder of the Church of Scientology, science fiction hack author, L. Ron Hubbard, in 1973. It is sometimes wrongly referred to as Operation Snow White, which annoys Scientologists. It was so-called because Hubbard wished it to make his Church appear snow white.

The Church claimed that the Program aimed to nullify government reports about the cult which were perceived to be untrue by Hubbard and his followers. The stated objective of the program was “to engage in various litigation in all countries affected so as to expose to view all such derogatory and false reports, to engage in further litigation in the countries originating such reports, to exhaust recourse in these countries and then finally to take the matter to the United Nations… and to the European Commission on Human Rights, meanwhile uprooting and canceling all such files and reports wherever found.” This would entail the submission of Freedom of Information Act requests to federal agencies, the requesting of public records, and litigation.

The Program was created while Hubbard and the management of Scientology were aboard the ship, Apollo, which Scientologists described as “the sanest place on the planet.” The 3,280 ton Apollo had for almost a decade been the personal yacht of Hubbard. The Program was largely prompted by the difficulties encountered by the Apollo as it shuttled between ports in Spain, Portugal, Morocco, and Madeira. The Apollo had often visited ports without problems from 1969 to the first half of 1974, but in July, 1973, rumors surfaced in Portugal that the vessel was a “CIA ship.” The same had been rumored in Spain in 1972. When the Apollo stopped at the port of Funchal in Madeira, Portugal, on October 3, 1974, the ship was attacked by a sizable crowd who threw rocks and shouted: “CIA ship!” One crew member said that Molotova cocktails were thrown, but were not lit. “Fortunately, “ he said, “this was not an experienced mob.” Nearby police and army units declined to intervene. Some Church members were injured and property was damaged: lines were cut and Scientologists’ autos and motorcycles were pushed off the dock and into the water. Attackers were fended off with fire hoses, and the ship departed in haste.

The Scientologists were perhaps not best placed to complain of their reception. On June 25, 1971, a young woman from Colorado, Susan Meister, died in an apparent suicide aboard the Apollo. The next month, her father went to the ship when it was in Safi in Morocco to inquire about his daughter’s death. Hubbard was reportedly on the ship, but declined to meet Meister. Meister questioned the explanation of Susan’s suicide which he received from Scientology personnel, and suggested that he might seek further investigation. In the present of the American vice consul from Casablanca, William J. Galbraith, the Apollo’s captain said that “he had enough material, including compromising photographs of Miss Meister, to smear Mr. Meister first.”

The captain’s threat was likely empty. A person acquainted with Susan who later left the Church said, “There was no way that girl could have been involved in anything compromising. She was very quiet, very nice.”

The captain also said that “”his organization, backed by money and friends in high places, ‘would cause a nosy vice consul severe problems’.” In Safi, he said, his ship was well-regarded and “Accidents could easily happen to people.”

The two most senior officers of the ship filed a formal complaint with the State Department, claiming that Galbraith had said he could “get the ship sunk … by the CIA” or arrange its sabotage “by getting a couple of bottles of Coca-Cola into the (engine) oil, or, even better, commercial diamond dust.”

The Apollo was, like this vessel, a rustbucket. Photo: PhillipC

The Apollo was registered in Panama with its owner designated as Operation and Transport Corp, Ltd., a Panamanian company which declined to divulge the names of its clients. The Panamanian consul said the Apollo was “in a very bad state of repair” and “the lives of the crew had been in jeopardy while the vessel was at sea.”

The Apollo transmitted messages in code. A U.S. diplomatic cable from Tangier which was dated April 26, 1972 said that there had been rumors in town that the Apollo was “involved in drug or white slave traffic.” The latter is a delightful term for prostitution, and the cable said that the allegation arose because aboard the Apollo were “a large number of strikingly beautiful young ladies.” The cable added that these allegations were likely false, as the vessel stood out “like a sore thumb,” and would not have been employed by anybody not wishing to attract attention. The rumors followed the Apollo to the Caribbean. In Trinidad, the tabloid, The Bomb, connected the Apollo not only with Scientology, but also the CIA and the Sharon Tate murder. The Church sued for libel.

The American Consul General in Tangier, Howard D. Jones, told of a social encounter with a lady from the Apollo’s owner, the mysterious OTC company. She told him: “’I am Meredith Thomas. I am here with a Panamanian corporation, and that is all I can tell you.”

The Apollo attracted attention in Portugal because the ship purported to be owned by a wealthy consultant, but dirty laundry was hung from it, children could be seen running around the decks, and the vessel was a wreck.

The Snow White Program was, in truth, a systematic attempt to infiltrate the U.S. government and steal files relating to the Church. The Program was divided into Snow White Operating Targets, each of which had a codename.

The building on Constitution Avenue in Washington which houses the IRS, and was a target of the Snow White Program

The highest priority targets included the IRS, CIA, FBI, FDA, NSA, DEA, U.S. air force, army, navy, and coast guard, the U.S. attorney general, the Departments of Justice, Labor, State, Treasury, Immigration, the Post Office, and the Senate and House of Representatives.

Project Hunter targeted the IRS in addition to other federal and state agencies. The plan was written by Hubbard on 20 April, 1973. He said the Project was one of “record correction”: French police, he said, had reported that the U.S. government had made false accusations against him. He described the resultant damage as “incredible,” causing problems with immigration and suchlike. This would be the subject of a complaint to the UN, a venture which did not get anywhere. The Church’s representative at the UN was John McMaster, who wore a ministerial collar and was addressed as “Father McMaster.” Hubbard’s plan was entirely legal: government agencies would be asked for relevant information, and if that could not be “corrected,” suit would be filed. In practice, it was all terribly illegal, and encompassed the governments of several nations.

Mary Sue Hubbard in 1957

The Guardian’s Office (G.O.) was an organization within the Church headed by Hubbard’s wife, Mary Sue. It was, in effect, a private CIA.

The G.O. was responsible for the planting of a bug in a conference room of the IRS Chief Counsel, where the Church was discussed. Jane Kember, the Guardian World Wide, who resided in East Grinstead, in England, issued Guardian Order 1361, which called for the insertion of a Scientologist agent into the IRS in Los Angeles. This individual was to be “trustworthy and well grooved-in.” G.O. member, Gerald Wolfe, codenamed Silver, was given this mission.

Wolfe was hired as a clerk typist in May, 1975. He acted in concert with the G.O.’s Assistant Guardian for the Bureau of Information, Michael Meisner. Between May, 1975 and June, 1976, the pair burglarized the offices of the IRS’s Chief Counsel, a number of attorneys, the Interpol Liaison Office, the Office of Intelligence Operations, and the Deputy General of the United States using Wolfe’s I.D. card and five forged ones.

Documents were taken relating to organizations other than the Church, so that another body would be suspected. Information was obtained to resist a financial audit by the IRS in California, and to assist with a Freedom of Information Act suit against the IRS. IRS stationery was stolen to be used to draft fake letters from a disgruntled employee.

The premises of the Church of Scientology which were raided by the FBI

In June, 1976, Wolfe was apprehended by the FBI with a forged I.D. Card, after a security guard at the U.S. Courthouse became suspicious of his credentials. He was arrested and convicted of forging identity documents. Meisner escaped justice for a year, but he did not escape imprisonment: the G.O. held him captive when he threatened to flee Los Angeles to Canada or Washington, D.C. He escaped and turned himself over to the FBI and agreed to cooperate. A month after that, the FBI raided the G.O.’s offices in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. The thousands of documents seized included most of those stolen from IRS offices.

Eleven G.O. Officials were indicted, and nine landed prison sentences of between six months and, in the case of Mary Sue Hubbard, five years and a fine of $10,000. Mary Sue pleaded for leniency, but was criticized by her judge for attempting to “destroy the very foundation of the government.” She served one year before being released, and was ousted from her position as head of the G.O. L. Ron Hubbard was named as an unindicted co-conspirator, and it is unlikely he was unaware of the activities of his spouse. Other of the Church of Scientology’s covert operatives were uncovered. Nancy Douglass, codename Pitts, worked for the Drug Enforcement administration while the attractive Sharon Thomas, codename Judy, was employed by the American Psychiatric Association, the Coast Guard and then the Department of Justice. Both stole or photocopied documents, and received light sentences for their actions.

Documents obtained by the FBI told of Project Apple, an attempt to remove negative references to Scientology from the files of Interpol, the Paris police, and the French ministry of immigration and Project Coal, an attempt to have German critics of the Church charged with genocide.

Paulette Cooper, the target of Operation Freakout

Some of the seized documents detailed Operation Freakout PC. This was a series of efforts to undermine Paulette Cooper, author of The Scandal of Scientology. The aim was to have her “incarcerated in a mental institution or jail or at least to hit her so hard that she drops her attacks.” Some of her stationery was stolen and her fingerprints acquired, which were used to make bomb threats against the Church. Until the evidence revealed by the FBI raids, Cooper faced 15 years in jail. No indictments resulted from Freakout, but it has been speculated that Cooper filed civil charges and received a cash settlement. Church documents discussed framing Cooper for bomb threats against an Arab consulate and Henry Kissenger, and threats to then-President Nixon.

One policy which fell into the hands of the FBI was entitled, Security and Theft of Materials, which talked about how to burglarize. Premises would be cased before operatives entered, wearing gloves. A series of cover stories would be created for presentation to authorities, and anybody arrested would say only the minimum required by law. Operatives were to carry nothing which connected them to the Church. A document named Walk-Ins detailed how to break into a locked xerox machine, how to open a locked door with a credit card, how to make a metal tool for lockpicking, how to use a strand of wire for the same, how to defeat a combination lock, and more. Illustrations were provided.

The document, B & Es (breaking and entering), commented that “some of our most successful collections actions fall into this category.” Another document spoke of bugging and debugging. Policy #121669, Programme: Intelligence: Internal Security, said that personnel files should be used against targets. One document concerned plans to put agents into the offices of the U.S. Attorney, the headquarters of the AMA, and different state and local district attorneys. Compliance Report GO#121569 said that with the World Federation of Mental Health, “everything possible was done to collect the data, everything from infiltrating to stealing to eavesdropping, etc.”

The policy documents, The Correct Use of Codes and Re: Coding/Wording of Messages, said messages should be encoded if they concerned incriminating activities, particularly those that might require more payment of tax. Specified were activities that would call into question the Church’s humanitarian motives, and admission to unpunished crimes, breaking and entering, posing as a government agent, illegal wiretapping of taping of conversations, harassment, and bribery. Wording such as “let’s wipe him out,” in particular, was to be encoded.

The document, Re.: Intelligence, listed infiltration, bribery, purchasing information, robbery, and blackmail as methods of obtaining information. Another document described the system of the Red Box, where evidence of illicit activities was kept in a folder or briefcase which could be quickly destroyed in the event of a raid. Basic and Essential Security said that G.O. Staff should be capable of destroying incriminating material within 30 to 60 seconds. It said that “Fire is usually most thorough and practical,” and recommended having lighter fluid and matches to hand.

G.O. Agents attended a course known as Information Full Hat. The reading list for the course included Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, The Spy and His Master, and KGB, CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. Training in lying was given.

Information obtained during "auditing" was passed to the G.O.

The G.O. maintained files on all Scientologists and people perceived to be enemies. As Hubbard said in a policy later dated 5 August, 1959, “Remember one thing, we are not running a business, we are running a government. We are in direct control of people’s lives.” Information divulged by Church members during “auditing” sessions where confidentiality had been promised ended up with the G.O. The information was used for intimidation and, specifically, blackmail. One such file, on a member who became disaffected, detailed her promiscuity (“She slept with four or five men during the course… She had quite a record of promiscuity… She has masturbated regularly since she was eight years old, mentions doing it once with coffee grounds and once had a puppy lick her”), Another report talked of the subject’s several abortions, appointments with a psychiatrist due to alcohol problems, drug history, and son being in jail.

New members to the Church were interviewed, where they were asked questions about all their past lives. Inquiries included: “Have you ever enslaved a population?”, “Have you ever eaten a human body?”, and “Did you come to Earth for evil purposes?” Adherents sign a billion year contract.

The Church says that the Guardian’s Office was disbanded in 1983, but it appears to have been merely renamed the Office of Special Affairs. The Apollo was sold on and became a restaurant in Texas before it was cut into scrap. While the Church of Scientology claims to work toward global social betterment, its true function was apparent from a 1972 policy letter written by Hubbard to senior Scientologists: “Make money… make more money… make other people produce so as to make money.”

Bibliography

“Scientology Myths.” Church of Scientology. n.d. 10 January 2012. <http://www.scientologymyths.info/snow-white-program/.>
“The strange links between the CoS-IRS agreement and the Snow White Program.” Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science. n.d. 10 January 2012. <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Cowen/essays/irs-snow.html<a href=”http://www.scientologymyths.info/snow-white-program/”/.>
“Lies Debunked: Operation Snow White – FOIA.” Church of Scientology volunteer ministry Program. n.d. 10 January 2012. <http://www.cosvm.org/swfoia.htm.>
“Lies Debunked: Operation Snow White – Germany.” Church of Scientology Volunteer Ministry Program. n.d. 10 January 2012. <http://www.cosvm.org/swgerm.htm.>
“OSA (Office of Special Affairs) — The Secret CIA of Scientology.” Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science. n.d. 10 January 2012. <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/wakefield/us-12.html.>
“Scientology – Crime & Legislation – Operation Snow White.” Whatisanonymous. n.d. 10 January 2012. <http://www.costruth.com/trans/index.php/Whatisanonymous_-_english_-_Scientology_-_Crime_&_Legislation_-_Operation_Snow_White.>
Preston, Alex. “The Church of Scientology: A History of a New Religion by Hugh B Urban – review.” Guardian. 2 September 2011. 10 January 2012. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/02/church-of-scientology-urban-review.>
“Google Asked to Delist Scientology Critics.” Chilling Effects. n.d. 10 January 2012. <http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=90357.>
Gillette, Robert. “Scientology Flagship Shrouded in Mystery.” Los Angeles Times. n.d. 10 January 2012. <http://www.xenu-directory.net/mirrors/www.whyaretheydead.net/susan_meister/latimes_780829.txt.>
“The Sea Org — ‘For the Next Billion Years…’.” Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science. n.d. 10 January 2012. <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/wakefield/us-09.html.>
Leyden, John. “Scientology spokesman confirms Xenu story.” The Register. 16 March 2009. 10 January 2012. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/16/scientology_xenu_confirmation/.>

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It’s seen by some that the Salvation Army’s extreme beliefs of Christian fundamentalism is harming women’s rights, homosexuals, the terminally ill, and religious freedom.

Homophobia

As Jamie McGonnigal of LGBTQNation reports:

• When New Zealand considered passage of the Homosexual Law Reform Act in 1986, the Salvation Army collected signatures in an attempt to get the legislation killed. The act decriminalized consensual sex between gay men. The measure passed over the charity’s objections.
• In the United Kingdom, the Salvation Army actively pushed passage of an amendment to the Local Government Act. The amendment stated that local authorities “shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality” or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.” The law has since been repealed, but it led many schools and colleges to close LGBT student organizations out of fear they’d lose their government funding.
• In 2001, the organization tried to extract a resolution from the White House that they could ignore local non-discrimination laws that protected LGBT people. While the commitment would have applied to all employees, the group claimed that it needed the resolution so it “did not have to ordain sexually active gay ministers and did not have to provide medical benefits to the same-sex partners of employees.” After lawmakers and civil rights activists revealed the Salvation Army’s active resistance to non-discrimination laws, the White House admitted the charity was seeking the exemptions.
• Also in 2001, the evangelical charity actively lobbied to change how the Bush administration would distribute over $24 billion in grants and tax deductions by urging the White House deny funding to any cities or states that included LGBT non-discrimination laws. Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary, issued a statement saying the administration was denying a “regulation sought by the church to protect the right of taxpayer-funded religious organizations to discriminate against homosexuals.”
• In 2004, the Salvation Army threatened to close all their soup kitchens in New York City to protest the city’s decision to require all vendors and charities doing business with the city to adhere to all civil rights laws. The organization balked at having to treat gay employees equal to straight employees.

Against Women’s Rights

According to the Salvation Army website,

When an unwanted pregnancy occurs, The Salvation Army counsels that the parents receive caring support for their emotional, physical, social and spiritual needs, and that the unborn child be carried to term.

Against Euthanasia

Again, according to the organization,

The Salvation Army believes that euthanasia and assisted suicide are morally wrong, and holds that they should continue to be illegal under Canadian law.

Promotion of one religion over the other

The Salvation Army has banned the distribution of Harry Potter books and Twilight toys, claiming the books and films are incompatible with the charity’s Christian beliefs.

From the Edmenton Sun article:

I was told to withhold a six-inch Harry Potter figure, but when I picked up a plastic M-16, I was told, ‘That’s for the 10-year-olds,’” he said.

I was shocked…war-themed toys and toys from TV shows and movies with far more violence than Harry Potter and these were considered appropriate toys?

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TIME changes the cover of its magazine when selling issues in the United States.  The latest occurrence involves the December edition, where pictures of the Egyptian revolution are replaced by a childish cartoon telling Americans it’s o.k. to worry about silly little insignificant things.

Why the switcharoo?

Many negative inferences can be drawn from the cover-switching practice:

• Media is censored in America
• Americans are too dumb to understand world problems
• Americans don’t care about world problems
• The media is afraid Americans may copy their global neighbors

That last one, “media is afraid Americans may copy their global neighbors”, is big.  Comparing the December issues, what is different between the American and international versions is the topic of conflict.

Media doesn’t want to start fights that would end sales

American Media knows how powerful it is.  It censors the Occupy Wall Street movement for a reason:  it doesn’t want to slow business.

Conflict is bad for business.  Suppressors lose money when their victims rebel against them.  That’s why you don’t see any hard-hitting journalism and in-depth reports anymore on TV; the Disney-owned ABC news network instead presents inconsequential stories that do nothing but encourage you to keep sitting on your butt and watching their channel and buying their products.

Be weary of news from corporate-owned media

When media giants like ABC or TIME bring up a topic in their news stories, ask yourself, what topics did they choose to ignore?  Is there anything more important happening in the world now that they are not reporting, and why?

Thanks to David Airey for the cover comparison.

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A report by the Wall Street Journal confirms CIA drones are targeting “men believed to be militants associated with terrorist groups, but whose identities are not always known.”

The attack on unknown targets comes as the result of increased military offense efforts in the Pakistani region.  Initially, only top-level terrorist leaders were targeted.  Now, simply spotting a group of people talking in the street is enough for the CIA to initiate an attack.

The Hunt for Terrorists Comes Home

It’s not a good sign when a country’s intelligence agency begins to accept the mass murdering of possible innocents as standard operating protocol.  The feared consequence is that the agency will use the same tactics against its own people.

Why would the CIA attack its own people, you ask?  Consider the spread of civil unrest events breaking out all over the country recently: New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Denver, Chicago, Seattle, and many more.

Protestors massing. CNN

News and media outlets spin the Occupy Wall Street protestors as big unruly mobs that will destroy America with their lethargy and no-purpose attitudes.  Rebels without a cause, you might say.

As the economy continues to nosedive and the protests continue to grow, tension will rise between the government and the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Acts of brutality have already made headlines.  Two Oakland residents, both Iraq War veterans, have been hospitalized due to police crackdowns.  Actions like these only further the divide between government and public, constructing false perceptions of ‘good guy’ versus ‘bad guy’.

The government, the ‘good guys’ as they would see themselves, could place grassroots movements and protests in the same category of homegrown terrorism and order drone airstrikes on protestors.  The orders would be carried out because the same tactics used against terrorists abroad should be just as effective against terrorists at home.

“We do it overseas, and it works, so why not do it here?” would be the reasoning and justification for carrying out drone attacks on homeland targets.

Stop the Bloodshed Before It Can Go Further

The CIA’s indiscriminate killing of possible innocent civilians must come to an end.  Today they may be going overseas and killing innocent strangers, but tomorrow, they could come home for Anonymous.

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The goal of the program is to predict events before they happen.  They collect data from thousands of blogs, websites, twitter accounts, and social networks (GOOGLE PLUS ahem) and put it together to make connections out of it.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is receiving a lot of attention around the world.  It’s garnishing the attention of Recorded Future as well; so much so that the company has decided to make it a primary focus of their eavesdropping and data surveillance research.

In this video, Recorded Future attempts to map the global spread of Occupy Wall Street by placing dots in cities where protests broke out in chronological order.

Does Google and the CIA share the same bed?

Although Google and the CIA are partners, no one really knows how deep the connection is.  Let’s just call it friendly.  Google has been known to sell servers and products to the NSA, and White House visitor logs show that Google’s director of public policy and political affairs has had at least 3 meetings with the National Security Council since 2010.

Despite these lovely get-togethers, Google continues to show some forms of independence.  Its refusal to grant a law enforcement request to pull a police brutality video shows that the company is not yet 100% pro government– at least not local government, that is.

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Opening the Gate to World Domination

GATE, or Gifted And Talented Education, was a program that introduced young American students to new and developing educational methods and technologies.  The program claimed the testing was harmless, but some of the participants are looking back on the experience now as adults and realizing  it was way out of the ordinary and perhaps dangerous.

There is talk in some circles that the true purpose of the program was for the government to train a tireless and submissive army that would die fighting at the commands of its leaders.  The group was to become a walking meat-shield, human body guards programmed to protect their leader and fight to the very end.

A Gateway to Brainwashing and Mind Control

To most, the memory of how they were tested in GATE’s classes is a blank spot in their mind; as if it were erased.  But because of the number of people that were involved in this program was so great, we can piece together individual accounts to get the big picture.

GATE was all about experiments.  The kids were given simple materials and asked to construct vehicles and moving parts.  They were asked to look at images and then draw them with their eyes closed.  They were given lessons in the programming code Basic.  They were given various logic puzzles and tests, the most peculiar being the fast flickering light examination.  People fear that this “examination” was the main tool the program used to brainwash and plant obedience into their naive young minds.

Gates Closed

For reasons unknown, GATE was discontinued, and children were no longer required to be taken out of class and attend special sessions.  It looked as though the kids– now adults, were free to live their lives without worry of the testing they underwent.  It was believed the program did not last long enough to leave any lasting scar or imprint on their minds.  Recently, however, this belief is changing.

People Searching for Answers

GATE participants are finding each other in forums and on the Internet, sparked by a recent interest in the program they seemed to have gained all at the same time.  The conclusion that many draw from this occurrence is that the GATE program in fact did NOT fail, that it succeeded in brainwashing and controlling their minds, and that the orders implanted laid dormant and are now just beginning to activate as the former kids reach the age of full-grown adults.

To those reading this who participated in GATE, leave a message below expressing your experience with the program and any advice you can give to prevent the government from switching the mind-control button to ‘On’.

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Is Facebook the CIA's information gathering site?

We all love Facebook. We tell it who our friends are, what we like and don’t like, what we are doing today, and anything else which pops into our innocent little social network loving heads. It’s hard to keep track of the count of users  now as it goes up all the time. Even your grandparents probably use it.

But what if the friendly Facebook image is just a front and it’s actually being run by the ruthless men of the CIA?

Who Wants All This Information Anyway?

Are you telling the government what you like?

The story goes that the Defense Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was looking at ways to use cutting edge technology to grab people’s personal details for its Information Awareness Office (IAO) section for use by the government. They wanted easy access to names, addresses,credit card details, and anything possible. When word got out about their plans, there was an outcry and the IAO was effectively rendered useless by getting funding cut off. So does the story end there?

Well, if you believe the Facebook conspiracy theory then it doesn’t.  You see, information gathered about you would be extremely useful to snoops from the CIA and it has been repeatedly suggested that they are behind a good deal of Facebook’s initial funding– it’s basically a sham operation to gather information for the US government.

Check out the Facebook’s terms of use and privacy policy if you haven’t read them before. They make for interesting reading.

How to Stay Safe

The best way to protect your information is to refrain from releasing it in the first place.  Once it is saved in your profile, the data cannot be deleted from Facebook’s database.  It may appear gone, but it stays stored in Facebook’s server even though it is no longer shown on your profile.

So now we know to be more protective of the information we release.  Another way we can stay safe is to prevent Facebook from tracking what websites we visit.  This can be down with the help of a Firefox addon called Priv3.  This is one of many addons that can prevent unauthorized tracking of your Internet use.  Another handy one is NoScript, which stops websites from running scripts and malicious code on your computer without permission.

Facebook and CIA Connections

Was Facebook set up by the CIA? Probably not, but information you feed into it is being seen by more people than you think. Facebook cooperates with governments to release requested information about its users.  The social network has also filed a patent detailing how to track users that are not logged into the site.  This means Facebook has found a method to continue collecting information from you even when you’re not using the site.

Facebook’s controversial privacy policy throws up a red flag among Internet privacy watchdogs, and for good reason.  After typing in personal details and secrets into Facebook, prepare to see that information follow you forever.

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The conspiracy of dumbing down society on food

Could it be true that the elite is dumbing down society through the use of food and medicine? The elite not only control the food and medicine industry, but they also allow government to tolerate and implement laws dumbing down people on physical, emotional, and mental levels, in order to control the population and reduce it by 80-90%.

In the context of food, beverages, and medicine, society is a puppet on strings, unaware that the elite control what is eaten and drank.  I do not give this information to scare, but to inform people to be observant– food  contains harmful chemicals, toxins, and untraceable poisons.

Dumbing Down Society on Food and Beverages: What’s in the Food and Drinks?

Have you ever wondered why, after you eat a certain food, you keep craving it? Food companies exist to make a profit. With the use of food additives, chemicals, and artificial flavors, consumers are indoctrinated through mass media to crave the foods advertised.  These food companies deceive us into thinking the food is satisfying and healthy.

Mosanto,  a company holding a huge monopoly on the agricultural industry, produces an estimate of 95% of all soybeans and 80% of all corn in the US.  The company practices genetic modification, which makes their food more pleasing to the taste buds and eyes of consumers.  If they have enough control of the genetics of food to make it big and tasty, they may also have enough control to alter the behavior of the people who eat it.   Think of the corn, beans, and steak you had for dinner yesterday. It’s likely your food contained patented genes owned and engineered by the Mosanto company.  That food could even be influencing the way in which you make decisions today.

Mosanto also markets Roundup brand pesticide, which is used to strengthen crops against insects and disease.  Studies show Roundup leads to many health problems, miscarriages, ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), and increased risk of the cancer non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.  Why is such a harmful product allowed on the market?  Because the people who are supposed to make such harmful products illegal, the people who pass laws for agriculture, food, and medicine, are also the same people who used to work  for Mosanto.

We all love sitting back and watching television programs (which are programs to “program” and indoctrinate) while drinking cold soda. There’s an ingredient found in beverages, especially those “sugar-free” ones, called Aspartame. This is used as an artificial sweetener not only in sodas, but also in chewing gum. It was discovered in 1965, and caused controversy regarding its effect on causing brain tumors.  The FDA considered it so dangerous that it was banned from sale, until the Searle company came along and pushed it to market. It was at this same time they also appointed Donald Rumsfeld as CEO, and then guess what happened? Now, over 5,000 foods contain Aspartame.

Dumbing Down the Society on Medicines: What’s in your Prescription Drugs?

The dumbing down of society in medicine

Another way for the elite to dumb down society is by using prescription drugs to not treat disease, but to sedate you and slow down your brain function. There has been a huge increase in the amount of drugs prescribed, particularly for children targeted by disorders such as ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). Children who have ADD are prescribed drugs to sedate them; Ritalin use at very young ages has increased. Research shows that this leads to children becoming more dependent on psychotropic drugs later in life.

“This concern have also been voiced out in the January 2005 issue of Pediatrics in which the large discrepancies between pediatricians’ practice patterns and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) guidelines for the assessment and treatment of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was bought forth. The article also stated that because the medical community didn’t come to a consensus on how to diagnose ADD/ADHD, they should not be making extensive decisions as to how to treat individuals who have been diagnosed with the disorder.”

Many prescription drugs are sold, prescribed, and approved by the elite.  Most are not ground with proper research on their long-term effects, and if side effects are found, it is quite unlikely that the public will not be informed of them. I am not against taking medicine, nor am I saying  to stop trusting your doctor for prescription drugs, but come to think of it, where did your doctors study? In prominent and well-established universities. Even educational systems are intended to indoctrinate, not to educate, but to feed our minds with information which only they want us to know. Universities are also controlled by the elite. All these systems work together to work against us, and it is up to us to be aware and informed.

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email: timothychilman@yahoo.com

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

- The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

The villain of the piece

COINTELPRO stands for counter-intelligence program, and is the collective name for 2,370 covert action programs directed at US domestic groups by the FBI from 1956-1971.

Here, the FBI acted beyond the realm of intelligence collection and resorted to action to “neutralize” or at least “disrupt” targeted groups or individuals. The FBI intended to prevent the exercise of First Amendment rights of free speech, free press, association, and protest, positing that preventing the expansion of undesirable groups propagating dangerous ideas would protect national security by deterring violence. In Brandenberg v Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969), the Supreme Court declared actions of this nature to be illegal.

COINTELPRO was investigated by the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities – the Church Committee. More than 20,000 pages of FBI documents were reviewed, depositions were taken from many of the FBI agents involved, and targets were interviewed. The 35,339 words of the Church Committee’s final report are alarming, and are summarized here at slightly more than one sixth of the original length.

COINTELPRO sought to attend to people for whom traditional law enforcement methods were ineffective due to inadequate statutes, ineffective local police, or restrictive court rulings. Every FBI witness deposed by the Church Committee believed his particular COINTELPRO was the product of considerable pressure on their organization to deal with some perceived threat. The head of COINTELPRO said that in the 1950s there was a widespread feeling that “you did not have to worry about Communism because the FBI would take care of it. Leave it to the FBI.”

The CPUSA logo

The program was aimed at five “perceived threats to domestic tranquility”: the Communist Party, USA (1956-71) ; the Socialist Workers Party (1961-69); White Hate (1964-71); Black Nationalists (1967-71) ; and the New Left (1968-71).

The FBI used methods which had worked in wartime against foreign agents and which the Soviets had employed in return. Former Assistant to the Director William C. Sullivan said it was “a rough, tough, dirty business” where “no holds were barred.” Examples of every activity mentioned by the Church Committee are given here, however where possible additional instances of one method have been omitted for the sake of brevity, not to mention excitement.

More than half of all proposals to receive approval related to the CPUSA. The Bureau possessed evidence that the CPUSA had been “blatantly” involved in Soviet espionage and that the Soviet Union continued to use the party for political or intelligence purposes. While activities under the name COINTELPRO began only in 1956, similar activities had been underway for some years, with efforts differing by office. COINTELPRO endeavors against the CPUSA included not just party members but also sponsors, for instance the National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee, and civil rights leaders who were insufficiently anti-Communist.

The logo of the NAACP

It was in March 1960 that CPUSA COINTELPRO field offices were issued a directive ordering an increase in efforts to staunch Communist infiltration of mass movements varying from the NAACP to a local scout troop.. This memorandum signifies a move toward the targeting of not only CP members but people supposedly bending to CP will – like Martin Luther King Jr, whom the agency acknowledged advocated non-violence. It was enough to adopt a position also supported by communists, for instance increased minority hiring, opposition to the House Unamerican Activities Committee, and school integration. In one case, a reporter was passed details of communist involvement in a Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, to lower the standing of SANE and the participants.

The Socialist Worker Party COINTELPRO had low priority, seeing only 45 operations approved. It ended in 1969, upon which it was combined with the New Left COINTELPRO. The FBI acknowledged that the SWP had never engaged in violence or taken other criminal steps, but it did support Cuba. Targeting of the Socialist Workers Party included people unconnected with the SWP who had sponsored anti-war demonstrations along with the SWP.

The White Hate COINTELPRO kicked off on July 30 1964. Seventeen Klan bodies and nine “hate” organizations (e.g., National States Rights Party, the American Nazi Party) were listed as targets of the White Hate COINTELPRO. The FBI sought to deter or counteract propaganda and deter violence and recruitment. No “legitimate” right wing organizations where encompassed by the program, in contrast to the treatment of the CPUSA and SWP.. Operations against White Hate targets were very precise thanks to extensive informer penetration.

Previously, investigation of “negro matters” had been limited to specific instances of communist penetration, but pressures on the Bureau during what the Church Committee called the “long, hot summer of 1967” led it to behave more proactively that same year. Starting almost from square one in this way was a departure, as every other COINTELPRO was an intensification of existing operations which had lasted for years.

Elijah Muhammed, considered by the Bureau to be a potential Black Nationalist messiah figure

The Black Nationalist COINTELPRO had several objectives. It aimed to prevent a “coalition of militant black nationalist groups,” which was thought to be the first step toward establishing something like the Mau Mau in America. The Mau Mau fought the British in Kenya, then known as British East Africa. COINTELPRO aimed to prevent the rise of a messiah figure able to “unify and electrify” the population, with Elijah Muhammed, Stokely Carmichael, and Martin Luther King Jr. considered candidates. Violence was to be prevented by identifying “potential troublemakers” and neutralizing them before they committed violent acts. COINTELPRO intended to prevent leaders or groups from becoming respected within the black or white communities. The latter was divided into “the responsible community” and “liberals.” Recruitment of young people by Black Nationalist groups was to be hindered.

Per its supervisor, the Black Nationalist movement included many organizations that while pretty black were not very nationalist: the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a non-violent body, was labeled a black nationalist “hate group” after allegations of communist infiltration. Others investigated were the Nation of Islam, the Congress of Racial Equality, Deacons for Defense and Justice, the Revolutionary Action Movement, and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). While the Black Panthers were included, so were most black student groups.

BPP members

The Black Panther Party (BPP) was excluded from the first two lists of Black Nationalist primary targets (August 1967, March 1968) as it had yet to attain national significance. But by November of that year it had made it and was regarded as a primary target. A letter to field offices dated November 25, 1968 ordered recipients to prepare “imaginative and hard-hitting” measures to cripple the BPP. Rapt attention was to be devoted to capitalization upon the differences between the BPP and Ron Kenga’s US, Inc., which had already assumed “the aura of gang warfare” with concomitant threads of murder and the like. By January 1969, the BPP was cultivating an improved image and was attempting to purge itself of police informants. FBI offices were advised to play upon suspicions.

The fifth and final COINTELPRO was initiated against the nebulous New Left, in response to concerns amongst the government and citizens resulting from media coverage of campus protests. The New Left was defined as “more or less an attitude,” which attitude was heavily anti-war. Students were targeted who published underground newspapers, protested university censorship of student publications, or, horror of horrors, carried signs bearing cuss words.

The Bureau wished to target people urging revolution in the US and US defeat in Vietnam, falsely alleging excessive use of force by police (hey, they deserved it), frustrating conscription, and committing other unlawful acts while they were at it.

Much was made of the New Left’s “immorality.” All that fucking, one supposes. Headquarters did not believe enough had been done in this direction, and on October 9 1968 a letter went out from HQ, criticizing field offices for failing to “remain alert for and to seek specific data depicting the nature and moral looseness of the New Left.”

Methods used against the New Left varied. Leaflets attempted to discredit student demos. Personal conflict between party leaders and whole parties was instigated. The impression was created that leaders were FBI or police informants. University-published articles were sent to authorities and anonymous letters to parents, neighbors, parents’ employers and university authorities to inform them of all that sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. People were arrested for marijuana possession. Cartoons, photographs and anonymous letters ridiculed the New Left. Disinformation was employed to disrupt New Left activities, for instance notifying members that events had been canceled. The New Left COINTELPRO included the highest proportion of proposals intended to prevent free speech.

Two students participating in a demonstration for defending the use of swear words were targeted. The FBI did not believe the demonstration was inspired by the New Left, but that the students showed “obvious disregard for decency and established morality.”

Nine percent of all approved proposals for COINTELPRO were for “selective law enforcement.” Local, state, and federal law enforcement was “guided.” While the Bureau was not ordinarily interested in health violations, it became so if the perpetrator was a target. The Bureau claimed that passing information to other authorities was not counter-intelligence but a regular part of its job, but the lie is given to that by the case of a “key figure” Communist with a history of homosexuality. The plan was to arrest him and embarrass CPUSA, but the Bureau lost interest when the target ceased to work for the Party.

Bureau-run splinter groups were formed to bleed membership from the target organization. One “notional” organization in a Southern city was a chapter of the W.E.B. DuBois Club. Its members were all Bureau informants or fictions. The aim was to cause CPUSA to incur expense in sending organizers to an area and funding out-of-town CP meetings. The chapter later deviated from the Party line in the hope of being expelled, enabling them to claim they were victims of a Stalinesque purge. It was thought that the whole operation would be over in 18 months.

Certain persons to the forefront of race relations in the United States

A second form of “notional” would have some genuine members, as when a Klan organization was established which, at its peak, diverted 250 people from the United Klans of America. The third form was entirely fictitious, but its name could be used on newsletters, such as one attacking CPUSA from a “Marxist right” viewpoin

The Bureau acted to prevent US citizens from petitioning the government for a redress of grievances. A mid-west field office discombobulated the effort of state university students to attend the 1969 inaugural demonstrations by means of anonymous telephone calls to the transport service provider. The calls attempted to flummox both the company and the student leaders concerning the cost of transport and the place and time of departure and return. The office also distributed confusing leaflets around the campus showing different places and times for demonstration planning meetings.

Another protest nullified was the plan to drop flowers over the Pentagon from an airplane at the time of the 1967 National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (NMC) rally in Washington. The New York field office answered the NMC’s ad seeking a pilot, and maintained the pretense until protestors turned up at an airport with a 200 pound floral arrangement.

The Bureau sought to abridge the right of people peaceably to assemble. Oft-used techniques were to contact the owner of a building where a meeting was to take place and persuade him to refuse to rent to the target group; persuading sponsors to cease funding; and fomenting press interest in meetings.

The most egregious of attacks on the right to assemble peacefully, however, made use of “disinformation.” In one such case, Chicago’s field office copied blank forms for the volunteering of premises to the NMC for the purpose of housing out-of-town demonstrators. The office completed 217 forms with concocted names and addresses and sent them in. Supporters conducted long and fruitless journeys to locate the addresses. The NMC abandoned its effort to house demonstrators.

The same was performed with the Washington arm of the NMC when it organized protests around the 1969 Presidential inauguration. An additional twist was that marshals employed walkie-talkies to manage movement, and the Washington field office used compatible equipment to send spurious messages, for instance countermanding true instructions.

A technique used by all COINTELPROs was the “snitch jacket” – labeling a target as a snitch, i.e. informant. Often, this caused the target to be alienated from the group. One man was targeted because he took part in draft counseling at San Diego’s Message Information Center. By chance, the man had been present on two occasions when Selective Service violators were arrested. A Bureau informant suggested at a meeting that is was odd that two men had been apprehended by federal agents shortly after the target had become aware of their locations. The target was “completely ostracized” by people at the Center.

In October 1959, hearings were held in Philadelphia by a legislative committee into a resurgence of CPUSA activity in the vicinity. A target of the Bureau was subpoenaed to appear in front of the committee , although he was not called to testify. The field office suggested local CPUSA leaders be led to question how the target escaped testifying, so the target might be suspected of co-operating with the committee. The target was actually not a CPUSA member, but an infiltrator for a private anti-communist group who had aroused the ire of the Bureau for getting in their way.

Some of the groups upon whom the snitch jacket was used had been known to murder informants. The chairman of New York’s BPP chapter was suspected as an informant after another member was arrested for weapon possession. The Bureau dispatched anonymous letters to the BPP state headquarters, the wife of the arrestee and another person describing the target as a “fink.”

The Racial Intelligence Section chief, George C. Moore, said he was not aware of anyone the Bureau labeled as an informant coming to a sticky end, and that if it had happened, it would have been reported. When asked whether this was through luck or judgment, he replied, “Oh, it just happened that way, I am sure.”
The Bureau undertook a number of attempts to prompt organizations to cease funding targets. When the SNCC tried to obtain funds from the Episcopal Church for a “liberation school,” two letters were sent to the Church falsely alleging that SNCC was conducting a “fraudulent scheme” relating to the expected funds. The scheme was to place fictitious orders from local businessmen, who would split the money with the SNCC.
4 percent of COINTEL proposals were to expose “communist infiltration” of groups. Most often, groups such as a PTA, the Boy Scouts, or a civil rights organization would be informed anonymously that one of their members was a pinko fag commie subversive. Sometimes the group itself was the target, in which case the information was sent to the media.

One example was a professor who had recently been president of a local peace center which brought together anti-Vietnam groups. He had resigned to act instead as chairman of the state’s campaign to elect Eugene McCarthy for president in 1968, intending to return to the peace center post-election. The professor’s spouse had been a CPUSA member in the early 1950s, which information was supplied to a newspaper editor who had previously written an editorial describing Students for a Democratic Society and certain Black Nationalist groups as “professional revolutionists.”
28 percent of all COINTELPRO actions approved intended to increase factionalism between and within groups. The first ever COINTELPRO capitalized on divisions within CPUSA concerning Krushchev’s excoriation of Stalin. One method was for informants to raise controversial issues at meetings.

Hostility to the point of gang warfare between groups was encouraged. The supervisor of the Black Nationalist COINTELPRO admitted that physical harm could easily result. One example was the mailing of an anonymous letter to the leader of the Chicago-based Blackstone Rangers gang, a body to whom violent activity was, the Bureau said, “second nature.” The letter said the Panthers blamed the Rangers for “blocking their thing” and that there was said to be “a hit” out on the Rangers’ leader.

The Bureau reported at least four assaults, two on women, with the San Diego field office taking credit for three. The Bureau sent a critical article from the Black Panther newspaper to the leader of the opposing Black Nationalist group, US Incorporated, to prompt retaliatory action. This came to pass when US members assaulted a Panther newspaper vendor. In another instance, US Inc. members gained entry to a BPP meeting and assaulted a female member. The Bureau gave the San Diego police a tip that “sex orgies” were occurring at the headquarters of the Black Panthers. The police gained entry after discovering two outstanding traffic warrants for one BPP member. The woman who granted officers access to BPP HQ was “severely beaten up” by other members. An informant entered a “heated conversation” between group members and sided with one party to heighten tension. Members subsequently fought, upon which the informant “departed the premises.”

The logo of the SCLC

The Bureau arranged a meeting between a Southern Christian Leadership Conference official and the leader of a small “anti-Vietnam black nationalist [veterans'] organization.” The veteran’s group leader was on leave from a psychiatric hospital and was unhappy to not be receiving funds from the SCLC. It was hoped that he would lose his temper and initiate a fight, causing the police to be called. This would neutralize the small group’s leader and lower the standing of the SCLC.

Anonymous mailings were made. These could denigrate a leader, accusing them of living ostentatiously or being lackluster public speakers. Mailings could stoke resentment between groups, as when an attempt was made to frustrate the alliance between the Black Panthers and the SDS through a letter to BPP leaders lambasting SDS for “diarheaof the mouth” A chapter could be reported to its headquarters for rule infractions, leading to criticism or even disciplinary action.

Derogatory information was disseminated to family, friends and associates of targets. Perhaps the nastiest example was when a letter was sent to Mr. B., the husband of a woman who was both a Black Nationalist and New Left target. The lady led a branch of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, active in draft resistance and other New Left activities, and was an officer of ACTION, a biracial organization that had broken off from the Congress of Racial Equality.

Mr. B. had been making inquiries as to his wife’s relationship with black males in ACTION. The Bureau’s letter confirmed his suspicions, which were not known to be true. The Bureau dearly hoped the ensuing “marital tempest” would render the woman ineffective in her political roles. If Mr. and Mrs. B. shouted at each other, threw things, and had less sex, the Bureau believed this would constitute a “major blow” against both the WIL and ACTION. The couple split up, to which the Bureau believed it had “contributed very strongly.”

One informant implied that the leader of one SDS faction used group funds to support his drug habit, and that another leader embezzled funds from a school. Name calling and fist-fights ensued. Another informant questioned the sexuality of a 30 year-old, unmarried group leader.

The members of a group or its supporters were interviewed to promote jealousy or engender suspicion. The latter could result in purges. People who had been contacted by the Revolutionary Union were interviewed to lead them to believe the organization had been infiltrated by informants at a high-level. The same was tried with the Tougaloo College Political Action Committee, a student group affiliated to the Student Non-violent Co-ordinating Committee, resulting in reduced participation in its affairs.

Once, a target of Black Nationalist persuasion attempted to organize a youth group in Mississippi. Prospective leaders of the group were interviewed and the target’s background and “true intentions” made known. The target’s landlords were contacted, and three asked the target to end his tenancy.

One attack on free speech centered on a dissident group of stockholders seeking to protest a large corporation’s military production at the company’s Annual General Meeting. The Bureau aimed to prevent disruption of the AGM and avoid embarrassment to company officials. A field office obtained the group’s plans from paid informants and passed them to a company manager.

In one case, 120 anonymous telephone calls were placed to the editorial desks of three newspapers in a city in the Midwest. The calls advised that an upcoming lecture on a university campus was sponsored by an organization that was a front for the Communist Party. Only recently had that university lifted a ban on Communist speakers on campus, and the decision was debated.

For a time, the Bureau’s machinations appeared to be working. Staff from one of the newspapers contacted the director of the university’s conference center, who in turn spoke to the president of the university, who decided to cancel the meeting. The sponsoring organization, assisted by the ACLU, went to court and secured a ruling that the university could not bar the speaker. The decision caused the HQ to order its field office to supply information on the judge. While the lecture proceeded as planned, HQ praised the field office for its work: the sponsoring organization was obliged to rack up additional expenditure to pay its attorneys, and newspaper coverage had been obtained.

Teachers received the attention of the Bureau because they were believed to be uniquely placed to “plant the seeds of communismin the minds of unsuspecting youth.” It was also believed that the position of a teacher gave added respectability to a cause. In one instance, a high school teacher was targeted for arranging for two poets to attend one of his school’s classes. The poets had come to prominence for their efforts on behalf of the draft resistance movement. Authorization was given to the local field office to send anonymous letters to two local newspapers, the city’s Board of Education, and to the high school’s administrators pointing out that the teacher was a convicted draft dodger. No results were forthcoming.

The Bureau’s intention in targeting people’s right to speak was to prevent recruitment of new members. Writers and publications were targeted for this reason. Once, two university teachers were targeted only because they hand a considerable hand in the publication and funding of a student underground newspaper. Needless to say, this newspaper was anti-establishment, left-of-center, and opposed to the university’s administration. The Bureau was of the opinion that if the two teachers withdrew their support, the newspaper would fold and “This would eliminate what voice the New Left has in the area.” And so the field office sent an anonymous letter to a university officer passing on information of the teachers’ connection to the newspaper and warning that if the university did not cause the teachers’ to cease their support, the information would be made public. A strong blow was struck against the cause of Communism when the teachers were placed on probation, making them ineligible for a pay rise.

The Bureau often abridged the freedom of the press. The paper of the Black Panther Party was repeatedly targeted due to its contents and the revenue it earned for the Party. Contact was made with the landlord of premises rented by two New Left papers with the intention of ending their tenancy. An anonymous letter was sent to a state legislator bemoaning the distribution of an underground newspaper on certain campuses as it propagated “immorality.” A letter with the signature “Disgusted Taxpayer and Patron” was sent to advertisers in one student newspaper because of the paper’s editorial stance and “vulgar language.” Proposals to physically damage printing presses were drawn up but never enacted.

The New Mexico Free University aroused Bureau interest for teaching “draft counseling training” and “confrontation politics.” A cartoonist’s labors were solicited to create a cartoon to depict anti-war activists who traveled to North Vietnam as traitors. A professor was targeted because he was faculty adviser to a college group which distributed “The Student as Nigger.” A professor performing a study on the social costs of McCarthyism was targeted for seeking help from the American Institute of Marxist Studies. Three law schools were contacted to prevent the hiring or contract renewal of a teaching candidate.

Organizations hostile to targeted groups were used to inconvenience targets, for example by disrupting meetings.

Bureau propaganda used three basic techniques. Reprints of magazine or newspaper articles were mailed to group members and their potential supporters to dissuade them from protest. A list of amenable news sources was compiled and confidential sources (unpaid informants) were cultivated. Articles were written supplying information to these bodies in order to “expose” targets such as the National Mobilization Committee, the Southern Students Organizing Committee, the Institute for Policy Studies, and the Poor People’s Campaign

An American Legion meeting place

The provenance of distributed pamphlets and fliers, needless to say, went unmentioned. The Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion sometimes took ownership of Bureau-authored pamphlets, e.g. condemning the SDS. One group, “a militant anti-communist right wing organization, more of an activist group than is the more well known John Birch Society,” was used at least four times. Even unfriendly groups could be used, as when Operation Hoodwink attempted to pit La Cosa Nostra and CPUSA against each other.

Reprints of a news article entitled “Rabbi in Vietnam Says Withdrawal Not the Answer” were mailed to members of the Vietnam Day Committee to satisfy them of the wisdom of US foreign policy in Vietnam.

Information concerning the Junta of Militant Organizations was provided to a source at a television station in Tampa. A half-hour film was made as a result. A Miami television station produced documentaries on the New Left, Black Nationalist groups and the Ku Klux Klan using material secretly supplied by the Bureau. The documentary that highlighted the Nation of Islam left the Bureau “elated,” after the stations switchboard was overwhelmed by favorable calls. NOI leaders were forced to rebut the documentary at every meeting, where attendance dropped by 50 percent.

The Church committee acknowledged that anonymous propaganda violated no civil rights, but questioned whether the Bureau ought to devote time to it. Attorney General Levi labeled much of COINTELPRO as “foolishness,” and the Church committee felt propaganda richly merited this description.

Despite never having come close to election victory, candidates of the Socialist Workers Party were routinely selected for counter-intelligence. One SWP candidate for a state position inadvertently protected herself by stating at a news conference that she did not object to premarital sex, leading to the withdrawal of a field office’s proposal to publicize her common law marriage.

Another candidate targeted was a lawyer in the mid-west whose company stood for “subversives” – defendants in the Smith Act (Alien Registration Act) trials. The lawyer ran for City Council. He had been active in the South’s civil rights movement. The John Birch Society in his city had not long before mailed a book by the name of “It’s Very Simple – The True Story of Civil Rights” to a selection of clergymen. The Bureau sent an anonymous follow-up letter to recipients noting the pages where the candidate had been mentioned, highlighting his “Communist background” and describing him as a “charlatan.” Another letter went to a television station where the candidate would appear, detailing questions that should be asked. Although the candidate was defeated, he later successfully ran for a judgeship.

The Bureau made stringent efforts to exercise control over COINTELPRO. Every proposal had to be approved by the Seat of Government, the Bureau term for its HQ. A recommendation would be made by the relevant Section Chief, the next stage being approval by the Assistant Director, Domestic Intelligence Division or, more often, the Assistant to the Director or the Director hisself. While targets were not directly selected by HQ, directives were occasionally issued to target particular groups or individuals. When a favorable result was reported, the field office or even the leading agent himself received a letter of praise or incentive award.

The Assistant Director who then headed the Inspection Division stated that his job was to determine the efficacy rather than the propriety of proposals. The Bureau assembled for the Church Committee every document in its files which showed a member of the legislative or executive branches being informed.

On May 8 1958, two letters were sent by Director Hoover. One went to Robert Cutler, Eisenhower’s Special Assistant, and the other to Attorney General William Rogers. The letters stated that a program to disrupt CPUSA had been instigated. There is no record of a reply.

On January 10 1961, more letters emanated from the Director, this time to Byron White, Robert Kennedy, and Dean Rusk, the incoming Deputy Attorney General, Attorney General, and Secretary of State. Again, a “counterattack” against CPUSA was detailed.

On September 2 1965, Hoover this time wrote to Attorney General Katzenbach and Marvin Watson, President Johnson’s Special Assistant. The letters spoke of Bureau success in dealing with racial violence in the South. The Bureau’s declaration that it was “seizing every opportunity to disrupt the activities of Klan organizations” was taken as notification of the White Hate COINTELPRO. Katzenbach’s two-paragraph reply praised the Bureau. Mr. Katzenbach told the Church Committee that he had no knowledge of Hoover’s letter or his reply. He said it never occurred to him that the Bureau would conduct such operations.

On December 19 1967, a letter went from Hoover to Attorney General Ramsay Clark revealing accomplishments against the Ku Klux Klan. Its talk of removing senior Klan officers and “provoking scandal” should have indicated operations beyond the realm of standard investigative activity. There exists no record of a reply to this letter, and Clark could not remember receiving it.

A final letter was sent to Attorney General Mitchell on September 17 1969, with copies going to the Deputy Attorney General as well as the Assistant Attorneys General of three divisions. It described “significant progress” against the KKK.

The head of COINTELPRO declared that he was sure Hoover verbally briefed every President and Attorney General, because he composed “squibs” – talking points – for the Director’s use on these occasions. He could not, however, remember the dates of these briefings and the Bureau was unable to produce any “squibs,” which would not normally have been retained.
Cartha DeLoach, formerly Assistant to the Director, testified to “distinctly” recalling briefing Attorney General Clark “generally” about COINTELPRO. Clark retorted that this never occurred. The Bureau could not produce memoranda recording such briefings, although it was the practice of both Hoover and DeLoach to create these in this kind of situation.
The Bureau produced part of a briefing paper for the eyes of Hoover relating to his briefing of the Eisenhower Cabinet dated November 6 1958. The paper described efforts against CPUSA which included anonymous communications and use of informants.

The Bureau was unable to substantiate its claim that external authorities were informed of the New Left, Black Nationalist, or SWP COINTELPROs. The Black Nationalist efforts in particular made much heavier use of degrading, dangerous, or outright unconstitutional methods than did the communist or White Hate programs. What notification there was did not mention the risk of physical damage to targets. One ex-Attorney General said he was too busy to be aware of Bureau activities and that he could not have halted it anyway.

In January 1974, Attorney General Saxbe instructed Assistant Attorney General Henry Petersen to form a cross-departmental committee to study COINTELPRO. The committee comprised Department attorneys and Bureau agents. The committee found that most activities were legitimate, although some could “only be considered abhorrent in a free society” as they violated First Amendment rights. The committee recommended that no counter-intelligence program be initiated without the approval of the Attorney General. No such approval was ever given.

The Church Committee asked the Bureau for a list of any actions similar to COINTELPRO since April 28 1971. At first, the Bureau said none had transpired, but later found two examples. The Church Committee found a third.

The notorious transvestite, J. Edgar Hoover

Efforts against CPUSA included “the most effective single blow ever dealt the organized communist movement.” The Bureau took particular pride in its moves against the KKK. It is unsure of the efficacy of the Black Nationalist COINTELPRO. Moore said he hoped the Bureau had provided what he described as “a nudge.” No Bureau witness believed the New Left was much affected by COINTELPRO, partly due to imprecise targeting. The SWP COINTELPRO was a small-scale affair, and it is revealing that the program was discontinued two years before the others. The SWP Troskyites had actually at times been useful against CPUSA.

P.S. J. Edgar Hoover is widely-reputed to have been a transvestite

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