https://static01.nyt.com/video/players/offsite/index.html?videoId=100000002635482
The COINTELPRO program operated unnoticed throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s. They attacked individuals for speaking out against the Vietnam War and other individuals for seeking to help out different organizations during the Civil Rights movement. These attacks came in the forms of threats, surveillance or anonymous letters all designed to slander individuals or dismantle organizations from the inside out. The head of the FBI, J Edgar Hoover, commissioned this top-secret program in 1956 and the program ran for almost fifteen years. With a program that tries to reach out into every reformist organization, there is a chance that someone will uncover what he or she are doing. That is exactly what happened in 1971.
Animosity towards the government, the local police and the military had grown significantly during the 1960’s. This was due to a multitude of reasons such as the Vietnam War, assassinations of important individuals and the suppression of protests and left wing groups. This animosity turned to curiosity for some individuals who started to question what was really going on during these protests where the government was trying to put down dissent.
A group of eight individuals recruited by a man named William C. Davidon decided together that they believed that the US government was spying on the government. This group came together and decided to rob a FBI office in Media, PA. They planned the robbery for months on end and decided on the day of the Muhammad Ali vs. Fraser fight. The group snuck into the office a stole files that contained proof of the COINTELPRO program and that all of their suspicions about the government spying on them were true. The group decided to send these classified files to different newspapers and soon the word was out on COINTELPRO. The video above details the first interview with some of the members of the groups because if they had come out earlier, they would have been prosecuted and sent to jail. Hoover, after the burglary sent over 200 agents to try to find the group but was unsuccessful. After five years the FBI dropped the case and the burglars were not identified until 2014.
Due to the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI, not only was the COINTELPRO program discovered but also it was uncovered that the program had not been approved but executives within the FBI. J Edgar Hoover had worked on his own to commission this program and worked outside of higher-ups. More and more information started to spill out about the program as time went on such as the Carl Stern, an NBC employee, suing the FBI in order to obtain more documents that would incriminate the program even more.
Throughout the years preceding the leak, more and more documents were leaked until most of the COINTELPRO activities were released to the public. The more the government tried to suppress the dissenters and spy on its people, the more curious individuals got. Without the group of burglars, this information would have never been made public. This discovery of these documents was one of the greatest leaks in American history at the time, but it was not the only one.
Anti-War Suppression 