Cointelpro.com

The Counter Intelligence Program and the internet

on this page:

COINTEL operations to disrupt civil rights and peace movements in 1960s

smear campaigns against "oilempire" website

"Over the years we have been warned about the danger of subversive organizations that would threaten our liberties, subvert our system, would encourage its members to take further illegal action to advance their views, organizations that would incite and promote violence, pitting one American group against another... There is an organization that does fit those descriptions, and it is the organization, the leadership of which has been most constant in its warning to us to be on guard against such harm. The [FBI] did all of those things."

-- Sen. Philip A. Hart

Select Committee on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, 1975

www.cointel.org - excellent reference site, including declassified and liberated documents. Includes the FBI's letter to Martin Luther King, Jr. urging him to commit suicide, sent just before he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize

your tax dollars at work - the FBI's psychological warfare effort against Martin Luther King (1964)

www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-jalon8mar08,0,2280342.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

From the Los Angeles Times

A break-in to end all break-ins

In 1971, stolen FBI files exposed the government's domestic spying program.

By Allan M. Jalon

ALLAN M. JALON is a longtime contributor to The Times and other publications on issues of culture and media.

March 8, 2006

THIRTY-FIVE YEARS ago today, a group of anonymous activists broke into the small, two-man office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Media, Pa., and stole more than 1,000 FBI documents that revealed years of systematic wiretapping, infiltration and media manipulation designed to suppress dissent.

The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI, as the group called itself, forced its way in at night with a crowbar while much of the country was watching the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fight. When agents arrived for work the next morning, they found the file cabinets virtually emptied.

Within a few weeks, the documents began to show up mailed anonymously in manila envelopes with no return address in the newsrooms of major American newspapers. When the Washington Post received copies, Atty. Gen. John N. Mitchell asked Executive Editor Ben Bradlee not to publish them because disclosure, he said, could "endanger the lives" of people involved in investigations on behalf of the United States.

Nevertheless, the Post broke the first story on March 24, 1971, after receiving an envelope with 14 FBI documents detailing how the bureau had enlisted a local police chief, letter carriers and a switchboard operator at Swarthmore College to spy on campus and black activist groups in the Philadelphia area.

More documents went to other reporters Tom Wicker received copies at his New York Times office; so did reporters at the Los Angeles Times and to politicians including Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota and Rep. Parren J. Mitchell of Maryland.

To this day, no individual has claimed responsibility for the break-in. The FBI, after building up a six-year, 33,000-page file on the case, couldn't solve it. But it remains one of the most lastingly consequential (although underemphasized) watersheds of political awareness in recent American history, one that poses tough questions even today for our national leaders who argue that fighting foreign enemies requires the government to spy on its citizens. The break-in is far less well known than Daniel Ellsberg's leak of the Pentagon Papers three months later, but in my opinion it deserves equal stature.

Found among the Media documents was a new word, "COINTELPRO," short for the FBI's "secret counterintelligence program," created to investigate and disrupt dissident political groups in the U.S. Under these programs, beginning in 1956, the bureau worked to "enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles," as one COINTELPRO memo put it, "to get the point across there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox."

The Media documents along with further revelations about COINTELPRO in the months and years that followed made it clear that the bureau had gone beyond mere intelligence-gathering to discredit, destabilize and demoralize groups many of them peaceful, legal civil rights organizations and antiwar groups that the FBI and Director J. Edgar Hoover found offensive or threatening.

For instance, agents sought to persuade Martin Luther King Jr. to kill himself just before he received the Nobel Prize. They sent him a composite tape made from bugs planted illegally in his hotel rooms when he was entertaining women other than his wife and threatened to make it public. "King, there is one thing left for you to do. You know what it is," FBI operatives wrote in their anonymous letter.

Under COINTELPRO, the bureau also targeted actress Jean Seberg for having made a donation to the Black Panther Party. The fragile actress ultimately committed suicide after a gossip nugget based on a FBI wiretap was leaked to the L.A. Times and published. The item, suggesting that the father of the baby she was carrying was a Black Panther rather than her French writer-husband, turned out to be wrong.

The sheer reach of a completely politicized FBI was one of the most frightening revelations of the Media documents. Underground newspapers were targeted. Students (and their professors) were targeted. Celebrities were targeted. The Communist Party of the U.S.A., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Non-Violent Organizing Committee, the Black Panther Party, the Women's Strike for Peace all were targeted. "Neutralize them in the same manner they are trying to destroy and neutralize the U.S.," one memo said.

Eventually, the COINTELPRO memos some from Media and some unearthed later prompted hearings led by Rep. Don Edwards of California and by Sen. Frank Church of Idaho on intelligence agency abuses. In the mid-1970s, the wayward agency began finally to be reined in.

It is tragic when people lose faith in their government to the extent that they feel they must break laws to expose corruption.

But a war that had been started and sustained by lies had gone on for years. And a government had betrayed its citizens, manipulating their fear to strengthen its grip on power.

Today, again, many people worry that their government may be on the road to subverting its own ideals. I hope that the commemoration of those unknown activists being held today in Media, Pa., will serve as a reminder that fighting for democracy abroad must remain more than merely an excuse to weaken civil liberties at home.

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times

Ward Churchill and Jim VanderWall, "The Cointelpro Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States," South End Press: 1990.

www.prorev.com/mil.htm

Mission creep: the militarizing of America

By Sam Smith

From the March 1996 issue of the Progressive Review

... last July, Charles Swett, who works for the Pentagon office handling "special operations and low intensity conflict" wrote an internal memo titled: Strategic Assessment: The Internet. The report, uncovered by the Federation of American Scientists, provides an overview of the Internet, particularly its usefulness for spying on both Americans and foreigners and for spreading disinformation during psychological operations. Of course, Swett didn't use those words, so to be absolutely fair let's quote the man: The Internet could also be used offensively as an additional medium in psychological operations campaigns and to help achieve unconventional warfare objectives. Used creatively as an integral asset, the Internet can facilitate many DOD operations and activities. . . The Internet is a potentially lucrative source of intelligence useful to DOD. The intelligence can include . . . information about the plans and operations of politically active groups. Networks of human sources with access to the Internet could be developed in areas of security concern to the US, and these sources could be oriented to seek specific needed information. If contracted and managed correctly, such a system could be much more responsive and efficient than the current complex, unwieldy, intelligence tasking and collection processes we must use. If it became widely known that DOD were monitoring Internet traffic for intelligence or counterintelligence purposes, individuals with personal agendas or political purposes in mind, or who enjoy playing pranks, would deliberately enter false or misleading messages. Our analysis function would need to account for this. A great deal of "brain power" exists on the Internet, and if it could be harnessed and channeled for productive purposes, it might be a useful addition to DOD's informational and political assets. Any such use, of course, would have to be protected by appropriate security measures. It would be possible to employ the Internet as an additional medium for Psychological Operations (Psyops) campaigns. E-mail conveying the US perspective on issues and events could be efficiently and rapidly disseminated to a very wide audience. DOD intelligence agencies should investigate the role of the Internet in helping coordinate the operations of political activists and paramilitary groups in regions of interest. The Internet should be incorporated in our Psyops planning as an additional medium. Means of employing the Internet offensively in support of our unconventional warfare objectives should be employed.

http://mediafilter.org/MFF/USDCO.PsyWar.html

Harassment Through Psychological Warfare While boring from within, the FBI and police also attack dissident movements from the outside. They openly mount propaganda campaigns through public addresses, news releases, books, pamphlets, magazine articles, radio, and television. They also use covert deception and manipulation. Documented tactics of this kind include: False Media Stories: COINTELPRO documents expose frequent collusion between news media personnel and the FBI to publish false and distorted material at the Bureau's behest. The FBI routinely leaked derogatory information to its collaborators in the news media. It also created newspaper and magazine articles and television "documentaries" which the media knowingly or unknowingly carried as their own. Copies were sent anonymously or under bogus letterhead to activists' financial backers, employers, business associates, families, neighbors, church officials, school administrators, landlords, and whomever else might cause them trouble.

One FBI media fabrication claimed that Jean Seberg, a white film star active in anti-racist causes, was pregnant by a prominent Black leader. The Bureau leaked the story anonymously to columnist Joyce Haber and also had it passed to her by a "friendly" source in the Los Angeles Times editorial staff. The item appeared without attribution in Haber's nationally syndicated column of May 19, 1970. Seberg's husband has sued the FBI as responsible for her resulting stillbirth, nervous breakdown, and suicide. Bogus Leaflets, Pamphlets, and Other Publications: COINTELPRO documents show that the FBI routinely put out phony leaflets, posters, pamphlets, newspapers, and other publications in the name of movement groups. The purpose was to discredit the groups and turn them against one another.

FBI cartoon leaflets were used to divide and disrupt the main national anti-war coalition of the late 1960s. Similar fliers were circulated in 1968 and 1969 in the name of the Black Panthers and the United Slaves (US), a rival Black nationalist group based in Southern California. The phony Panther/US leaflets, together with other covert operations, were credited with subverting a fragile truce between the two groups and igniting an explosion of internecine violence that left four Panthers dead, many more wounded, and a once-flourishing regional Black movement decimated.

Another major COINTELPRO operation involved a children's coloring book which the Black Panther Party had rejected as anti-white and gratuitously violent. The FBI revised the coloring book to make it even more offensive. Its field offices then distributed thousands of copies anonymously or under phony organizational letterheads. Many backers of the Party's program of free breakfasts for children withdrew their support after the FBI conned them into believing that the bogus coloring book was being used in the program. Forged Correspondence: Former employees have confirmed that the FBI has the capacity to produce state-of-the-art forgery. This capacity was used under COINTELPRO to create snitch jackets and bogus communications that exacerbated differences among activists and disrupted their work.

One such forgery intimidated civil rights worker Muhammed Kenyatta (Donald Jackson), causing him to abandon promising projects in Jackson, Mississippi. Kenyatta had foundation grants to form Black economic cooperatives and open a "Black and Proud School" for dropouts. He was also a student organizer at nearby Tougaloo College. In the winter of 1969, after an extended campaign of FBI and police harassment, Kenyatta received a letter, purportedly from the Tougaloo College Defense Committee, which "directed" that he cease his political activities immediately. If he did not "heed our diplomatic and well-thought-out warning," the committee would consider taking measures "which would have a more direct effect and which would not be as cordial as this note." Kenyatta and his wife left. Only years later did they learn it was not Tougaloo students, but FBI covert operators who had driven them out.

Later in 1969, FBI agents fabricated a letter to the mainly white organizers of a proposed Washington, D.C. anti-war rally demanding that they pay the local Black community a $20,000 "security bond." This attempted extortion was composed in the name of the local Black United Front (BUF) and signed with the forged signature of its leader. FBI informers inside the BUF then tried to get the group to back such a demand, and Bureau contacts in the media made sure the story received wide publicity.

The Senate Intelligence Committee uncovered a series of FBI letters sent to top Panther leaders throughout 1970 in the name of Connie Mathews, an intermediary between the Black Panther Party's national office and Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, in exile in Algeria. These exquisite forgeries were prepared on pilfered stationery in Panther vernacular expertly simulated by the FBI's Washington, D.C. laboratory. Each was forwarded to an FBI Legal Attache at a U.S. Embassy in a foreign country that Mathews was due to travel through and then posted at just the right time "in such a manner that it cannot be traced to the Bureau." The FBI enhanced the eerie authenticity of these fabrications by lacing them with esoteric personal tidbits culled from electronic surveillance of Panther homes and offices. Combined with other forgeries, anonymous letters and phone calls, and the covert intervention of FBI and police infiltrators, the Mathews correspondence succeeded in inflaming intra-party mistrust and rivalry until it erupted into the bitter public split that shattered the organization in the winter of 1971. Anonymous Letters and Telephone Calls: During the 1960s, activists received a steady flow of anonymous letters and phone calls which turn out to have been from the FBI. Some were unsigned, while others bore bogus names or purported to come from unidentified activists in phony or actual organizations.

Many of these bogus communications promoted racial divisions and fears, often by exploiting and exacerbating tensions between Jewish and Black activists. One such FBI-concocted letter went to SDS members who had joined Black students protesting New York University's discharge of a Black teacher in 1969. The supposed author, an unnamed "SDS member," urged whites to break ranks and abandon the Black students because of alleged anti-Semitic slurs by the fired teacher and his supporters.

Other anonymous letters and phone calls falsely accused movement leaders of collaboration with the authorities, corruption, or sexual affairs with other activists' mates. The letter on the next page was used to provoke "a lasting distrust" between a Black civil rights leader and his wife. Its FBI authors hoped that his "concern over what to do about it" would "detract from his time spent in the plots and plans of his organization." As in the Seberg incident, inter-racial sex was a persistent theme. The husband of one white woman active in civil rights and anti-war work filed for divorce soon after receiving the FBI-authored letter reproduced on page 50.

Still other anonymous FBI communications were designed to intimidate dissidents, disrupt coalitions, and provoke violence. Calls to Stokely Carmichael's mother warning of a fictitious Black Panther murder plot drove him to leave the country in September 1968. Similar anonymous FBI telephone threats to SNCC leader James Forman were instrumental in thwarting efforts to bring the two groups together.

The Chicago FBI made effective use of anonymous letters to sabotage the Panthers efforts to build alliances with previously apolitical Black street gangs. The most extensive of these operations involved the Black P. Stone Nation, or "Blackstone Rangers," a powerful confederation of several thousand local Black youth. Early in 1969, as FBI and police infiltrators in the Rangers spread rumors of an impending Panther attack, the Bureau sent Ranger chief Jeff Fort an incendiary note signed "a black brother you don't know." Fort's supposed friend warned that "The brothers that run the Panthers blame you for blocking their thing and there's supposed to be a hit out for you." Another FBI-concocted anonymous "black man" then informed Chicago Panther leader Fred Hampton of a Ranger plot "to get you out of the way." These fabrications squelched promising talks between the two groups and enabled Chicago Panther security chief William O'Neal, an FBI-paid provocateur, to instigate a series of armed confrontations from which the Panthers barely managed to escape without serious casualties. Pressure Through Employers, Landlords, and Others: FBI records reveal repeated maneuvers to generate pressure on dissidents from their parents, children, spouses, landlords, employers, college administrators, church superiors, welfare agencies, credit bureaus, and the like. Anonymous letters and telephone calls were often used to this end. Confidential official communications were effective in bringing to bear the Bureau's immense power and authority.

Agents' reports indicate that such FBI intervention denied Martin Luther King, Jr., and other 1960s activists any number of foundation grants and public speaking engagements. It also deprived alternative newspapers of their printers, suppliers, and distributors and cost them crucial advertising revenues when major record companies were persuaded to take their business elsewhere. Similar government manipulation may underlie steps recently taken by some insurance companies to cancel policies held by churches giving sanctuary to refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala. Tampering With Mail and Telephone Service: The FBI and CIA routinely used mail covers (the recording of names and addresses) and electronic surveillance in order to spy on 1960s movements. The CIA alone admitted to photographing the outside of 2.7 million pieces of first-class mail during the 1960s and to opening almost 215,000. Government agencies also tampered with mail, altering, delaying, or "disappearing" it. Activists were quick to blame one another, and infiltrators easily exploited the situation to exacerbate their tensions.

Dissidents' telephone communications often were similarly obstructed. The SDS Regional Office in Washington, D.C., for instance, mysteriously lost its phone service the week preceding virtually every national anti-war demonstration in the late 1960s. Disinformation to Prevent or Disrupt Movement Meetings and Activities: A favorite COINTELPRO tactic uncovered by Senate investigators was to advertise a non-existent political event, or to misinform people of the time and place of an actual one. They reported a variety of disruptive FBI "dirty tricks" designed to cast blame on the organizers of movement events.

In one "disinformation" case, the [FBI's] Chicago Field Office duplicated blank forms prepared by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam ("NMC") soliciting housing for demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention. Chicago filled out 217 of these forms with fictitious names and addresses and sent them to the NMC, which provided them to demonstrators who made "long and useless journeys to locate these addresses." The NMC then decided to discard all replies received on the housing forms rather than have out-of-town demonstrators try to locate nonexistent addresses. (The same program was carried out when the Washington Mobilization Committee distributed housing forms for demonstrators coming to Washington for the 1969 Presidential inaugural ceremonies.)

In another case, during the demonstrations accompanying inauguration ceremonies, the Washington Field Office discovered that NMC marshals were using walkie-talkies to coordinate their movements and activities. WFO used the same citizen band to supply the marshals with misinformation and, pretending to be an NMC unit, countermanded NMC orders.

In a third case, a [Bureau] midwest field office disrupted arrangements for state university students to attend the 1969 inaugural demonstrations by making a series of anonymous telephone calls to the transportation company. The calls were designed to confuse both the transportation company and the SDS leaders as to the cost of transportation and the time and place for leaving and returning. This office also placed confusing leaflets around the campus to show different times and places for demonstration-planning meetings, as well as conflicting times and dates for traveling to Washington.

Scoop: Anatomy Of A SWAT From A Lawyer’s Perspective

www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0504/S00241.htm

Scoop: Fear: The Foundation of Every Government's Power

www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0505/S00236.htm

www.radio4all.org/aia/sec_cointelpro.html

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.radio4all.org/aia/sec_cointelpro.html

Cover Manipulation to Make a Legitimate Activist Appear to Be an Agent

An actual agent will often point the finger at a genuine, non-collaborating and highly valued group member, claiming that he or she is the infiltrator. The same effect, known as a "snitch jacket", has been achieved by planting forged documents which appear to be communications between an activist and the FBI, or by releasing for no other apparent reason one of a group of activists who were arrested together. Another method used under COINTELPRO was to arrange for some activists, arrested under one pretext or another, to hear over the police radio a phony broadcast which appeared to set up a secret meeting between the police and someone from their group.

www.totse.com/en/politics/green_planet/sec_act.html

SECURITY GUIDELINES FOR MOVEMENT ACTIVISTS

GUIDELINES FOR COPING WITH INFILTRATION

Snitch Jacketing - smearing an activist as an agent provocateur

The "indymedia" sites are an excellent place for uncensored discussion of undercovered issues, and serve the peace and environmental movement as a form of electronic bulletin board. However, the unmoderated nature of indymedia allows right wingers and Cointelpro agents to spam nonsense onto the discussion forums -- the Portland Indymedia discussion list on 9/11 often has more disinformation about 9/11 (promotion of the fake film "In Plane Site," among other nonsense) than real material. There is a big difference between an editor and a censor - an editor merely requires a writer to document the statements in an article, whereas a censor shuts down discussion due to its unpopular nature. If Indymedia had editors that make modest efforts to keep out the right wing disinformation spam, it would be a far more useful media tool.

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/08/295016.shtml

Oil Empire Website Linked to Carlyle Group

01.Sep.2004 16:20

John Houston

The Oil Empire website that everyone keeps referencing has ties to big oil and to the Carlyle Group. Just do a "whois" search on the website and do a little investigative footwork. This information has been out there for a very long time. I can't believe you people still buy in to the Robinowitz scheme of BIG OIL and BIG PROFITS made from war. He admits this much right on his website where he talks about "peak oil."

My advice: Watch 911 in plane site and see for yourself.

www.truthmove.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=29

Keenan

Joined: 12 Jun 2006

Posts: 2

Location: N. California

I'm sorry to see that you have apparently fallen for the oilempire disinfo. Their analysis attacking the Pentagon 'no plane' theory is complete nonsense. There is a consensus in the 9/11 truth movement that Flight 77 did not crash into the Pentagon. The physical evidence, if analysed honestly, simply does not support the official hoax that Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. Only a few researchers, who appear to be primarily disinfo agents, are trying to uphold this official government lie.

note: a list of prominent 9/11 researchers who don't believe the no plane claim is at www.oilempire.us/pentagon-truth.html

Newcomers to the movement who happen upon certain websites, such as Jim Hoffman's 911research.com and 911review.com, or Mark Robanowitz's oilempire.us, are often fooled by the sophisticated methodology of disinfo they employ. In order to gain credibility in the movement, the disinfo agents will offer a limited hangout in which they present themselves as a genuine 9/11 truth researcher, but then do serious harm to the movement by attemtping to divide and discredit good people in the movement. One of the most common tactics is called "badjacketing", which is to smear someone else in the movement as an agent or a fake. In FBI COINTELPRO history, badjacketing was used extensively to destroy many social movements. As Barry Zwicker explained in his lecture, these agents know how to be very convincing. That includes Mark Robaniwitz at oilempire.us embracing permaculture and other things that gives more warm fuzzy feelings to people who then conclude "well, if they support good things like permaculture, then they must be telling the truth!"

note: how creative to spread badjacketing (aka snitch jacketing) while supposedly complaining about the practice

Its important to understand that people like Jim Hoffman and Mark Robanowitz at oilempire.us are not interested in an open and honest debate about what happened at the Pentagon. If they were, then they would not be disparaging the efforts of, and questioning the motives of, those researchers who refuse to ignore the fact that the available evidence is entirely inconsistent with the crash of a jetliner at the Pentagon. It is absulutely inexcuseable for them to automatically accuse others of being disinfo agents who disagree with them. Especially when there are totally valid reasons not to buy the official hoax about the Pentagon attack on 9/11. That's why most of the credible 9/11 researchers, including David Ray Griffen, Webster Tarpley, Mike Ruppert (in those few moments when he is speaking privately and honestly), Steven Jones, Jeff King, and countless others dispute the official Pentagon hoax. At Scholars for 9/11 Truth (st911.org), probably the most credible 9/11 research group in the whole movement, NOBODY believes in the official lie that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon.

note: Ruppert repeatedly publicly and privately pointed out this false claim is not real. Like many people, he originally thought it might have validity until he looked closer. Scholars for 9/11 Truth never was the "most credible" research group, and has fallen apart over bizarre arguments disconnected from reality. Some of the people who lent their names to it are sincere and good researchers, but they aren't the ones who controlled the content of the website. A number of the people who lent their names to the "Scholars" group definitely do understand that Flight 77 was flown into the nearly empty part of the Pentagon. In 2007, the "Scholars" group held a conference dedicated in large part to the claim that planes didn't hit the World Trade Center, either and all of the thousands of people in New York City who claim to have seen them were dupes.

"What about all those witnesses who saw a big commercial airliner crash into the Pentagon," you ask? Almost all of them can be proven to be agents of the Pentagon, the Bush Administration, the mainstream media, and high political operatives both Democratic and Republican. For an excellent review of the bogus "eye witness" accounts of the Pentagon, check out Dave McGowan's analysis here: http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr68e.html. Also, it is important to keep in mind that any experienced criminal investigator will tell you that physical evidence always outweighs eye witness evidence, especially when there is a discrepency between the two.

note: in reality, the hundreds of eyewitnesses of the Flight 77 crash are a diverse, semi-random group of people. While there are employees of the government and media who saw the flying plane, plane crash and plane parts, this is not surprising given the location of the events. But even the most cursory examination of the facts coupled with a basic understanding of geography disproves every assertion of the above paragraph. Busy highways were not screened off from anyone not part of the conspiracy before the crash. Most of the eyewitnesses do not have their comments on websites, although they told their families, friends, co-workers, etc about their experiences. Many eyewitnesses had no special ties to the DC power structure. No eyewitness saw a missile or small plane hit the Pentagon. And the physical evidence corroborates the obvious fact that Flight 77 really did crash. Finally, the "davesweb" website also promotes the false "abiotic oil" claims, so it is not exactly a fact checked, scientifically accurate journalistic endeavor.

Another important point is that there was lots of eye witnesses who saw multiple aircraft, including what appeared to be a large Boing [sic] aircraft that flew towards the Pentagon and then veered off to the left at the last minute just before the attack. This could have been an intentional distraction by the perpetrators to confuse people. And, this could account for at least some of the eye witnesses who claimed to have seen a large commerical aircraft. And, most of the witnesses who say they saw a large commercial aircraft didn't actually see it crash into the Pentagon. I.E. first they saw the plane, then after it disappeared they saw/heard an explosion far away towards the Pentagon a little later.

note: anyone with a basic understanding of Arlington County can see through this, since if a large jet had really "veered off to the left" it would have been seen by a LOT of people along Washington Blvd, the GW Parkway, along the Potomac River, the 14th Street bridge and other vantage points. Those who had a good view of the impact site definitely saw the crash, and the cleanup workers saw the plane parts everywhere.

Dave McGowan at The Center of an Informed America, probably has the most thorough overall analysis about what happened at the Pentagon and the ensuing disinfo campaign: October 2, 2004

September 11, 2001 Revisited: Act II www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr68.html.

A little more homework on your part about the evidence of what really happened at the Pentagon can help you to see through the lies and deception being offered at sites such as oiempire.us. I think it is important for all of us in the 9/11 truth movement to identify and call out those who are attempting to do great harm to the movement, because it is a serious threat, as Barry Zwicker explained. I believe that the use of superior logic and intelligence by those of us in the truth movement who are willing to do our homework will prevail and let the truth win out.

note: most of the people who believed this false claim are sincere, but that sincerity does not mean that their beliefs are actually truth. Mr. Zwicker has done some very good work, especially his early 2002 "Great Deception" film, but his subsequent book Towers of Deception uses false evidence that has been refuted to promote this.

The "No Plane Hit Pentagon" is probably the most important COINTELPRO campaign against the 9/11 truth movement. It has discredited the "movement" inside the Beltway, alienated most of the 9/11 victim families, distracted from the real questions of Flight 77 (why it wasn't intercepted and how it was steered into the nearly empty part of the Pentagon), and given the media a "straw man" attack on the truth movement.

"Robnaziwitz is a population controlists who supports the peak oil psyOp."

-- vicious comment posted by probable Cointelpro operative at Portland Indymedia (a site that allows anyone to post anything, even if it grotesquely untrue, and has been overrun with spam from people pushing nonsense posing as activism) Perhaps the insult is because this site is opposed to Holocaust Denial?

Comment posted at http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/05/cynical-sophisticated-and-subtle.html#comments (the article at the blog was excellent, but the comments section attracted some nonsense from hoax promoters)

It's certainly true that phony disinformation is spread thick throughout the 911 truth movement, and it was in place prior to the attacks. Oilempire, Mike Ruppert, and QuestionsQuestions are all disinformation.

a good history of COINTELPRO scandals at the FBI

www.drewhendricks.freeservers.com/things.htm

"There (is) a cultural problem in the FBI that needs to be addressed. If it isn't, it's going to destroy itself."

Former FBI Special Agent Dan Vogel, speaking on CBS 60 Minutes II, May 29, 2001 "We take people’s freedoms away. We put your son, we put your daughter in jail. We take away your freedom. We take away your house. We take away your assets. We compile files of your information-FBI dossiers- on you. If that doesn’t give you pause for thought, nothing in this life will."

Paul Mark Moskal, Special Agent, Buffalo, NY Collected here are a few of the public scandals which have come to light about the FBI. (Index to Agents of the FBI)

(It does not pretend to be a comprehensive list)

1917 - IWW 'Wobbly' raids

1919 - 1920's Infiltration of UNIA and targeting Marcus Garvey

1919, 1920 - Palmer Raids

1920 - present - Communist Party U.S.A. infiltration

1920 - 1971 - Investigation of the Ameican Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

1941 - 1976 - Socialist Worker's Party infiltration, burglaries, etc.

1953 - 1966 - Surveillance of Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz Al-Sabban)

1956 - 1971 - COINTELPRO Panthers, Anti-War Movement, Puerto Rico, KKK

1963 - 1968 - Surveillance and Threats against Dr Martin Luther King, Jr

1968 - 1970's - Infiltration and frame-ups against the Black Panther Party

1972 - 1976 - FBI actions against the American Indian Movement (AIM)

1973 - 1988 - Library Awareness Program

1979 - 1989 - Investigation of General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS)

1981 - 1986 - Burglaries and harassment of CISPES

1989 - 1990 - Earth First! (Arizona Five and Judi Bari)

1989 - 1991 - VANPAC

1992 - Randy Weaver standoff and Vicki Weaver assassination at Ruby Ridge

1993 - World Trade Center Bombing

1993 - 'Waco' seige and inferno (Mount Carmel)

1995 - Oklahoma City (Murrah Building bombed)

1995 - 1997 - SPLITRAIL (under construction)

1996 - TWA flight 800 crash investigation

1996 - The Centennial Park Bombing - FBI leaks Richard Jewell's name as a suspect.

1997 - FBI Labratory misconduct (Whitehurst allegations)

1999 - SPAM from the Law Enforcement Online project (ANSIR e-mail)

2000 - CARNIVORE by any other name, would bite as hard

2000 - FBI attempts to squelch web sites (Mike Z, Cyptome.org, IndyMedia)

2000 - FBI gets caught lying to FISA Court

2001 - FBI gets caught witholding thousands of documents (4,034 pages) from McVeigh Defense Team

2001 - FBI researcher releases Sircam internet worm to the net

2001 - Did the FBI know something about 9/11 before it happened?

2001 - Mass Detentions and Racial Profiling post-9/11

2001 - Who killed John P. O'Neill?

www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=5276

March 21, 2005

Dirty Tricks Revisited

William Arkin targeted by the U.S. government?

by Justin Raimondo