COINTELPRO Was Necessary

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In times of great terror and panic, the citizens of a nation must decide what they value most: their right to privacy or the lives of the innocent. Government surveillance is criticized, however there are times in a nation’s history where, in order to ensure the safety of their citizens, they must surveill the country for potential hazards that might exist in the world. The government-issued program, COINTELPRO--a series of illegal projects during the twentieth century organized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation--while heavily criticized for its unconstitutional grounds--was justified because it benefitted the nation during a period of upheaval. COINTELPRO is popularly condemned by historians and professors such as Brandeis University Professor of Sociology, David Cunningham, who asserts that the FBI counterintelligence program was only a form of repression that allowed for the government to suppress matters that they consider bothersome (234) This however was not the case. COINTELPRO was necessary because of the great social unrest, individuals posed threats to society, and creating operations that were beneficial to the United States.

COINTELPRO was founded by the FBI in 1956 as a government program for counterintelligence. The FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, was instrumental in the program’s creation. After the age of McCarthyism best known as the Second Red Scare, Hoover was concerned about the institution of Communism gaining popularity within the United States. This gave way to the creation of COINTELPRO. The program originally focused on infiltrating the Communist Party within the United States and then instilling disorder and confusion via numerous tactics. The program mainly used espionage to allo...

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