Edgar Hoover Counterintelligence Program Essay

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J. Edgar Hoover began a new phase of a counterintelligence program in August of 1967 known as COINTELPRO. The purpose of this particular program, according to Hoover, who was the Director of the FBI, was to expose and disrupt the activities of black nationalists, hate organizations or groups. Hoover obsessively used the vast resources of the FBI against black groups across the political spectrum, from the NAACP to the Black Panther Party. His justification was that African Americans who objected to segregation were communists. Given Hoover’s well documented antipathy towards black people, which was typical of a white conservative man with southern upbringing, his motivation was simply racism. The Black Panther Party was not originally on Hoover’s “Black Nationalist-Hate Group” list, but organizations such as SCLC, SNCC and the Nation of Islam were included. But the Black Panther Party became the primary focus of the program where they were the target of 233 …show more content…

They reportedly stole more than 1,000 documents. In doing so, the Commission exposed the FBI’s “COINTELPRO,” program, a secret counterintelligence program created to investigate and disrupt dissident political groups in the United States. According to the documents, Hoover had directed all of the Bureau’s offices to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit and otherwise neutralize,” African-American organizations and leaders. One of these organizations was the Black Panthers. Two years later, it was publicly revealed that Chicago Black Panther Party Chief of Security William O'Neal was a paid informant for the FBI. The reaction to the black community was distraught from the events that had occurred. In their minds, the government hated blacks and everything they stood for. However, change came from all of this, and justice would eventually take its

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