On Monday, March 8, 1971, members of The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into the government offices in Media, Pennsylvania with the intent of destroying draft cards. What they stumbled on would expose the secret and illegal war waged by the FBI against political movements dating back to the late 1940s. Reams of documents stamped with the name COINTEPRO (CounterINTElligencePRogram) revealed the infiltration, set-up, gaslighting, snitch-jacketing, and elimination of political activists, union organizers, teachers, and other members of society.
The documentary film 1971 tells the story of these brave activists and the Church Committee hearings held in 1976 that supposedly put an end to these extra and illegal actions organized by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.
In 2019, at the height of white nationalist and Nazi organizing in public and in clandestine cells, it was revealed that the FBI had created a new category for surveillance and infiltration: the "Black Identity Extremist" designation. This category would be the pretext for the infiltration and attempts to destroy political movements yet again.
A new podcast from Western Sound and iHeartPodcasts updates the ongoing illegal activities of government agencies and agents. The podcast "Alphabet Boys reveals the secret investigations of the FBI, CIA, DEA, ATF, and other alphabet agencies. Hosted by journalist Trevor Aaronson, this podcast exposes secret undercover recordings that the government never wanted you to hear, along with the entrapment schemes federal agents set up to target unsuspecting Americans. We explore cases that are both dangerous and absurd while asking this question: Are America's top cops catching criminals — or creating them?
Told as a single narrative over 10 episodes, season one of "Alphabet Boys" features access to never-before-heard FBI undercover recordings and interviews with activists who were the targets of the federal probe. The show also reveals for the first time the identity and sordid history of the controversial informant the FBI paid to spy on racial justice activists."
Check out this interview on Democracy Now! with podcast host Trevor Aaronson.
