May 21, 2015

Ever wondered how the FBI's COINTELPRO and other activities since 1956 where un-earthed

By normal people such as you and I )

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Approximately 90 minutes long

Background:

Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI

The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI was a leftist activist group operational in the US during the early 1970s. Their only known action was breaking into a two-man Media, Pennsylvania office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and stealing over 1000 classified documents. They then mailed these documents anonymously to several US newspapers. Some news outlets refused to publish the information, as it related to ongoing operations and they contended disclosure might have threatened the lives of agents or informants.

"The complete collection of political documents ripped-off from the F.B.I. office in Media, Pa., March 8, 1971" was published for the first time as the March, 1972 issue of WIN Magazine, a journal associated with the War Resisters League. The documents revealed the COINTELPRO operation,[1] and led to the Church Committee and the cessation of this operation by the FBI. Noam Chomsky has stated:

According to its analysis of the documents in this FBI office, 1 percent were devoted to organized crime, mostly gambling; 30 percent were "manuals, routine forms, and similar procedural matter"; 40 percent were devoted to political surveillance and the like, including two cases involving right-wing groups, ten concerning immigrants, and over 200 on left or liberal groups. Another 14 percent of the documents concerned draft resistance and "leaving the military without government permission." The remainder concerned bank robberies, murder, rape, and interstate theft.[2]

The theft resulted in the exposure of some of the FBI's most self-incriminating documents, including several documents detailing the FBI's use of postal workers, switchboard operators, etc., in order to spy on black college students and various non-violent black activist groups.

Some forty years after their successful infiltration, some of the perpetrators decided to go public. In 2014, Betty Medsger's book The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret F.B.I. was released, which contains the burglars' description of the burglary, and revealed the identities of five of the eight burglars.[3] Filmmaker Johanna Hamilton also made a documentary titled 1971.

More at the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Commission_to_Investigate_the_FBI


1971 (2014 film)



1971 is a 2014 American documentary film and the directorial debut of producer Johanna Hamilton, who also co-wrote the film.[1] The film had its world premiere on 18 April 2014 at the Tribeca Film Festival and focuses on the break-in of an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania in 1971.[2]

Hamilton was inspired to create the film after learning that Betty Medsger was working on her book The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI, which discussed the 1971 events and revealed the identities of many of the participants, who had remained anonymous up to that point.[3]

Synopsis

The film focuses on the events of March 8, 1971, when eight people broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania. The group, all of whom were ordinary citizens, called themselves the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI and stole every file in the office. The content in the stolen files ranged from training manuals to information about organized crime and draft resistance. Over time the group mailed the files to various newsrooms. One of the more significant elements in the stolen materials were files relating to COINTELPRO, a secret surveillance program that was run by J. Edgar Hoover.

More at the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_%282014_film%29

Two discussion on DU before the PBS TV premier

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251408120

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026692300


Have fun kids, happy learning...