“Further Harassment and Neutralization”: The FBI’s Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) in Illinois

1. Memo from SAC [Special Agent in Charge], Springfield, to Director, FBI, February 26, 1970, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Springfield, 100-449698-52, 54, FBI Records: The Vault (website), https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-springfield-part-01-of-01/view. Page numbers from online FBI documents refer to pages displayed in Adobe Acrobat that correspond to the FBI’s online reader.

2. In its 1976 findings on intelligence activities in the United States, the Senate pointed out that “covert action” was a more accurate term than “counterintelligence” when describing the FBI’s program. See US Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, book 3 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976), 4.

3. Dennis Cunningham, There’s Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and FBI Counterintelligence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 6.

4. David Farber is one such historian. See David Farber, “New Wave Sixties Historiogrpahy,” Reviews in American History 27, no. 2 (1999): 298-305. See also W. J. Rorabaugh, Berkeley at War: The 1960s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), x; Kevin Boyle, “The Times They Aren’t A-Changin,’” Reviews in American History 29, no. 2 (2001): 304-309; and Robbie Lieberman, Prairie Power: Voices of 1960s Midwestern Student Protest (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004), 9-11. For a more recent overview of 1960s historiography that highlights works focusing on the grassroots, see Simon Hall, “Framing the American 1960s: A Historiographical Review,” European Journal of American Culture 31, no. 1 (2012): 5-23.

5. For overviews of the decade that emphasize 1968, see Todd Gitlin The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York: Bantam, 1993); William L. O’Neil Coming Apart: An Informal History of the 1960s (New York: Quadrangle Books, 1971); Allen J. Matusow The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009); James Miller, Democracy is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987); and Maurice Isserman, If I Had a Hammer: The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left (New York: BasicBooks, 1989). For a narrow focus on 1968, see Marc Kurlansky, 1968: The Year that Rocked the World (New York: Random House, 2005); and Charles Kaiser, 1968 in America: Music, Politics, Chaos, Counterculture, and the Shaping of a Generation (New York: Grove Press, 1997). Rob Kirkpatrick, in his 1969: The Year Everything Changed (NY: Skyhorse Publishing, 2011), makes the case for that year being crucial in culture as well as politics.

6. Gitlin, Sixties, 413. FBI head of Domestic Intelligence William Sullivan claimed as much, noting, “Before we read the headlines and saw the pictures of Mark Rudd smoking a cigar with his feet up on [Columbia president] Grayson Kirk’s desk, we didn’t know the New Left existed.” See William Sullivan, The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover’s FBI (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979), 147-48. James Kirkpatrick Davis, however, convincingly refutes Sullivan’s claim. See James Kirkpatrick Davis, Assault on the Left: The FBI and the Sixties Antiwar Movement (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997), 42-45.

7. For overviews of the historical literature on the FBI, many of which feature narrowly on J. Edgar Hoover, see Melissa Graves, “FBI Historiography: From Leader to Organization,” in Intelligence Studies in Britain and the U.S.: Historiography Since 1945, ed. Christopher R. Moran and Christopher J. Murphy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 129-45; and David J. Garrow, “FBI Political Harassment and FBI Historiography: Analyzing Informants and Measuring the Effects,” The Public Historian 10, no. 4 (1988): 5-18. For more recent works that move FBI scholarship in new directions, see Douglas M. Charles, The FBI’s Obscene File: J. Edgar Hoover and the Bureau’s Crusade Against Smut (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press 2012); and Douglas M. Charles, Hoover’s War on Gays: Exposing the FBI’s “Sex Deviates” Program (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2015); and Matthew Cecil, Branding Hoover’s FBI: How the Boss’s PR Men Sold the Bureau to America (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2016).

8. Cunningham, There’s Something Happening Here, 6-11.

9. Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2002), 61. The authors also argue for the FBI’s effectiveness against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement.

10. Gitlin, Sixties, 415.

11. Cunningham, There’s Something Happening Here, 151.

12. Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr. Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party (Berkley: University of California Press, 2013), 382.

13. Cunningham, There’s Something Happening Here, 6; Betty Medsger, The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret Files (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), 344. COINTELPRO expanded from its 1956 targeting of communists to targeting the Socialist Workers Party in 1961, the KKK and white supremacist groups in 1964, black nationalist groups in 1965, and the New Left in 1968. See Athan Theoharis and John Stuart Cox, The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1988), 312-13. For FBI counterintelligence activity before World War II, see Raymond J. Batvinis, The Origins of FBI Counterintelligence (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007).

14. Michael Newton, The FBI Encyclopedia (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2003), 68; Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The FBI: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 170.

15. Ronald Kessler, The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002), 96-97.

16. Newton, FBI Encyclopedia, 72.

17. See Memo from F. J. Baumgartner to William Sullivan, October 1, 1965, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), White Hate Groups, Section 1, 157-9, 68; and Memo from G. C. Moore to William Sullivan, October 10, 1967, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), White Hate Groups 1, Section 1, 157-9, 164, both at FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/White%20Hate%20Groups/white-hate-groups-part-01-of-14/view.

18. Memo from G. C. Moore to William Sullivan, February 29, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 1, 66-69, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-01-of/view.

19. Seth Rosenfeld, Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012), 414.

20. James Kirkpatrick Davis, The FBI’s Counterintelligence Program (New York: Praeger, 1992), 136-37.

21. Roger Biles, Illinois: A History of the Land and Its People (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005), 275-76.

22. Patrick D. Kennedy, “Reactions Against the Vietnam War and Military-Related Targets on Campus: The University of Illinois as a Case Study, 1965-1972,” Illinois Historical Journal 84, no. 2 (1991): 101-118. See also Joy Ann Williamson, Black Power on Campus: The University of Illinois, 1965-1975 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003).

23. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, May 31, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Chicago Division, 100-449698-9, 229, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-chicago-part-01-of-01/view.

24. For an overview of these activists, see Terry Anderson, The Movement and the Sixties: Protest in America from Greensboro to Wounded Knee (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

25. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, May 31, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Chicago Division, 100-449698-9, 231, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-chicago-part-01-of-01/view. FBI intelligence chief William Sullivan later claimed that informants “could cause tremendous problems for the bureau” by embellishing information, but by his retirement, the FBI employed some 300 of them. See William Sullivan, The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover’s FBI (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979), 128-29.

26. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, May 31, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Chicago Division, 100-449698-9, 232, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-chicago-part-01-of-01/view.

27. Memo from SAC [Special Agent in Charge] to Director, FBI, May 31, 1968, 233.

28. Memo from SAC [Special Agent in Charge] to Director, FBI, May 31, 1968, 234.

29. Memo from SAC, Springfield, to Director, FBI, July 2, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Springfield, 100-449698-52, 40, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-springfield-part-01-of-01/view.

30. Memo from SAC [Special Agent in Charge] Springfield to Director, FBI, July 2, 1968, 35.

31. John Slaman, “SDS Gains Charter Monday; Freshmen Key Plan Passes,” Bradley Scout, May 12, 1967, 4; Memo from SAC, Springfield, to Director, FBI, July 2, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTEL-PRO), New Left, Springfield, 100-449698-52, 27-30, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-springfield-part-01-of-01/view.

32. Kennedy, “Reactions Against the Vietnam War,” 101-18; Memo from SAC, Springfield, to Director, FBI, July 2, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Springfield, 100-449698-52, 19-25, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-springfield-part-01-of-01/view. Athan Theoharis argues that the bureau’s focus on “subversives” sapped energy from its attempts to investigate organized crime. See Athan Theoharis, The FBI & American Democracy: A Brief Critical History (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 130.

33. Memo from SAC, Springfield, to Director, FBI, May 20, 1969, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 10, 122, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-12/view. Cathy Perkus notes Bureau agents “pored over” periodicals such as the Militant and alleges the FBI had “a special hatred for the Black civil rights movement.” See Cathy Perkus, COINTELPRO: The FBI’s Secret War on Political Freedom (New York: Monad Press, 1975), 83-84.

34. Memo from SAC, Springfield, to Director, FBI, April 2, 1969, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 9, 115, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-11-of/view.

35. FSO, “Soul Spot,” The Decaturian, November 14, 1969, 2.

36. “Senate Grants FSO $1500,” The Decaturian, January 9, 1970, 2.

37. “Free Huey is Panthers’ Cry, Theme for Black Emphasis Week,” The Decaturian, March 6, 1970, 1.

38. Memo from SAC, Springfield, to Director, FBI, September 4, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 3, 67, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-05-of/view.

39. “Claude Lightfoot, Chairman of State Communist Party,” Chicago Tribune, September 7, 1991, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1991-09-07/news/9103070439_1_smith-act-supreme-court-illinois. See also Lightfoot’s self-published autobiography, From Chicago’s Ghetto to World Politics: The Life and Struggles of Claude M. Lightfoot.

40. Lighfoot had attracted the FBI’s attention as part of Operation SOLO and its investigation of the Communist Party USA, and, in addition to reports on Lightfoot, his name appears in FBI memos regarding, among others, the Black Panthers and Malcolm X. For example, his giving a speech in the spring of 1962 in which he only mentioned Malcolm X is noted in an FBI memo. See Clayborne Carson, ed., Malcolm X: The FBI File (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2012), 212.

41. Claude M. Lightfoot, Ghetto Rebellion to Black Liberation (New York: International Publishers), 1968), 183.

42. Lightfoot, Ghetto Rebellion, 129, 139-51, 183-92.

43. Memo from SAC, New York, to Director, FBI, July 9, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 2, 134, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-04-of/view.

44. Memo from SAC, Springfield, to Director, FBI, July 5, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 2, 150, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-04-of/view.

45. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, July 31, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 3, 170, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-05-of/view.

46. Memo from Director, FBI, to SAC, Springfield, July 17, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 2, 152, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-04-of/view.

47. Memo from SAC, Springfield, to Director, FBI, July 19, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 3, 215, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-05-of/view.

48. Memo from SAC, Springfield, to Director, FBI, September 4, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 3, 67, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-05-of/view.

49. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, May 15, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006 Section 2, 119, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-03-of/view.

50. Biles, Illinois, 274.

51. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, April 22, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 2, 125-132, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-03-of/view.

52. Memo from Director, FBI, to SAC, Chicago, January7, 1969, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 6, 145, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-08-of/view.

53. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, January 22, 1969, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 6, 17-18, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-08-of-1/view.

54. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, January 22, 1969, 20-21. Wallace, indeed, took over after his father’s death. See Claude Andrew Clegg III, The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 276-77.

55. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, January 22, 1969, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 6, 23, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-08-of-1/view.

56. Clegg, Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad, 259. See also Jonathan Eig, Ali: A Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2017), 170, 195-97, 209; Louis Erenberg, The Rumble in the Jungle: Muhammad Ali and George Foreman on the Global Stage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019); and Leigh Montville, Sting Like a Bee: Muhammad Ali vs. The United States of America, 1966-1971 (New York: Anchor Books, 2017).

57. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, April [day illegible], 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 2, 66, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-03-of/view. From 1967 to 1970, Marlin Johnson was the Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago office, to be followed by Richard Held. See Newton, FBI Encyclopedia, 143, 171.

58. Memo from F. J. Baumgardner to Mr. W. C. Sullivan, October 1, 1965, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTEPLRO), White Hate Groups, Section 1, 157-9, 68; and Memo from G. C. Moore to Mr. W. C. Sullivan, October 10, 1967, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTEPLRO), White Hate Groups, Section 1, 157-9, 164, both at FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/White%20Hate%20Groups/white-hate-groups-part-01-of-14/view.

59. Memo from Mr. C. D. Brennan to Mr. W. C. Sullivan, May 20, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Section 1, 100-449698, 165, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-hq-part-01-of-05/view; Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, June 28, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Chicago Division, 100-449698-9, 227, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-chicago-part-01-of-01/view; Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, July 26, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Chicago Division, 100-449698-9, 198, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-chicago-part-01-of-01/view; Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, October 20, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Chicago Division, 100-449698-9, 168, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-chicago-part-01-of-01/view; Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, October 18, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Chicago Division, 100-449698-9, 162, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-chicago-part-01-of-01/view

60. Memo from Director, FBI, to SAC, Chicago, December 27, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Chicago Division, 100-449698-9, 156-58, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-chicago-part-01-of-01/view

61. Memo from SAC, Springfield, to Director, FBI, October 1, 1969, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Springfield, 100-449698-52, 51, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-springfield-part-01-of-01/view.

62. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, December 31, 1969, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Chicago Division, 100-449698-9, 24, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-chicago-part-01-of-01/view.

63. Memo from SAC, Springfield, to Director, FBI, February 28, 1969, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 7, 25, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-09-of/view.

64. Memo to SAC, Springfield, to Director, FBI, May 31, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Springfield, 100-449698-52, 3, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-springfield-part-01-of-01/view.

65. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, July 26, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Chicago Division, 100-449698-9, 193, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-chicago-part-01-of-01/view.

66. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, August 15, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Chicago Division, 100-449698-9, 187, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-chicago-part-01-of-01/view; Memo from C. D. Brennan to Mr. R. C. Sullivan, August 15, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Section 1, 100-449698, 86, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-hq-part-01-of-05/view; Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, September 4, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Chicago Division, 100-449698-9, 183, FBI Records: The Vault: COINTELPRO, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-chicago-part-01-of-01/view; Cunningham, There’s Something Happening Here, 54.

67. Memo from Director, FBI, to SAC, Chicago, December 10, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremists, 100-448-6, Section 5, 116, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-07-of/view.

68. Memo from Director, FBI, to SAC, Chicago, January 20, 1970, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Section 2, 100-449698, 34, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-hq-part-02-of-05/view.

69. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, November 22, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 5, 120, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-07-of/view. The Chicago bureau also contemplated taking out subscriptions to gay magazines in the name of National Socialist White People’s Party national secretary Matt Koehl. See Cunningham, There’s Something Happening Here, 121.

70. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, April 23, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist 100-448006, Section 2, 110, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-03-of/view.

71. Memo from Director, FBI, to SAC, Chicago, April 23, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist 100-448006, Section 2, 58, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-03-of/view.

72. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, July 2, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist 100-448006, Section 2, 126, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-04-of/view.

73. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, July 2, 1968, 127. The effectiveness of creating division within the Movement by discrediting its leaders can be found in the days prior to the Democratic National Convention as well. During an argument between Chicago activists and Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden intervened, labeling Chicagoan Abe Peck a CIA agent. See Abe Peck, Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press (New York: Citadel Press, 1991), 110.

74. Dick Gregory, Up From Nigger, with James R. McGraw (New York: Stein and Day, 1976), 53-56.

75. Gregory, Up From Nigger, 62.

76. Gregory, Up From Nigger, 79-80.

77. Dick Gregory, Callus on My Soul: A Memoir, with Sheila P. Moses (New York: Kensington Publishing Group, 2000), 113-44; Bambi Haggins, Laughing Mad: The Black Comic Persona in Post-Soul America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 18-22. Gregory was made aware of his place in COINTELPRO, including the mob hit idea, in 1978. See Rob Warden, “FBI Memo: Use Mob against Dick Gregory,” Chicago Tribune, March 10, 1978, 1; Gloria Campisi, “Comic a ‘Hit’ With Hoover?” Philadelphia Daily News, March 11, 1978, 3; and Associated Press, “Activist Target of FBI in 1968,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 11, 1978, 1.

78. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, May 31, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Chicago Division, 100-449698-9, 229, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-chicago-part-01-of-01/view.

79. Bloom and Martin, Black Against Empire, 237.

80. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, April 22, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 2, 85, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-03-of/view.

81. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, October 14, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremists, 100-448006, Section 4, 159, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-06-of/view.

82. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, October 2, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Chicago Division, 100-449698-9, 154, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-chicago-part-01-of-01/view.

83. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, December 16, 1968, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 6, 76, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-08-of/view.

84. Bloom and Martin, Black Against Empire, 228.

85. “Snitch jacketing” or “bad jacketing” was a tactic also used on suspected communists, Klansmen, and others. See Churchill and Vander Wall, Agents of Repression, 49; Michael Newton: The FBI and the KKK: A Critical History (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc. 2005), 118; and Newton, FBI Encyclopedia, 318.

86. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, February 10, 1969, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 7, 125, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-09-of/view.

87. Cunningham, There’s Something Happening Here, 116.

88. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, February 10, 1969; and Memo from Director, FBI, to SAC, Chicago, January 1, 1969, both in Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 6, 214-216, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-08-of/view.

89. Bloom and Martin, Black Against Empire, 228-29.

90. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, June 4, 1969, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 10, 28, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-12/view.

91. Memo from Director, FBI, to SAC, Chicago, July 31, 1969, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 12, 48, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-14/view.

92. Jakobi Williams, From the Bullet to the Ballot: The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 180-82.

93. Williams, From the Bullet to the Ballot, 162.

94. Bloom and Martin, Black Against Empire, 228-29.

95. Bloom and Martin, Black Against Empire, 233. As similar raids happened across the nation, the Panthers realized this was a coordinated FBI attempt of some kind.

96. Williams, From the Bullet to the Ballot, 163; Andrew J. Diamond, Mean Streets: Chicago Youths and the Everyday Struggle for Empowerment in the Multiracial City, 1908-1969 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 305.

97. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, December 3, 1969, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 15, 73-74, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-17-of/view. See also Bloom and Martin, Black Against Empire, 237-39.

98. Memo from Director, FBI, to SAC, Springfield, July 6, 1969, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 14, 111, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-16-of/view.

99. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, November 25, 1969, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), Black Extremist, 100-448006, Section 15, 186-87, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-17-of/view. No other accounts support the Bureau’s claim that Hampton cleaned house.

100. Bloom and Martin, Black Against Empire, 237-38.

101. US Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports, 27.

102. Memo from SAC, Chicago to Director, FBI, September 30, 1970, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Section 3, 100-449698, 70, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-hq-part-03-of-05/view.

103. Memo from SAC, Chicago, to Director, FBI, September 30, 1970, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Chicago Division, 100-449698-9, 3, 6, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-chicago-part-01-of-01/view.

104. See Robbie Lieberman and David Cochran, “It Seemed a Very Local Affair: The Student Movement at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale,” in The New Left Revisited, ed. John MacMillian and Paul Buhle (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2003), 11-27.

105. For the fullest treatment of the act that ended COINTELPRO, see Medsger, The Burglary. For the fallout, see Jeffreys-Jones, The FBI, 177-90; and Cecil, Branding Hoover’s FBI, 241-53.

106. 43rd Ward Citizens Committee, Serendipity City: A Selective Guide to the Best in Shopping, Dining, Entertaining, and Existing in the Lincoln Park Neighborhood (Chicago: Swallow Press, 1972), 2:37.

107. Doug Rossinow, The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Paul Lyons, The People of This Generation: The Rise and Fall of the New Left in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); Rusty L. Monholon, This is America? The Sixties in Lawrence, Kansas (New York: Palgrave, 2002); Gregg L. Michel, Struggle for a Better South: The Southern Student Organizing Committee, 1964-1969 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Robert Cohen and David J. Snyder, eds., Rebellion in Black and White: Southern Student Activism in the 1960s (Baltimore, MD: John’s Hopkins University Press, 2013); Judson Jeffries, ed., Comrades: A Local History of the Black Panther Party (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007).

108. Memo from SAC, Springfield, to Director, FBI, June 20, 1970, Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts, Subject: (COINTELPRO), New Left, Springfield, 100-449698-52, 59, FBI Records: The Vault, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/new-left/cointel-pro-new-left-springfield-part-01-of-01/view.