On August 28, 1956, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover formally established COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program), a covert and illegal program designed to surveil, infiltrate, discredit, and disrupt domestic political organizations. Initially targeting the Communist Party USA, the program would eventually expand to target civil rights organizations, antiwar movements, feminist groups, and virtually any organization Hoover deemed a threat to the existing social order.
COINTELPRO represented a fundamental corruption of law enforcement into a political weapon. The FBI employed tactics including illegal wiretapping, mail opening, burglary ("black bag jobs"), planting false media stories, forging correspondence to create conflicts within organizations, and using informants to provoke illegal actions. These tactics were explicitly designed to circumvent constitutional protections and due process, operating entirely outside any legal framework or judicial oversight.
The program reflected Hoover's personal ideology and his determination to maintain power by targeting perceived enemies of the state. By framing domestic dissent as a security threat requiring counterintelligence methods developed for foreign adversaries, the FBI established a template for treating American citizens exercising constitutional rights as enemies to be neutralized rather than protected.
COINTELPRO remained secret for 15 years until March 8, 1971, when the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI burglarized an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania, and released files exposing the program. The subsequent Church Committee investigation (1975-1976) documented systematic abuses including surveillance of over 500,000 Americans, infiltration of political organizations, and illegal harassment campaigns. The committee concluded that FBI activities had "violated specific statutory provisions and infringed the constitutional rights of American citizens."
The founding of COINTELPRO established a dangerous precedent: that intelligence agencies could operate as tools of political suppression with no accountability, targeting Americans for their beliefs and associations rather than criminal activity. This institutional capture of law enforcement for political purposes would expand dramatically over the following two decades, particularly targeting the civil rights movement.