The FBI ran a covert domestic sabotage program for 15 years targeting civil rights leaders, antiwar groups, and political parties. MLK received an anonymous letter suggesting suicide. Records were confirmed by the Church Committee and by a 1971 office burglary. No prosecutions followed.
COINTELPRO — an abbreviation of COunter INTELligence PROgram — was a series of covert and illegal FBI programs targeting American citizens between 1956 and 1971. The programs were revealed when a group called the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI burglarized the FBI's Media, Pennsylvania field office on March 8, 1971 and obtained approximately 1,000 documents, which were mailed to news organizations.
The FBI initially denied the documents were genuine. They were. Director J. Edgar Hoover terminated the formal COINTELPRO programs shortly after the Media break-in. The Church Committee Senate investigation in 1975-1976 produced the most comprehensive public accounting.
COINTELPRO programs targeted multiple categories of domestic organizations. The confirmed programs include:
The FBI's campaign against Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is the most extensively documented individual COINTELPRO operation. The Church Committee established that the FBI:
In 1964, sent King an anonymous letter — now known to have been written or approved by FBI Associate Director William Sullivan — that included recordings of alleged sexual activity obtained through hotel room surveillance. The letter told King he had "34 days" before the recordings would be released and suggested he commit suicide. The letter was sent approximately one month before King was to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
Director Hoover designated King "the most dangerous Negro in America" in a 1963 internal FBI document. Wiretaps on King's personal phones and hotel rooms continued from 1963 until his assassination in 1968. Attorney General Robert Kennedy authorized the initial wiretaps. The surveillance was expanded under Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach and continued under Ramsey Clark.
"You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation."
— FBI anonymous letter to Martin Luther King Jr., November 1964. Declassified 2019.COINTELPRO is documented history confirmed by the Church Committee, by the Media, Pennsylvania documents, by FBI internal records released under FOIA, and by the FBI's own acknowledgment. The programs ran for 15 years and targeted civil rights organizations, antiwar groups, and political parties through illegal surveillance, forged documents, anonymous threats, and infiltration by provocateurs. The FBI sent Martin Luther King Jr. an anonymous letter suggesting he commit suicide. No FBI official was criminally prosecuted for COINTELPRO activities.