“expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize”

February 10, 2021 8:11 PM

UC Berkeley Library acquires FBI records of surveillance of Black leaders

In 1967, the FBI quietly unleashed a covert surveillance operation targeting “subversive” civil rights groups and Black leaders, including the Black Panther Party, Martin Luther King Jr., Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and many others. The objective, according to an FBI memo: to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” the radical fight for Black rights — and Black power. Details of that sabotage plaster internal FBI records, with thousands of pages scattered across a medley of databases. Now, the UC Berkeley Library is working to put those pieces together.

posted by Lexica (18 comments total)

I feel like this report is merely a prologue to what is going to be woven together and reported over the next few years.
posted by hippybear at 9:15 PM on February 10, 2021 [8 favorites]

In 1967, the FBI quietly unleashed a covert surveillance operation targeting ... Malcolm X

It's a bit like buying tickets to see Tupac
posted by I paid money to offer this... insight? at 1:46 AM on February 11, 2021 [4 favorites]

On the one hand there needs to be truth and reconciliation. On the other hand some people are going to be poring over these records to discredit their subjects, who aren't around to defend themselves.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:55 AM on February 11, 2021

Joe iIn Australia, I think we ve already seen what you fear happen, in the well-intentioned but also hacky Documentary, MLK/FBI

After watching it, I really wanted the film to dive into J Edgar Hoover, Allen Dulles, and John Foster Dulles, and their decades long roles in shaping the dominant mode of American anti-blackness.

MLK/FBI portrays Hoover as a 'man of his time', but that time extended to decades. Also, it's a cop out, for someone with that much power. If rascism waa normalized, this man normalized it.

As many times as the FBI uses the word "beast" to describe MLK, these documents say more about their authors than the people surveiled.

But yes, we are missing the body of documents on these white men who ruled their domains, often toward racist ends, for half a century.
posted by eustatic at 2:28 AM on February 11, 2021 [9 favorites]

Thanks for this post, Lexica!
posted by Bella Donna at 3:01 AM on February 11, 2021

MLK/FBI portrays Hoover as a 'man of his time'

lol what
posted by schadenfrau at 6:06 AM on February 11, 2021 [2 favorites]

Well, Hoover was a racist piece of shit.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 6:18 AM on February 11, 2021 [8 favorites]

“[Hoover] was very consistent throughout the years. He hated liberalism, he hated blacks, he hated Jews.” -- FBI Agent Bill Sullivan.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:40 AM on February 11, 2021 [6 favorites]

MLK/FBI was pretty disappointing, but I've got a little more hope for this film.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:43 AM on February 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

The headline at Berklyside does no favors by focusing on the word surveillance. It would be bad enough of the FBI merely spied, but COINTELPRO was counter-intelligence, a program that explicitly and with some success, attempted to destroy the movements and organizations targeted by Hoover.

While documentary evidence remains, and was released by the FBI under court order, Hoover kept a large stash of files in his personal care; ones he felt were too sensitive for anyone else to have access to. These were destroyed the day he died. In addition, when Nixon appointed Clarence Kelly to head the FBI, Kelly terminated several illegal projects but also destroyed documents relating to them.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:55 AM on February 11, 2021 [7 favorites]

Moral of the story of COINTELPRO: Remember, kids, the person suggesting more violence is typically the undercover Fed.
posted by rmd1023 at 7:01 AM on February 11, 2021 [23 favorites]

Berkeleyside was my local news for several years, I encourage people to skip the comments.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 7:51 AM on February 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

Hoover was indeed a man of his time, a racist, "nativist" time that he did everything in his power to prolong for decades after it had already begun to be discredited.
posted by wierdo at 9:18 AM on February 11, 2021 [3 favorites]

in related, Who Killed Malcolm X (on Netflix) is worth a look.
posted by ovvl at 3:26 PM on February 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

From the story:
The new collection, acquired from Gale, an educational publisher and online database, contains not only the COINTELPRO records, but also the surveillance files of many important Black figures and organizations of the day — including Thurgood Marshall, Marcus Garvey, the NAACP, and many others.

Archivist here. This story and the associated press release raises some questions for me and I think I finally figured out why - because the backstory behind the acquisition is super sketchy. There is a strong allusion here that like, Berkeley acquired boxes of FOIA'ed records that now resides in their archives. Normally if you acquire a big archival collection there will be a discussion of how it was acquired and who it was acquired from, etc. So I keep reading this sentence over and over and what I can't tell is - is this a glorified press release announcing a new licensing agreement for a pre-existing database? Or did they acquire the physical files that Gale used to make their database?

It's worth noting that a ton of FBI COINTELPRO files are already in the agency's online reading room. What makes this acquisition different?

Increasing access to digitized records that originate from other sources (like the FBI) is an unquestionably good thing - especially anything that sheds light on the monstrous abuses by the state. There's plenty of precedent for doing this - the National Security Archive is a great example. But it would be good to get some clarity on what exactly is meant by "acquisition" and the process involved.
posted by mostly vowels at 4:09 PM on February 11, 2021 [9 favorites]

I also noticed the vagueness about what the archive consists of, and whether it is replicated elsewhere. Maybe that would be a good question for Berkeleyside, actually - they are pretty responsive to follow-up questions and will often update their articles.

Looking at the Cal website, the collection seems to be this one: Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984. Its acquisition was noted on the Library website in July 2020.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 7:17 AM on February 12, 2021

MLK/FBI was pretty disappointing, but I've got a little more hope for this film.

re: Judas and the Black Messiah, Noname turned down the role because "...it’s a movie about an informant. fred is secondary and his radical communist politics aren't centered, at all."


I'll still probably watch it at some point though...
posted by nikoniko at 10:13 AM on February 12, 2021

re: Judas and the Black Messiah, Noname turned down the role because "...it’s a movie about an informant. fred is secondary and his radical communist politics aren't centered, at all."
I'm less concerned about Fred Hampton's politics than the FBI's. The damage done to the civil rights movement and the free speech movement by J. Edgar Hoover is incalculable. We would be living in a much fairer and freer society but for him.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 2:33 PM on February 12, 2021 [5 favorites]