The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret War Against Domestic Dissent
a book by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall.
Preface - The Face of COINTELPRO
Guide to the Documents
Introduction: A Glimpse Into the Files of America's Political Police
1. Understanding Deletions in
FBI Documents
2. COINTELPRO - CP, USA
3. COINTELPRO - SWP
4. COINTELPRO - Puerto Rican Independence Movement
5. COINTELPRO - Black Liberation Movement
6. COINTELPRO - New Left
7. COINTELPRO - AIM
Conclusion: COINTELPRO Lives On Preface - The Face of COINTELPRO
In many ways, the stark unwillingness of the federal government to accord
Leonard Peltier even a modicum of elementary justice is symbolic of the entire
AIM experience during the 1970s and, more broadly posed, of the U.S.
relationship to American Indians since the first moment of the republic. The
message embedded, not only in Peltier's imprisonment, but in the scores of
murders, hundreds of shootings and beatings, endless show trials and all the
rest of the systematic terrorization marking the FBI's anti-AIM campaign on Pine
Ridge, was that the Bureau could and would make it cost-prohibitive for Indians
to seriously challenge the lot assigned them by policy-makers and economic
planners in Washington, D.C. The internal colonization of Native America is
intended to be absolute and unequivocal.
.......In 1953, just prior to the
passage of PL-280, Felix Cohen, one of the foremost scholars of
Indian law compared the role of the Indians in America to that
of the Jews in modem Germany. He noted that, "Like the miner's
canary, the Indian marks the shift from fresh air to poison air
in our political atmosphere ... our treatment of Indians, even
more than our treatment of other minorities, reflects the rise
and fall of our democratic faith." 213 Given that all
that happened on and around Pine Ridge occurred long after
COINTELPRO allegedly became no more than a "regrettable
historical anomaly," 214 Cohen's insight holds
particular significance for all Americans. In essence, if we may
ascertain that COINTELPRO remained alive and well years after it
was supposed to have died, we may assume it lives on today. And
that, to be sure, is a danger to the lives and liberties of
everyone.
7. COINTELPRO - AIM