COINTELPRO (FBI program)

COINTELPRO (portmanteau of "Counterintelligence Program") was a U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) program of covert projects intended to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities and leadership of black nationalist and civil rights activist groups in the United States, including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), the Nation of Islam (NOI), and the Black Panther Party, as well as other dissident political groups, such as the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

The efforts of COINTELPRO involved extensive, often illegal, surveillance of individuals, including wiretapping, bugging, break-ins, and mail interception, information from which was used in psychological warfare operations against individuals, including smear campaigns and anonymous threats, all intended to create an atmosphere of pressure and disarray within targeted groups.

Despite being ostensibly shuttered by exposure in 1971, the tactics used by the agency under the guise of COINTELPRO have not effectively been halted, as a chilling program of surveillance continues to be used against domestic dissident groups, even up to the present day, according to findings of the U.S. Justice Department and other organisations.