Cointelpro Tactics: Part 3- "Black Propaganda" Operations

"BLACK PROPAGANDA" OPERATIONS

"'Black Propaganda' refers to the fabrication and distribution of publications (leaflets, broadsides, etc) 'in belief of' targeted organizations/individuals designed to misrepresent their positions, goals or objectives in such a way as to publicly discredit them and foster intra/inter-group tensions. A classic case of this is Congress' The FBI's Covert Action Program to Destroy the Black Panther Party, under the heading 'The Effort to Promote Violence Between the Black Panther Party and Other Well-Armed, Potentially Violent Organizations.' Among the methods employed was the production and distribution of a series of cartoons attributed to the Black Panther Party (BPP) and Ron Karenga's United Slaves Organization (US), with each side supposedly caricaturing the other in extremely negative fashion. This was part of an overall Bureau effort undertaken, as explained by Hoover in a Memorandum to Baltimore and thirteen other field offices, dated November 25, 1968, 'In order to fully capitalize upon BPP and US differences as well as to exploit all avenues of creating further dissension within the ranks of the BPP.' Hoover also noted that 'recipient offices are instructed to submit imaginative and hard-hitting counter-intelligence measures aimed at crippling the BPP' within what he described as a context of 'gang warfare' and 'attendant threats of murder and reprisal' associated with BPP-US dispute.

Small wonder that, when Los Angeles Panther leaders Jon Huggins and Alprentice 'Bunchy' Carter were killed by US gunmen in UCLA's Campbell Hall on January 17, 1969, the Bureau assigned itself a good measure of 'credit' and recommended a new round of cartoons designed to 'indicate to the BPP that the US organization feels they are ineffectual, inadequate, and riddled with graft and corruption.'" -From, "Agents Of Repression" By: Churchill and Wall