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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 10:18 AM
Original message
FBI tried to get Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to commit suicide ...
The FBI tried to drive King crazy in order to get him to kill himself. It's no "conspiracy theory." It's in the official record of the Government of the United States.

SUPPLEMENTARY DETAILED STAFF REPORTS
ON INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES AND THE
RIGHTS OF AMERICANS

_______

BOOK III
_______


FINAL REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE
TO STUDY GOVERNMENTAL OPERATIONS

WITH RESPECT TO

INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES
UNITED STATES SENATE


APRIL 23 (under authority of the order of April 14), 1976

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., CASE STUDY

I. INTRODUCTION


From December 1963 until his death in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was the target of an intensive campaign by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to "neutralize" him as an effective civil rights leader. In the words of the man in charge of the FBI's "war" against Dr. King:

No holds were barred. We have used techniques against Soviet agents. brought home against any organization against which we were targeted. We did not differentiate. This is a rough, tough business. 1

The FBI collected information about Dr. King's plans and activities through an extensive surveillance program, employing nearly every intelligence-gathering technique at the Bureau's disposal. Wiretaps, which were initially approved by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, were maintained on Dr. King's home telephone from October 1963 until mid-1965; the SCLC headquarter's telephones were covered by wiretaps for an even longer period. Phones in the homes and offices of some of Dr. King's close advisers were also wiretapped. The FBI has acknowledged 16 occasions on which microphones were hidden in Dr. King's hotel and motel rooms in an "attempt" to obtain information about the "private activities of King and his advisers" for use to "completely discredit" them. 2

FBI informants in the civil rights movement and reports from field offices kept the Bureau's headquarters informed of developments in the civil rights field. The FBI's presence was so intrusive that one major figure in the civil rights movement testified that his colleagues referred to themselves as members of "the FBI's golden record club." 3

The FBI's formal program to discredit Dr. King with Government officials began with the distribution of a "monograph" which the FBI realized could "be regarded as a personal attack on Martin Luther King," 4 and which was subsequently described by a Justice Department official as "a personal diatribe ... a personal attack without evidentiary support." 5

Congressional leaders were warned "off the record" about alleged dangers posed by Reverend King. The FBI responded to Dr. King's receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize by attempting to undermine his reception by foreign heads of state and American ambassadors in the countries that be planned to visit. When Dr. King returned to the United States, steps were taken to reduce support for a huge banquet and a special "day" that were being planned in his honor.
FBI tried to get Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to commit suicide ...


The FBI's program to destroy Dr. King as the leader of the civil rights movement entailed attempts to discredit him with churches, universities, and the press. Steps were taken to attempt to convince the National Council of Churches, the Baptist World Alliance, and leading Protestant ministers to halt financial support of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and to persuade them that "Negro leaders should completely isolate King and remove him from the role he is now occupying in civil rights activities." 6 When the FBI learned that Dr. King intended to visit the Pope, an agent was dispatched to persuade Francis Cardinal Spellman to warn the Pope about "the likely embarrassment that may result to the Pope should he grant King an audience." 7 The FBI sought to influence universities to withhold honorary degrees from Dr. King. Attempts were made to prevent the publication of articles favorable to Dr. King and to find "friendly" news sources that would print unfavorable articles. The FBI offered to play for reporters tape recordings allegedly made from microphone surveillance of Dr. King's hotel rooms.

The FBI mailed Dr. King a tape recording made from its microphone coverage. According to the Chief of the FBI's Domestic Intelligence Division, the tape was intended to precipitate a separation between Dr. King and his wife in the belief that the separation would reduce Dr. King's stature. 7a The tape recording was accompanied by a note which Dr. King and his advisers interpreted as a threat to release the tape recording unless Dr. King committed suicide. The FBI also made preparations to promote someone "to assume the role of leadership of the Negro people when King has been completely discredited." 8

CONTINUED...

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIb.htm

Moderators: These excerpts are from government documents and, thus, are not restricted by copyright.

DU: So, who thinks the FBI or CIA would have any compunction about driving Gary Webb to do the same?
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tuvor Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 10:23 AM
Response to Original message
1. Are these "gov't documents" available anywhere else?
Edited on Mon Dec-20-04 10:26 AM by tuvor
I hope so. I don't know this Paul Wolf (author of the website) from Adam, and Mr. Wolf gives no attribution.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 10:47 AM
Response to Reply #1
4. GOOGLE 'Frank-Church' and 'COINTELPRO'
You might be surprised at what government documents are out there in the public domain.

BTW: I don't know Paul Wolf from Adam, either. That doesn't mean the document and what it chronicles are wrong.
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tuvor Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 11:15 AM
Response to Reply #4
12. However, on the Internet, no one knows you're a dog.
I'm sure you can understand someone's reluctance to accept things at face value.

Thanks for the information.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 10:59 AM
Response to Reply #1
9. Here's the report in a form that may be more useful...
Courtesy of the Assassination Archives Research Center.

http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/book3/contents.htm

May this open up a whole 'nother can o' worms.
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tuvor Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 11:16 AM
Response to Reply #9
13. Even better. Thank you. n/t
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 11:22 AM
Response to Reply #13
15. You're welcome, tuvor!
Anybody who's intereested int he Truth is all right with me, especially a fellow DUer!
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hnsez Donating Member (430 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 12:26 PM
Response to Reply #9
19. Here is a link to the exact page
Edited on Mon Dec-20-04 12:26 PM by hnsez
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Mr_Spock Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 10:25 AM
Response to Original message
2. This is how Jesus would have been treated if he appeared today.
MLK was as close to a Jesus as we have seen for many decades - we killed him too. We have not progressed as a race.
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leftchick Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 10:48 AM
Response to Reply #2
5. I believe so. Can you imagine how...
John the Baptist would have been treated as well??
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 10:52 AM
Response to Reply #2
7. Exactly.
Jesus and Dr. King believed in treating others as one would like to be treated. In short: They lived the Golden Rule. They told others to treat the less fortunate fairly and that the way to peace was through forgiveness and love. That made them enemies of the State.
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Mr_Spock Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 11:05 AM
Response to Reply #7
10. Exactly, Jesus and MLK did walk the talk like few others.
I so admire these people for who they were, not what the mindless masses of unthinking humanity have made them into. If they so admire these people, why do they always have to kill them first? We killed another Jesus 26 years ago - no progress has been made and few Christians have any idea what Jesus was trying to teach us. Fools.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-22-04 11:55 PM
Response to Reply #10
41. Viola Liuzzo
The woman knew she would be in danger,
yet kept going forward.



The Detroit housewife who moved a nation toward racial justice

By Kay Houston / The Detroit News

A brutal attack by police on peaceful marchers in 1965 put a small Alabama town on the map, galvinized the American civil rights movement and created heroes and martyrs whose names live on today. The town was Selma and one of those heroes and martyrs was a Detroit housewife named Viola Liuzzo.

The clash on the Edmund Pettus Bridge outside Selma on March 7 of that year was captured dramatically on network television and focused the eyes of the nation for the first time on the brutality that blacks still faced from their own local governments in the south.

SNIP...

Mrs. Luizzo watched the march move on to the Capitol on Thursday, March 25. She had spent the past week in Selma, working at the hospitality desk in Browen Chapel, using her green Oldsmobile to ferry people back and forth to Montgomery's airport.

She had driven to Montgomery the night before to join the last leg of the march. She helped in the first aid station with the worn out marchers or those who had fainted from heat and exertion. She and Fr. Tim Deasy climbed a tower to view the marchers. The line stretched out, filling the street completely with no end in sight, heading toward the Capitol. She told him she had a premonition. "Something is going to happen today, I feel it. Somebody is going to get killed..." She repeated her premonition to another priest and group of nuns.

All the important civil rights fighters were there -- Dr. King, John Lewis of SNCC, Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, Whitney Young of the Urban League, Philip Randolph, Ralph Bunche, Bayard Rustin, Rosa Parks and others.

CONTINUED...

http://www.detnews.com/history/viola/viola.htm
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MarianJack Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 10:45 AM
Response to Original message
3. I First Heard This...
...years ago!

I wonder if j. edgar's apologists will try to "skirt" the issue?
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 11:08 AM
Response to Reply #3
11. The FBI's Vendetta Against Martin Luther King, Jr.
From the good folks at “Third World Traveler”

The FBI's Vendetta
Against Martin Luther King, Jr.


excerpted from the book

The Lawless State
The crimes of the U.S. Inteligence Agencies


by Morton Halperin, Jerry Berman, Robert Borosage, Christine Marwick
Penguin Books, 1976

EXCERPT…

Only now do we know how close the FBI came to an all-out confrontation. Unknown to King or SCLC until later, the FBI, at the height of the public controversy, took its most distressing step. It mailed the "tapes" to the SCLC office in Atlanta with a covering letter urging King to commit suicide or face public revelation of the information on the tapes on the eve of the award ceremonies in Sweden. The letter said in part:

King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do (this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite practical significance). You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy fraudulent self is bared to the nation.

It was thirty-four days before the Nobel Peace Prize ceremonies.

Although public scandal was averted at the last moment, the FBI's campaign continued. From 1965 until King's death, the covert effort of the FBI to destroy King r and to topple him from "his pedestal" continued. Aside from the suicide note, there is no more graphic illustration of the mind-set and nature of this political police operation than the realization that while the campaign went on, the FBI had a parallel plan to find a "suitable replacement" for King.

The plan was simple. William Sullivan, the head of the Intelligence Division, had given it some thought and, in a January 1964 memorandum to Hoover, proposed that the FBI conduct a search to find a "suitable" successor to King. Hoover agreed. Sullivan, when asked about the memorandum by the Senate Intelligence Committee, responded in a way that speaks for itself: "I'm very proud of this memorandum, one of the best memoranda I ever wrote. I think here I was showing some concern for the country." While King was alive, the concern was shown again and...

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/NSA/Vendetta_MLK_LS.html

LOL! Hoover and Tolson liked to eat together, too.

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nolabels Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 10:48 AM
Response to Original message
6. About Gary Webb, I do
Ever sense JFK it seems an type of murder or any other death of politicos or associated types always ends in the "Well it was in the just coincidence" file. That utter B.S. it is even mathematically impossible. Lots circumstantial evidence but their is no direct evidence painting red hands on government agencies on these political murders it seams. How is that possible?

Enron Suicide Note Could be a Fake

Robert Manis, The Manis Report, April 11, 2002

On January 25, 2002, Enron Executive Cliff Baxter was found dead, an apparent suicide, the night before he was to testify to Congress against his employer. Doubts were raised at the time about his motives, but things came to head on April 10, when CBS Nightly News raised the question of murder. CBS noted that the body was moved, rare special bullets were used that prevented ballastic identification of the weapon, and the body’s hands were not bagged to allow the coroner to examine for traces of gunpowder on the hands.

Today, to quell the rumors, Houston officials released Baxter’s suicide note. But there is a problem. The suicide note may well be a fake. Written completely in block letters in the style of kidnap note, including the so-called signature, there is not a single factor in content, handwriting or style that could not have been written by any one else on the planet. In short, it was no proof at all.

What’s worse is that Houston authorities have long resisted releasing the note claiming it revealed “intimate family details”. No such details were apparent in the note.

Baxter’s body was found lying next to his car. Try this experiment: Write a note on the car’s dashboard or on the car’s hood. The note shows no evidence of indentation as if written on a dashboard, and no scratchiness as if written on a hood or roof.

The worst thing is Baxter’s alleged signature. Even if writing block style, few people will resist signing their own name in their usual style, yet Baxter allegedly did so, even though he was writing to his own wife.
(snip)
http://www.themanisreport.tripod.com/enronsuicide.html

Btw. I have a larger electric bill here in California that is tied in to this Enron scandal that has complicity of government malfeasance written all over it. So I do have much right and room to BITCH about it, thank you very much
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 11:21 AM
Response to Reply #6
14. Similar tactics employed with Webb. Regarding Baxter, you are correct.
The BFEE are not mere gangsters. They are the spawn of the Reich.

Here's what Cockburn wrote over the weekend regarding Webb:

From Kobe Bryant to Uncle Sam
Why They Hated Gary Webb


By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

I read a piece about Kobe Bryant a couple of days ago. The way it described his fall made me think of Bryant as a parable of America in the Bush years, that maybe even W himself could understand. No longer the big guy leading the winning team to victory over Commie scum, but a street-corner lout, picking on victims quarter his size, trying always to buy his way out of trouble. Don't leave your sister alone with Uncle Sam! No one want to buy Uncle Sam's jerseys anymore, same way they don't buy Kobe Bryant's.

This business of Uncle Sam's true face brings me to Gary Webb and why they hated him. Few spectacles in journalism in the mid-1990s were more disgusting than the slagging of Gary Webb in the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. Squadrons of hacks, some of them with career-long ties to the CIA, sprayed thousands of words of vitriol over Webb and his paper, the San Jose Mercury News for besmirching the Agency's fine name by charging it with complicity in the importing of cocaine into the US.

There are certain things you aren't meant to say in public in America. The systematic state-sponsorship of torture by the US used to be a major no-no, but that went by the board this year (even though Seymour Hersh treated the CIA with undue kindness in Chain of Command: the Road to Abu Ghraib) . A prime no-no is to say that the US government has used assassination down the years as an instrument of national policy; also that the CIA's complicity with drug dealing criminal gangs stretches from the Afghanistan of today back to the year the Agency was founded in 1947. That last one is the line Webb stepped over.He paid for his presumption by undergoing one of the unfairest batterings in the history of the US press, as the chapter from Whiteout we ran on our site yesterday narrates.

Friday, December 10, Webb died in his Sacramento apartment by his own hand, or so it certainly seems. The notices of his passing in many newspapers were as nasty as ever. The Los Angeles Times took care to note that even after the Dark Alliance uproar Webb's career had been "troubled", offering as evidence the fact that " While working for another legislative committee in Sacramento, Webb wrote a report accusing the California Highway Patrol of unofficially condoning and even encouraging racial profiling in its drug interdiction program." The effrontery of the man! "Legislative officials released the report in 1999", the story piously continued, "but cautioned that it was based mainly on assumptions and anecdotes", no doubt meaning that Webb didn't have dozens of CHP officers stating under oath, on the record, that they were picking on blacks and Hispanics.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org

BTW: Keep going on the Baxter case, nolabels. If the BFEE has its way, we'll be on to Super Bowl XXXIX or whatever soon enough.

Posts Awaaaaaaaaaay!
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nolabels Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 06:41 PM
Response to Reply #14
29. It's not just the Baxter case
There is a whole bunch of them. You did that thread the other day with the journalist, but there seems to be others also. I am not even too sure they really all kicked the bucket also. Shut up or silenced by other means. The recent one like this

State Dept. Worker Found Dead Outside Agency
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=207591

That connect Uncle dicks daughter here

Vice President's Daughter to Leave State Dept
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=225427

Or this guy who killed himself (yea right) over is his inability to face fraud charges

CyberNET Group CEO killed during standoff - continued discussion please
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=76758

I wonder if any one has a good compilation of all the people that have died under suspicious (international / national crook or BFEE) circumstances

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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-21-04 09:20 AM
Response to Reply #29
34. Bush Body Count
Thanks for reminding us of those people who's lives ended under most strange circumstances. To that list I'd add the name of Dr. David Kelly, the British WMD scientist who talked to the BBC and said that Iraq posed no strategic military threat.

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/101403_kelly_1.html

I'd also like to add the name of Robert Stevens, the National Enquirer photo editor who helped publish photos of the drunken twin Jenna (or was it Barbara?) Bush piling on top of another co-ed at a bar.

http://www.winterboy.com/dejavu23.html

Your idea was realized by a good DUer who started this site a way's back. The thing is in the middle of reconstruction, so you may have to go to the GOOGLE caches to find some pages. Still, there is an attempt to chronicle those who've lost their lives when confronting the Bush Transnational Criminal Enterprise:

http://www.bushbodycount.com/list.php

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nolabels Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-22-04 01:04 PM
Response to Reply #34
39. Thanks for the links
This will be a good place to start and I see a lot of addendum's could be added :thumbsup:
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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 10:54 AM
Response to Original message
8. CHAOS


Janis used to say that her speed experience was induced by a man. He had been the cause of it. He had brought her lower than she had ever been in her life. Her involvement with the young man started in the spring of '65.
He was a very sharp brain and questionable character, engaged in some rather odd activities. Neither his history or his name was his own. He set up a fraudulent international pharmaceutical company in Canada to obtain drugs. He was also a methadrine addict. Janis was an exceptionally vulnerable girl. It had taken Janis about seven months from the time she returned from New York to degenerate into a vegetable, an eighty pound spastic speed-freak.

"Buried Alive, Janis Joplin"
Myra Friedman

http://www.maebrussell.com/Mae%20Brussell%20Articles/Operation%20Chaos.html
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 11:33 AM
Response to Reply #8
17. Nixon + Hoover + Helms + CHAOS = Legalized Treason
Edited on Mon Dec-20-04 11:34 AM by Octafish
Aren't the president, FBI and CIA supposed to UPHOLD the Constitution of the United States? And since when is asking the question treason?

THE PROPAGANDA WAR: THE CIA'S DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE OPERATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES

OPERATION CHAOS


EXERPT...

In July 1968, CIA Director Helms decided to consolidate all CIA domestic intelligence operations under one programme and title; this was called Operation CHAOS. The Agency's domestic activities greatly expanded from then on, at the urging of both President Johnson and his main White house advisers Dean Rusk, Walt Rostow and Tom Charles Huston, who were staunch anti-Communists and wanted the Agency to establish the involvement of foreign intelligence agencies in the anti-war movement in the U.S.

After Richard Nixon took office in January 1969, Operation CHAOS became one of the largest and most pervasive domestic surveillance programmes in the history of the United States. The CIA went to great lengths to conceal the operation's existence from the public, while Nixon, like Johnson, exploited CHAOS for his own political ends. Helms recommended that computer networks be used to "share information about American dissidents between the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency and military intelligence units." Using a computer system called HYDRA, the CIA gathered information on individuals and groups from all of these intelligence organisations. The Agency also employed satellites to monitor anti-Vietnam War demonstrations.

Many of the CHAOS agents received several weeks of assignments and training overseas to establish their covers as radicals. Once they returned to the US and enrolled in colleges and universities, they had the proper "credentials." The CHAOS unit periodically drew up reports "on the foreign aspects of the anti-Vietnam War, youth and similar movements and their possible links to American counterparts" and collected files on over 300,000 individuals in the United States.

In 1970, Richard Helms joined with others in recommending to President Nixon "an integrated approach to the coverage of domestic unrest," which came to be known as the Huston Plan. The CIA
"recruited or inserted about a dozen individuals into American dissident circles" In order to "establish their credentials for operations abroad." These agents "submitted reports on the activities of the American dissidents with whom they were in contact." This information was kept in CIA files and passed on to the FBI.

In June 1970, Nixon met with Helms, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, NSA Director Admiral Noel Gaylor and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) representative Lt. General Donald V. Bennett, and told them that he wanted an even more concentrated and coordinated effort against domestic dissenters. To that end, Nixon created the Inter-agency Committee on Intelligence (ICI), chaired by Hoover. The first ICI report, in late June, recommended new efforts in "black bag operations", wiretapping and mail-opening; within a month these recommendations had been accepted by the White House.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wakeupmag.co.uk/articles/propaganda4.htm



IdEt: durn htFml
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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 11:56 AM
Response to Reply #17
18. Hampton and Clark

Hampton founded the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party in November 1968. He immediately established a community service program. This included the provision of free breakfasts for schoolchildren and a medical clinic that did not charge patients for treatment. Hampton also taught political education classes and instigated a community control of police project.


SON OF A MINISTER
Clark was one of 17 children of the Rev. and Mrs. William Elder Clark. Rev. Clark was a well-known Pentecostal minister who died several months prior to his son’s death. Mrs. Clark lived in Michigan for many years after her son died. She reportedly later returned to the Peoria area where she died three months ago. Several Clark children still live in central Illinois while others reside out of state.

“Certainly, Mark Clark should be considered one the martyrs to the cause of black dignity and human equality,” the Rev. Blaine Ramsey, pastor at Davis Memorial Chapel in LaGrange, IL. and a one-time Peoria minister, declared in a recent phone interview. “He came to my church (in 1969) and asked me, ‘Rev. Ramsey, can we use Ward Chapel A.M.E. for our breakfast program?’ And I consented to it — no other church in Peoria would open their doors — for what I considered a worthwhile endeavor. There were a number of little children who really needed a good breakfast.”
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kk897 Donating Member (829 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 05:07 PM
Response to Reply #18
24. seemslikeadream...very interesting
Again, another sensei! Thanks for sharing this information. Is there a book you'd recommend on this particular angle?
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seemslikeadream Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 05:54 PM
Response to Reply #24
27. Here's a couple links kk897
Excerpt from Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States (The Rockefeller Commission), June 1975. Chapter 11, Section G (New York: Manor Books, 1975), pp. 142-44.
http://www.cia-on-campus.org/surveil/chaos.html

CIA Censors Books
Bush Perfects the Cover-up
excerpted from the book
Secrets
The CIA's War at Home
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/CensorsBooks_SecretsCIA.html

From Monterey Pop to Altamont
OPERATION CHAOS
The CIA's War Against the Sixties Counter-Culture
by Mae Brussell, November 1976
http://www.maebrussell.com/Mae%20Brussell%20Articles/Operation%20Chaos.html
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KurtNYC Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 11:28 AM
Response to Original message
16. Michael Moore has said repeatedly and pointedly
that he is not the type to commit suicide. The audience laughed and then he said "if you hear that I committed suicide -- investigate."
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 04:17 PM
Response to Reply #16
21. Same as Casolaro: "If I turn up dead, don't believe it's a 'suicide.'"
"The Octopus Returns"

by Kenn Thomas

Here's a quick refresher paragraph on the Octopus:

Danny Casolaro was "suicided" in 1992 on the trail of the mother of all conspiracies, a transnational cabal manipulating world political events since World War II called The Octopus. Key to his research was a super-surveillance software called PROMIS, which was given to a crony of Ronald Reagan's as a pay off for the deliverance of $40 million to the Ayatollah Khomeini for the "October Surprise" -- holding on to the 52 American hostages in Iran until after Jimmy Carter lost the 1980 election. The crony profiteered from PROMIS (really owned by a company called Inslaw) by selling it to police agencies throughout the world for the purpose of tracking criminals and extrapolating their next moves.

SNIP...

Like all great conspiracy writers, Casolaro was dismissed as a paranoid crank. The book's existence as a kind of cult classic testifies to how cutting-edge parapolitical insight is pushed into an underground of the few who care to know. It's re-emergence now, however, has an eerie, although not unsurprising, parallel with events and people easily recognizable to the wider world. The Octopus, the real one, has returned just in time for the book.

Example one: shortly after the Afghanistan war stories began circulating that Osama Bin Laden was using the PROMIS extrapolation function to avoid capture. According to these stories, it was given to him via a circuitous route from the Russians who got it from the famed turncoat spy Robert Hanssen.

Example two: the June resignation of Paul Redmond, Assistant Secretary of Information Analysis for the US Homeland Security department. Described by some as a "legendary spy catcher" - he had a role in the capture of CIA traitor Aldrich Ames - Redmond officially resigned for "health reasons." Most took that as polite cover for Redmond's frustration with under-funding of the department, but others connected into to a rumored secret investigation Redmond was conducting of long-standing common interests between the Bush and bin Laden families and was forced to resign. Among the connections: PROMIS, also had been given to Saddam Hussein by the senior Bush in the early 1990s, and he too now uses it to avoid capture. Danny Casolaro had reported that Iraq was among the countries that originally purchased the software illegally.

Example three: Casolaro had also written about John Poindexter, one of the few people convicted in the Iran-contra scandal, a trading-with-the-enemy affair that grew out of the October Surprise. An appeals court overturned his five 1990 felony convicitions, however, and more recently Poindexter was appointed head of a new information technology unit of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon agency that developed the internet. This new DARPA unit was called Total Information Awareness. Symbolized on its website and on a wall decoration in Poindexter's office by an eye over a pyramid - a tip of the hat that he worked for secret masters -- it's purpose was to further develop PROMIS-like software that could track every detail of every American citizen's life.

CONTINUED...

http://www.steamshovelpress.com/fromeditor24.html
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kk897 Donating Member (829 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 05:00 PM
Response to Reply #21
23. makes me worry about Madsen...
...when I read the whole thing, towards the end he starts talking about stuff that is EASILY connected to Madsen's work. Are we sure he's not "depressed"?

Whew.

Octafish, sensei...I thought I was clued in a bit more than most. Now I discover that I'm only clued in to the extent of my ignorance. Thank you.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 06:04 PM
Response to Reply #23
28. We both stumble forward together. We're Democrats!
As DEMs, we believe that all people are created equal. What's more, we believe each person has infinite "worth."

Thank you for the kind words, kk897! You understand and that makes it worth doing.

BTW: Are you familiar with the work of Alan Watts? The late philosopher, IIRC, was an Episcopalean priest and a world-class expert on Hinduism, Taoism and Zen Buddhism. One of the most fascinating talks I ever heard was his discussion on "One-Up, One-Down." The idea was that in the West, many of our institutions were designed to have the master/pupil relationship and how it carried over into interpersonal actions, with one person seeming to try to dominate another. Watts cut through the horsefeathers to reveal that each person is a treasure to be discovered. Now HE was a teacher...



A good GOOGLE cache lecture:

The Philosophies of Asia

http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:J4r3sr89fn0J:madphilosopher.ca/doc/philosophies_of_asia.html+alan-watts+one-up+one-down&hl=en
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Vanje Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 12:42 PM
Response to Original message
20. And that was BEFORE the right owned the noise machine!
"The FBI's program to destroy Dr. King as the leader of the civil rights movement entailed attempts to discredit him with churches, universities, and the press."

Those were bad old times, but there was no Limbaugh and no Fox news, no Judith Miller.
Now when a one is set up to be discredited, by God, he GETS discredited.

We really are fucked.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 05:42 PM
Response to Reply #20
25. Not all the way. We still have the Internets and word-of-mouth.
Other than that, today's Corporate McPravda amplifies what Dulles described into a "Mighty Whorelitzer."* This was mostly written in 1997. "Interesting" how things always seem to get worse when the Bush family is involved.

Journalism and the CIA: The Mighty Wurlitzer

Alongside those Greek morality plays and Biblical injunctions, we are also reminded by history itself that the use of unethical means to achieve a worthy end can be self-destructive. Power, by definition, is isolated from the correcting signals of external criticism. Or perhaps the feeling of fighting evil fits so comfortably, that it's difficult to shed even after objective circumstances change.

The history of U.S. intelligence since World War II follows both patterns. The Office of Strategic Services, the CIA's predecessor, had jurisdiction over wartime covert operations and propaganda in the fight against fascism. OSS chief William Donovan recruited heavily among social and academic elites. When the CIA was launched in 1947 at the beginning of the Cold War, these pioneers felt that they had both the right and the duty to secretly manipulate the masses for the greater good.

OSS veteran Frank Wisner ran most of the early peacetime covert operations as head of the Office of Policy Coordination. Although funded by the CIA, OPC wasn't integrated into the CIA's Directorate of Plans until 1952, under OSS veteran Allen Dulles. Both Wisner and Dulles were enthusiastic about covert operations. By mid-1953 the department was operating with 7,200 personnel and 74 percent of the CIA's total budget.

Wisner created the first "information superhighway." But this was the age of vacuum tubes, not computers, so he called it his "Mighty Wurlitzer." The CIA's global network funded the Italian elections in 1948, sent paramilitary teams into Albania, trained Nationalist Chinese on Taiwan, and pumped money into the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the National Student Association, and the Center for International Studies at MIT. Key leaders and labor unions in western Europe received subsidies, and Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were launched. The Wurlitzer, an organ designed for film productions, could imitate sounds such as rain, thunder, or an auto horn. Wisner and Dulles were at the keyboard, directing history.

SORRY TO SNIP...

The combined forces of unaccountable covert operations and corporate public relations, each able to tap massive resources, are sufficient to make the concept of "democracy" obsolete. Fortunately for the rest of us, unchallenged power can lose perspective. With research and analysis -- the capacity to see and understand the world around them -- entrenched power must constantly anticipate and contain potential threats. But even as power seems more secure, this capacity can be blinded by hubris and isolation.

CONTINUED...

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/8425/CIAPRESS.HTM

*My apologies to the Wurlitzer family.
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bobbieinok Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 04:33 PM
Response to Original message
22. there's a great deal of info about Hoover's and the FBI's vedetta vs MLK
in Taylor Branch's 2 vols on The King Years
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Dec-20-04 05:53 PM
Response to Reply #22
26. That's some work! Wow!
I knew the titles of a couple of the books in Branch's trilogy, but I knew little more -- to my shame and embarrassment. In GOOGLING about, I also learned that Branch helped spearhead the efforts to bring justice for the terrorist murders of fomer Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and his American aide, Ronni Moffit in 1976. George Herbert Walker Bush spent a lot of his "political capital" covering up that act of terror.


FBI Report on Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA)

21 January 1982

EXCERPT...

According to former Assistant U.S. Attorney Eugene M. Propper and author Taylor Branch, ALFA is identical with an Italian terrorist whose true name is Stefano Delle Chiaie.

Townley made reference to ALFA, although he did not disclose his true identity, in the following communications to Gustavo Etchepare:

Letters dated 4/26/79, 6/11/79, 6/16/79, 8/23/79, 8/29/79 and 9/2/79.

In his 4/26/79 letter to Etchepare, Townley, speaking of General Contreras, stated "There were meetings between him (Contreras), his Excellency (President Pinochet) and the Italians in Spain after Franco died. Also the Italians carried out numerous acts of military espionage against the Peruvians and Argentines not only in Europe, but also in Peru and Argentina."

In his 8/23/79 letter to Etchepare, Townley stated "I haven't spoken about the Italians. I have no idea where they are nor where they have been nor do I care to know! ALFA got mixed up with various people to do business in Argentina. Some of them had very bad backgrounds whom Argentine law enforcement agencies were seeking. Among other

Chile 02, p.5

things they tried to cash a check from Luis Felipe for $25,000, also they owed several thousand dollars including a $40,000 debt to Daniel, also he was mixed up in dirty deals in Spain...." "The problem with the Italians is serious, very serious! Mamo got married to them some time back and he married them in a manner much more indissolvable than with the Cubans. For your information, Pinochet had a meeting with Mamo and ALFA in Spain some time back. ALFA can be much more embarrassing for Mamo and the government in the long run than perhaps the Cubans. One thing obviously is that ALFA doesn't have anywhere to go and you know that as well as I do. Ask Chico or Don Cristian who ran ALFA about it."

CONTINUED TREASON...

http://www.namebase.org/foia/ch02.html

As I read the document, the global ties between the right and today's neo-fascists become clearer and clearer.
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bobbieinok Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-21-04 02:42 AM
Response to Reply #26
30. Taylor Branch...he was on Tavis Smiley's program when Tavis was
still on BET (I learned a lot about all sorts of things from watching his show)

Taylor said that not only blacks were influenced by King....he said King had been the defining influence on his life
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-21-04 09:09 AM
Response to Reply #30
33. That's why a man of peace is so dangerous.
Dr. King played a very successful role in raising awareness during the civil rights movement. He was taking leadership roles in the anti-war and economic justice movements, as well. His rhetoric was most effective, as people of all backgrounds began to understand how important their own roles were in creating a nation where all men are "judged by the content of their character."

The establishment got scared. Rightfully so.
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Swamp Rat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-21-04 03:45 AM
Response to Original message
31. Nominating this for the DU Homepage
Edited on Tue Dec-21-04 03:47 AM by Swamp Rat
:kick:

edit::wow:
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-21-04 12:49 PM
Response to Reply #31
35. Thanks, Swamp_Rat!
But isn't this a "Conspiracy Theory?" Doesn't this sort of post belong on Rense.com? Isn't this the sort of thing that gives DU a "bad name"? I'm sure that there's an honest explanation for this. J Edgar Hoover says so:

GREAT MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE FBI.

" too precise, too complete to be believed. The questionnaire plus the other information you brought spell out in detail exactly where, when, how, and by whom we are to be attacked. If anything, it sounds like a trap."

FBI response to the top British spy, Dusko Popov (code named "Tricycle") on August 10, 1941, dismissing Popov's report of the complete Japanese plan for the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Pearl Harbor: The Verdict Of History by Gordon Prange, appendix 7 published in 1986. Based on records from the JOINT CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Nov 15, 1945 to May 31, 1946.

SOURCE:

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/COINTELPRO/cointelpro.html

BTW: As you know, but many DUers apparently don't, the Reich currently is in full-swing blame the DEMs for Pearl Harbor mode. Hoover was one of the architects of today's police state. FUCK HIM AND THE CONSERVATIVE HORSE HE RODE IN ON.
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-21-04 12:57 PM
Response to Reply #35
37. FBI also covered up Hoover's penchant for "Young Boys"
Check out the FBI documents for yerselfs:






Nice, huh?

SOURCE:

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/COINTELPRO/cointelpro.html
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RBHam Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-21-04 03:52 AM
Response to Original message
32. Cointelpro still exists...
They know better than to give their new "projects" a generic name...

Stanley Kubrick knew the truth...

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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-21-04 12:52 PM
Response to Reply #32
36. Certainly does. They certain do. And he certainly did.
Kubrick's films chronicled the rise of the BFEE. His "Eyes Wide Shut" is a marvelous tale because it demonstrates how the Haves are so very cruel and "different" from the Have-nots.

May they all get the justice they deserve. May we all live to see the day.
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Swamp Rat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-22-04 05:42 AM
Response to Original message
38. kick
:kick:
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Octafish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-22-04 02:29 PM
Response to Reply #38
40. Thanks, Swamp_Rat! Remember when the KGB were the bad guys?
Mind Control Experimentation

Whither the KGB?

In February 1974, Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) hosted discussions on the plight of dissenters in the Soviet Union, and on a means by which the U.S. Government might most effectively intervene. highlights of these discussions are reported in "Understanding the Solzhenitzyn Affair: Dissent and its Control in the USSR," (CSIS, 1974).

KGB strategies were addressed in some detail during these discussions. It was noted that the KGB's success depended on the extensive use of informant networks and agent provocateurs; and, following Brezhnev's rise to power, on the use of drugs and psychiatrists for further purpose of manipulation and control. Shadowing, bugging, slandering, blacklisting and other related tactics were also cited as serving KGB purpose. Participants in the conference agreed that the KGB's obvious intent was to divide and isolate the populace, to spread fear, and to silent dissenters.

Agencies of our own government are on record as having employed precisely these same tactics on a recurrent basis. The Church and Rockefeller Committee Hearings in the mid-70's purportedly put an end to these practices. Based on recent developments, it would appear that the CIA's and FBI's Operations MKULTRA, MHCHAOS and COINTELPRO (the focus of these Senate Committee and Vice-President-level Hearings) were instead merely driven underground. We are now in contact with a total of 25 individuals, scattered throughout the United states, who firmly believe they are being harassed by agencies of the U.S. Government. Others have been brought to our attention whom we will be contacting in the future. The majority of these individuals claim that their harassment and surveillance began in 1989.

The methods reportedly employed in these harassment campaigns bear a striking resemblance to those attributed to the CIA and FBI during Operations MKULTRA, MHCHAOS and COINTELPRO. The only difference now is that electronic harassment and experimentation also appear to be (more blatantly) involved.

The Berlin Wall is down, Communism is in the midst of a death rattle, and the KGB no longer poses the threat which purportedly served to justify the U.S. Government's resort to such operations as MKULTRA, MHCHAOS and COINTELPRO. The KGB, since 1989, has been reduced to an increasingly distant memory.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wealth4freedom.com/truth/12/mindcontrol2.htm
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