6. COINTELPRO
The US Government isn’t exactly the biggest fan of activists because they have a way of swaying people against what officials want. COINTELPRO is proof of that. What started out as a conspiracy theory saying that the FBI was infiltrating activist organizations in order to discredit them turned out to be true.
Back in 1971, anti-war activists broke into the FBI and stole top secret documents which later landed straight in the biggest newsrooms. These files proved that the agency was running a counterintelligence program that had the purpose of surveilling, infiltrating and disrupting movements centered on peace, civil rights and black power starting from the mid-50s.
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