#cointelpro

Marriage Ops

December 18, 1968: The FBI evaluated a proposal to undermine activist Stokely Carmichael by sabotaging his marriage to South African singer Miriam Makeba. The Los Angeles office had suggested sending an anonymous letter claiming Carmichael was exploiting his wife and using his political work as a cover for “illicit romantic activities.” However, the Washington field office rejected this tactic, arguing it would likely fail and could even backfire. The memo noted that Makeba had already been aware of and frustrated by the demands of Carmichael’s activism, complaining about constant calls from “people in the ‘movement,’” yet still understood his activities as legitimate. Because she had frequently accompanied him on speaking engagements, she would “undoubtedly be aware of or reasonably suspect any current illicit affairs,” making such accusations “highly suspect.” The memo concluded that the marriage itself had already limited Carmichael’s political effectiveness. It observed that the relationship “had served to divide his time between the ‘movement’ and his personal life,” reducing his ability to organize and contributing to “a moderating of [his] more violent attitude” and a “more cautious approach.” The memo also warned that interfering in the marriage could produce the opposite outcome: a separation might provide “an excuse for his re-dedication to the black extremist movement.” The Washington field office concluded that Carmichael had been “neutralized more by his marriage…than he would be by attempts to disrupt this marriage,” and it recommended against pursuing the proposed scheme.

February 14, 1969: The field office in St. Louis sought to sow marital discord by sending a fake letter to Clydia Koen, the wife of the activist Charles Koen, founder of a group called the Black Liberators. She lived with their two daughters in their hometown of Cairo, Illinois while her husband worked in the city. Mrs. Koen was recorded in FBI files as a “faithful, loving wife, who is apparently convinced that her husband is performing a vital service to the Black world…She is to all indications an intelligent, respectable young mother, who is active in the AME [African Methodist Episcopal] Methodist Church.” A handwritten letter was “prepared from a penmanship, spelling style to imitate that of the average Black Liberator member,” the FBI wrote in a memo to HQ. The note was designed to contain “several accusations which should cause Koen’s wife great concern.” The Bureau noted the goal was to create “ill feeling and possibly a lasting distrust” between Koen and his wife, that the ”concern over what to do about it” would “detract from his time spent in the plots and plans of his organization.” The letter led with an introductory “Sister Clydia,” followed by: “Us Black Liberators are trained to respect Black Women and special are [sic] wifes [sic] and girls. Brother Charles keeps tellin’ the Brothers this but he don’t treat you that way. I only been in the organization 2 months but Charles been makin’ it here with Sister Marva Bass and Sister Tony and than [sic] he gives us this jive ‘bout their [sic] better in bed then [sic] you are and how he keeps you off his back by sendin’ you a little dough ever [sic] now an’ then. He says he gotta send you money. The draft board gonna chuck him in the army [or] somethin’. This ain’t rite [sic] and we’re sayin’ that Charles is treatin’ you wrong. -A Black Liberator.” The Koens remained married for 54 years until Charles Koen’s death in 2018.

January 30, 1970: The FBI’s St. Louis field office hoped to kill two birds with one stone. They learned that a husband had recently been inquiring about his wife having an affair and the Bureau seized upon the opportunity. She happened to work for two groups: the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and a biracial group that had splintered off from the Congress of Racial Equality called ACTION. The FBI hoped that in causing friction in their marriage, the “resulting marital tempest,” would “result in ACTION losing their [officer] and the WILPF losing a valuable leader, thus striking a major blow against both organizations.” The FBI sent a handwritten letter in black ink to the husband: “Dear Mr. B—Look man I guess your old lady doesn’t get enough at home or she wouldn’t be shucking and jiving with our Black Men in ACTION, you dig? Like all she wants to integrate is the bed room and us Black Sisters ain’t gonna take no second best from our men. So lay it on her, man—or get her the hell off Newstead. -A Soul Sister.” In reporting on “tangible results” four months later, the FBI noted that the woman and her husband had recently separated: “This matrimonial stress and strain should cause her to function much less effectively in ACTION. While the letter sent by the [field office] was probably not the sole cause of this separation, it certainly contributed very strongly.” Five years later when she learned of the FBI’s psychological operation against her, the woman confirmed that the FBI’s letter had led to her divorce and as a result she had to “curtail her political activities and seek full-time work.” She told the St. Louis Post-Dispatchthat she wanted “to see some legislation coming out of this that would prevent this from happening to somebody else, or to me again.”

Violent Ops

April 10, 1969: The San Diego FBI field office on this day took credit for instigating violence in three of four instances logged as “tangible results.” Two of the attacks involved women. In one, members of a rival Black organization known as US forcibly entered a Black Panther Party meeting and “roughed up” a female participant. Another assault followed the Bureau’s decision to forward a critical Panther newspaper article to the competing group’s leader, with officials acknowledging that “the possibility exists” of retaliation. That warning materialized when members of US assaulted a Panther newspaper vendor. In a third incident, police raided Panther headquarters based on a Bureau tip alleging “sex orgies.” Although entry was ultimately justified through unrelated warrants, the aftermath included internal violence: the woman who let the police in was later “severely beaten up” by fellow members, an outcome the field office labeled a “direct result” of the raid. Another case involved an informant who intentionally escalated an internal dispute by siding with one faction “in order to increase the tension.” When the argument turned physical with members hitting each other, the informant withdrew, reporting success in transforming a “flammable situation” into an outright fight.

Diary Op

August 12, 1970: On this day, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover approved an operation initiated by the FBI’s Los Angeles field office after it obtained the personal diary of a local Progressive Labor Party (PLP) leader and Security Index subject. Viewing the diary as an opening for an initiative, the field office proposed placing a “snitch jacket” on the individual, to falsely label him as a government informant to destroy his standing within the organization. To carry this out, Los Angeles requested assistance from the FBI Laboratory’s Documents Section, asking technicians to make discreet “additions and revisions” to the diary. These changes were meant to fabricate evidence of collaboration with authorities, including inserted references to contacts in the Secret Service and Army Intelligence. Additional entries were designed to imply that the diary’s owner had been routinely providing information to government agencies. In approving the plan, Hoover noted that because the diary might face “close scrutiny,” the alterations required “painstaking practice” and had to be “done perfectly on the first attempt.” Once altered, the diary was anonymously mailed along with a cover letter “written in the vernacular of the New Left,” explicitly framing the individual as “quite obviously a government informant” who had played that role for some time. The stated objective was to “seriously impugn the reputation” of the PLP executive committee member and thereby “neutralize him.” The operation soon prompted internal backlash within the PLP. Months later, the party’s newspaper, Challenge, accused police of fabricating materials, referring to “an old memo book of one of our leading members.” Despite this public suspicion, the Los Angeles office pressed forward. A subsequent memo to Hoover explained that agents were preparing another anonymous letter, this time criticizing a different PLP member for failing to recognize that the accused individual was a “police tool.” A second letter escalated the deception further, alleging the existence of an “unofficial committee” formed to uncover “traitors in the PLP ranks,” which purportedly had uncovered the incriminating diary.

Laxative Op

November 6, 1970: An FBI telegram sent from the Newark field office to headquarters recommended transmitting a fabricated warning, purportedly from the “Ministry of Information,” to Black Panther Party activists organizing the Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention. The draft message claimed that food donated by “anti‑liberation white pigs” was poisoned and allegedly caused “cramps, diarrhea, [and] severe stomach pains,” urging recipients to “destroy all food donated” while paradoxically insisting they still “meet quota.” Newark further suggested that the Bureau covertly tamper with the donated fruit, specifically by injecting oranges with a “mild laxative‑type drug” and then sending the produce under the guise of a charitable contribution from a fictitious donor in Miami. The intent was to reinforce the deception with physical effects, thereby validating the false poisoning claim. FBI headquarters ultimately declined to authorize the plan to modify the food, citing “lack of control over the treated fruit in transit.” Nevertheless, officials indicated that the deceptive telegram itself “has merit,” revealing that the underlying logic of the proposal was seriously entertained. U.S. Senator Walter Mondale later asked FBI Associate Director James B. Adams in Senate hearing: “How did we ever get to the point that this kind of insane suggestion was considered, a suggestion which violated everyone’s civil liberties and was based on Government-sponsored fraud? How does anyone ever consider something like that?” Adams replied: “I don’t know.”

Loop

COINTELPRO, which stood for Counter Intelligence Program, was a series of covert and often illegal operations conducted under this designation by the FBI between 1956 and 1971. Its stated goal was to monitor, infiltrate, disrupt, and neutralize American organizations or individuals the FBI considered “subversive” or a threat to national security. The program relied on a range of covert tactics designed to undermine targeted groups from both outside and within. FBI agents conducted extensive surveillance and wiretapping to monitor conversations and activities, while informants were placed inside organizations to gather intelligence and influence internal dynamics. Psychological warfare was also a key method employed: the FBI spread false information, forged letters, and planted rumors to damage reputations and erode trust. These efforts were reinforced through harassment, intimidation, and legal pressure, including frequent arrests or investigations meant to disrupt normal operations. These actions were intended to provoke suspicion, weaken leadership, and encourage internal conflict that could fracture organizations and render them ineffective.

One of the many targets included a prominent female singer who had publicly supported the Black Panther Party by signing petitions criticizing police conduct. Earlier in her career, when performances were scarce and work was difficult to find, she had appeared in a short pornographic film. Shot in a San Francisco motel, it was a brief “loop” of roughly ten minutes in which she performed a sexual act with an actor dressed as a sailor. She had long assumed the film no longer existed. The FBI had managed to obtain a copy and it was reportedly among Hoover’s preferred films. It was occasionally shown in a special screening room to special agents in charge returning to HQ for retraining. At some point, a print was mailed to the singer along with an anonymous note. The message implied that if she sought attention, as suggested by an enclosed newspaper clipping referencing her support for the Panthers, her audience might be interested in seeing her earliest screen appearance. She did not publicly back another controversial issue after receiving this communique.

Seberg

“I find myself believing more and more in American culture. And I’m getting more and more fed up with those who pooh-pooh America. It’s far and away the most humane country and the one with the least compromise. Whenever someone tells me, ‘I don’t really consider you American,’ I’m ready to scream.” -Jean Seberg, 1961

The FBI took more time in their neutralization efforts against actress Jean Seberg. Born in 1938 in Marshalltown, Iowa, she rose to prominence in the late 1950s after being cast by director Otto Preminger in the films Saint Joan (1957) and Bonjour Tristesse (1958). Although her early Hollywood career faced mixed critical reception, Seberg found lasting fame in Europe, especially through her iconic role in Jean‑Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960), which made her a symbol of the French New Wave. By the 1960s, Seberg had become increasingly active in political causes, publicly supporting the civil rights movement and donating to organizations such as the NAACP and the Black Panther Party. To the latter group, she provided substantial financial support, organized fundraisers, and offered practical help, describing her role as giving “bed, food, and psychological peace to a besieged people.” In 1968, Seberg mentioned that “Everybody talks about gaps—communication gaps, generation gaps, believability gaps. There is really only one gap, and that is a compassion gap. It exists between all of us.” Her generosity was constant and often impulsive for anyone who asked; she gave large sums of money, funded projects, and was described by a friend as “a pushover for any hard-luck story…constantly extending her purse.”

The FBI, under Director J. Edgar Hoover, monitored her closely at first as a result of her connections to Black activists. In February 1969, the Bureau considered planting a story to discredit her. By using “a reliable press contact,” they sought to publicize “Seberg’s relationship with [Hakim] Abdullah Jamal.” They drafted a narrative intended for gossip columns: “It was a cold day in January when American actress Jean Seberg met her tall, dark friend at Orly airport outside Paris. The warmth of the greeting suggested something more than a business relationship. He is Hakim Jamal, a black activist from Los Angeles. A few days later, they turned up in London, where Jamal appeared on television. Now she is back in the USA, but he lingers on in London. What is going on?” Headquarters this time decided not to pull the trigger. “Did Mr. Hoover approve doing this?” someone wrote on the memo. Hoover responded, referencing his Associate Director: “I did not. Such matters should always be approved by [Clyde] Tolson or me.” Rather than proceed with the proposal, the field office waited for another opportunity. As a next step, the Bureau opened “an active discreet investigation” into her activities, with FBI official G.C. Moore circulating her photograph and personal data to Bureau field offices. The Immigration and Naturalization Service was instructed to search her luggage any time she re-entered the United States.

Around this time, Seberg began to receive threatening phone calls and saw signs of intrusion into her home. On one occasion, she found a gun laying on a table inside of her residence. In another instance, she returned home to find her cats poisoned. She did not know who was doing this to her and later described this period as “a long nightmare where you don’t really know, and probably never will, where the truth is.” She later reflected on causes taking advantage of her, saying: “I was a sucker. I would run to people with my arms open and my purse in my hand. They always took the purse. Never the arms.”

Price

“They shot at me!” On the night of June 6, 1969, Seberg rushed to the door of her acting coach Paton Price. Out of breath, eyes wide with terror, and rambling, Seberg claimed to have been fired upon and asked to stay at their place for the night. She handed a package wrapped in brown paper to Price’s wife: “Please, Tilly, throw this away right now.” Tilly did as instructed while Paton hid Seberg’s car in a neighbor’s garage as she also requested. Tilly found Seberg a nightgown and she soon went to bed. “I never pried into the lives of my students,” Price later stated. “Both Tilly and I respected Jean a great deal. We figured she’d tell us what she wanted us to know. One thing was apparent that night. Jean fit badly into the world of intrigue and back-alley rendezvous. She was in a terrible mess.” Two days later, the Prices found a note on their table from Seberg, thanking them for their hospitality and telling them she had left for Rome to work on a new film. Curious to learn what was in the package, Tilly retrieved the item from the trash. Inside she found a man’s shirt covered in blood, describing it as follows: “It was pink and it had great bloodstains on the collar and the cuffs.”

Throughout this period, Seberg remained committed to the Black Panther Party, referring to herself as “the Panthers’ honky representative in Europe.” When she returned to her hometown of Marshalltown, Iowa to visit her parents for Christmas in 1969, the FBI recorded her phone call to the Panthers’ headquarters in California. The Bureau reached out to the Marshalltown Police Department for more information on Seberg; an officer there shared gossip from his newspaper contacts, which the FBI reported to HQ: “Miss SEBERG is a sex pervert who has been seeing a good deal of SAMMY DAVIS, JR., in recent weeks and reportedly has been romantically linked with LEE MARVIN, a movie co-star, in recent months...He said her parents are quiet and conservative people who are well regarded in the community.”

The FBI saw Seberg’s pregnancy in 1970 as an opportunity to provoke drama regarding her unborn child’s paternity. Though still legally married to the French novelist Romain Gary, Seberg later stated that the father was a Mexican activist she had met while filming Macho Callahan, explaining, “I didn’t want to abort…Romain said he would assume fatherhood.” This private affair soon became the basis for another attempt to “neutralize” her. On April 21, 1970, Elaine Brown of the Panthers placed a call to Seberg in which they discussed Brown’s pregnancy and the father, Raymond “Masai” Hewitt, also a member of the Panthers. Seberg jokingly referred to Hewitt as “Johnny Appleseed,” due to him having recently impregnated multiple Panther members. The FBI took this commentand Seberg talking to him about “planting your little seeds around” to mean that Hewitt was in fact the father of Seberg’s child. Seberg went on to discuss her pregnancy: “After not knowing and not knowing what to do about it, I’m going to go ahead, too…I’m like in the fourth month so I have a nice long wait ahead.” Being four months pregnant would have meant that the baby was conceived during her filming schedule in Mexico, during which time Hewitt did not visit. The Bureau would have been able to verify this as per their monitoring of Panther travel. Seberg added: “I’m happy about this, really…I was afraid I was going to lose custody, you know, if my former husband got wind of it and got upset about it. And I talked to him about it and he wasreally very civilized and very nice about it. So it’s really good, you know. So everybody you know sooner or later I guess is going to have a big tummy.” Hewitt responded, “I’m going to try not to have anything to do with it.” Brown then asked if Seberg had talked to “the other one,” referring to the actual father of Seberg’s child, Carlos Navarra: “I’ve had mail, you know,” Seberg replied, “but it’s almost impossible, phone communications with him and everything. The last time he wrote he thought he was going to be put in prison, you know, in jail. But he wasn’t sure. And that’s the last thing that I’ve heard. So we have to be as, you know, very kind of cool about it, kind of relaxed.”

A few days after FBI Special Agent M. Wesley Swearingen arrived on an assignment in the Los Angeles office, he overheard another agent speaking on the Seberg case: “I wonder how she’d like to gobble my dick while I shove my .38 up that black bastard’s ass?” Swearingen commented that he was “shocked at the licentious talk in the squad room area about the Panthers, Seberg, and Jane Fonda. I was used to foul language after nearly twenty years in the FBI, but the conversation of these agents was grossly offensive.” Six days after the recorded phone call between Brown, Seberg, and Hewitt, LA’s Special Agent in Charge Richard Wallace Held cabled HQ and proposed leaking false information to the press to “cause her embarrassment and serve to cheapen her image.”

A fabricated tip was prepared by the Bureau for use by gossip columnists: “I was just thinking about you and remembered I still owe you a favor. So—I was in Paris last week and ran into Jean Seberg, who was heavy with baby. I thought she and Romaine [sic] had gotten together again, but she confided that the child belonged to the Minister of the Black Panthers, one Masai Hewitt. The dear girl is getting around!Anyway, I thought you might get a scoop on the others. Be good and I’ll see you soon. Love, Sol.” The smear campaign first reached the media through Bill Thomas, city editor of the Los Angeles Times, who passed the fake tip on to columnist Joyce Haber: “Informant sez [sic] Jean Seberg is four months pregnant by Ray Hewitt, known as ‘Masai,’ and identified as present Black Panther Minister of Education. Informant sez [sic] she has sed [sic] she plans to have the baby.” Thomas added: “Joyce, I don’t know if you care, but this comes from a pretty good source.” Haber wrote it up in disguised form and the piece was published on May 19, referring to Seberg as “Miss A,” hinting that a “beautiful… blonde” actress involved with “the black revolution” was expecting a child by “a rather prominent Black Panther.” Haber later denied knowing the tip had come from the FBI, explaining, “That plant was given me by someone who is very reliable—a journalist. Good God, I never would have run it even blind! I think it is horrible. I liked Jean very much. She was a real human being, as so many people out here are not.”

The rumor spread rapidly, further making its way into print through other newspapers and magazines. The same day that Haber’s column appeared, high-level officials such as senior White House aide John Ehrlichman and Attorney General John Mitchell were informed by the FBI of her activities, a briefing later summarized as containing “information concerning her pregnancy by an official of the BPP.”

The situation escalated with the publication of a Newsweek article, released on newsstands on August 17, that went beyond insinuation and stated outright that Seberg’s child was “by another man—a black activist.” Seberg was “stunned” and outraged, immediately preparing a lawsuit and remarking, “They do not even say there are rumors…They say it as a fact.” Already in fragile health, she described herself as “really just a mess,” fearing both for her life and for the survival of her child: “If I get through the end of this month…he can possibly live.” Her mental state deteriorated under the strain: “This is like getting hit over the head with a hammer,” she commented. Increasingly paranoid, she became convinced of conspiracies around her, fearing betrayal even from those close to her.

In early August, overwhelmed by isolation and despair, she attempted suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills and collapsing on a beach. Though she survived, the incident further endangered her pregnancy. Soon after, she went into premature labor. Writing from the hospital, she declared, “I am fighting like a lioness to save the child…who…is a cause célèbre for racist America before even being born.” Despite medical efforts, she gave birth to a premature daughter, Nina Hart Gary, who weighed less than four pounds and was given little chance of survival. After two days, the child died. The FBI transcribed her thoughts at the time in a recorded phone conversation: “it’s a very cold world.”

Seberg, heavily sedated and emotionally shattered in the hospital, was visited by friends in the Black Panther Party. “Here, Jean, look. This is the best gun in Europe,” one of them said to her. Holding the firearm in her hand, she soon became terrified that she could be framed for a crime: “I took it and turned it over in my hands,” she later recalled. “Stupidly. Without thinking. My fingerprints were on it. He could kill anyone with that gun and furnish proof against me.” This experience marked the beginning of the end of her association with the Panthers.

Gary responded to the death of Seberg’s child publicly with a fierce denunciation of the press, accusing them of effectively causing the tragedy. He wrote in an article, “There was a time when the mother and child were sacred…No more. This is the time of the cutthroats,” and directly blamed the media frenzy for forcing her into premature labor. He described the baby as “this little spark of life… struggling against death,” adding a final update when he learned the news: “The child is dead.”

Though she blamed external forces, Seberg also privately was haunted about the role the sleeping pills had played in her child’s death. Increasingly withdrawn, she relied on a bodyguard for protection and lived in near seclusion, convinced that danger lurked everywhere. Newsweek stood by its reporting, while some in the French press rallied to Seberg’s side, a headline proclaiming, “JEAN SEBERG WEEPS FOR HER BABY, KILLED BY HATRED.” On the opposing side, the weekly French paper Minute dismissively wondered why Seberg, having supported Black militants, would be “floored by the deductions” drawn about her life. For those who knew her, the answer was more straightforward: “It was simply because it wasn’t true…she was traumatized by the falsehood,” a friend explained. Raised to believe that goodness would be met with goodness, she found herself unable to cope with what another friend described as the shattering realization that the world did not work that way.

Seberg formally distanced herself from the Black Panther Party, in a letter citing mistrust, internal divisions, and the threat of violence. She shifted her support to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and she pledged half of any potential libel settlement to causes ranging from civil rights to the poor, explaining that the funds should support “the orphaned and oppressed.”