# COINTELPRO

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "COINTELPRO," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cointelpro/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*The FBI programme of warrantless surveillance and disruption directed at Americans, and one of the four abuses John Kiriakou names when explaining what the Church Committee actually investigated. He treats it as the historical benchmark for what a real congressional inquiry into the security agencies looks like, and through the campaign against Martin Luther King, as proof that the state will destroy a citizen it considers a threat.*

- **Agency:** [FBI](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/fbi)
- **What it did:** Warrantless surveillance and disruption of Americans
- **Exposed by:** [The Church Committee](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/church-committee)
- **Best-known target:** [Martin Luther King](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/martin-luther-king)

**COINTELPRO** was the [FBI](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/fbi)'s counterintelligence programme directed at Americans, and one of the four abuses [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) lists whenever he is asked what the [Church Committee](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/church-committee) was for.

His description of it is short and unqualified: the committee was *"looking at the FBI's surveillance program and spying on Americans without any warrant or court order. They would just arbitrarily do it, through a program then called COINTELPRO."*[1]

He sets it alongside the CIA's international assassinations programme, the Army's programme to infiltrate peace and anti-Vietnam-war groups, and [MKUltra](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mk-ultra), the four together being what he means by crimes committed by the deep state, and the standard against which he measures [later committees claiming the Church Committee's mantle](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/weaponization-subcommittee).[1][2]

Its most consequential application, in Kiriakou's account, was the campaign against [Martin Luther King](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/martin-luther-king), an operation whose surveillance component he describes as running to two hundred agents, and which he treats as the demonstration of what the programme was ultimately for: *"they tried to label him first as some kind of communist agent. That didn't go over, then as some kind of pervert, or something. But destroy him."*[3][4]

## See also

- [Church Committee](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/church-committee)
- [Martin Luther King Jr.](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/martin-luther-king)
- [MLK assassination](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mlk-assassination)
- [FBI](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/fbi)

## Sources

1. ScheerPost (2023-01-20), at 04:38. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT8DwRsee84&t=278s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-20-scheerpost-scheerpost/
2. ScheerPost (2023-01-20), at 05:08. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT8DwRsee84&t=308s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-20-scheerpost-scheerpost/
3. ScheerPost (2023-01-20), at 13:04. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT8DwRsee84&t=784s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-20-scheerpost-scheerpost/
4. ScheerPost (2023-01-20), at 29:07. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT8DwRsee84&t=1747s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-20-scheerpost-scheerpost/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cointelpro/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt