Ward Churchill has his day in court.

[Peter Lemkin]

First page of one of his books...

“To Disrupt, Discredit and Destroy”
The FBI’s Secret War against the Black Panther Party
by Ward Churchill
The record of the FBI speaks for itself
—J. Edgar Hoover
Introduction to The FBI Story
1965
Beginning in August 1967, the Black Panther Party was savaged by a campaign of political repression,
which in terms of its sheer viciousness has few parallels in American history. Coordinated by the Federal
Bureau of Investigation as part of its then-ongoing domestic counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO)
and enlisting dozens of local police departments around the country, the assault left at least thirty Panthers
dead,1 scores of others imprisoned after dubious convictions,2 and hundreds more suffering permanent
physical or psychological damage.3 Simultaneously, the Party was infiltrated at every level by agents
provocateurs, all of them harnessed to the task of disrupting its internal functioning.4 Completing the
package was a torrent of “disinformation” planted in the media to discredit the Panthers before the public,
both personally and organizationally, thus isolating them from potential support.5
Although an entity bearing its name would continue to exist in Oakland, California for another decade, as
would several offshoots situated elsewhere, the Black Panther Party in the sense that it was originally
conceived was effectively destroyed by the end of 1971.6 In this, it was hardly alone. During the 1960s,
similar if usually less lethal campaigns were mounted against an array of dissident groups ranging from the
Socialist Workers Party to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, from the Revolutionary Action
Movement to Students for a Democratic Society, from the Republic of New Africa to the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference. The list goes on and on, and the results were always more-or-less the same.7
The FBI’s politically repressive activities did not commence during the 1960s, nor did they end with the
formal termination of COINTELPRO in 1971.8 On the contrary, such operations have been sustained for
nearly a century, becoming ever more refined, comprehensive and efficient. This in itself implies a marked
degradation of whatever genuinely democratic possibilities once imbued “the American experiment,” an
effect amplified significantly by the fact that the Bureau has consistently selected as targets those groups
which, whatever their imperfections, have been most clearly committed to the realization of egalitarian ideals.
9 All things considered, to describe the resulting sociopolitical dynamic as “undemocratic” would be to
fundamentally understate the case. The FBI is and has always been a frankly anti-democratic institution, as
are the social, political and economic elements it was created and maintained to protect.10
Predictably, the consequences of this protracted and systematic suppression of the democratic impulse
in American life, and the equally methodical reinforcement of its opposite, have by now engulfed us.
These will be apprehended not only in the ever greater concentration of wealth among increasingly narrow
and corporatized sectors of society,11 but in the explosive growth of police and penal “services” over
the past thirty years,12 the erosion of constitutional safeguards supposedly guaranteeing the basic rights
of average citizens,13 and a veritable avalanche of regulatory encroachments reaching ever more deeply
into the most intimate spheres of existence. Again, the list of indicators could be extended to great
length.
Such trends do not imply the danger that, if they continue, the United States “may become” a police state.
The United States has been a police state for some time now.14 Questions of how to prevent this from
happening are at best irrelevant. The only real question is what to do about it now that it’s occurred. The
answer, of course, is entirely dependent upon our ability to apprehend the precise nature of the problem
confronting us. Only thus can we hope to achieve the clarity of vision necessary to devise an adequate
response and, from there, chart a truly alternative course into the future.