[Ppnews] Seattle Post-Intelligencer outs Memphis Commercial Appeal over COINTELPRO link

[Political Prisoner News]

Seattle Post-Intelligencer outs Memphis Commercial Appeal over COINTELPRO link

December 3rd, 2010 12:20 pm ET
By 
<http://www.examiner.com/user-richardsonreports>Michael 
Richardson, COINTELPRO Examiner
http://www.examiner.com/cointelpro-in-national/seattle-post-intelligencer-outs-memphis-commercial-appeal-over-cointelpro-link


Earlier this year the Memphis Commercial Appeal 
exposed Memphis photographer Ernest Withers as an 
informant of the Federal Bureau of Investigation 
during Operation COINTELPRO.  Withers spied on 
Martin Luther King and the local civil rights 
activists for the FBI for several years, most likely as a paid informant.

COINTELPRO was a massive and illegal clandestine 
program of the FBI during the long tenure of J. 
Edgar Hoover as director.  The secret war on 
domestic political activists that Hoover didn’t 
like was the largest abuse of law enforcement in 
American history and was carried out with lethal ferocity.

Withers had become the star photographer of the 
civil rights movement and had unique access 
behind the scenes of historical events when he 
was recruited by the Memphis FBI office to spy on 
King and others.  The expose of Withers by the 
Memphis Commercial Appeal garnered the paper 
international attention as the story spread.

However, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer now has 
exposed the Memphis newspaper for its role in 
COINTELPRO dirty tricks.  The FBI under Hoover 
operated a vast propaganda machine both to 
promote Hoover and to shape public opinion.  When 
the publicity experts within the FBI applied 
their talents to COINTELPRO’s mandates a 
wholesale manipulation of the news media began.

Numerous publications, columnists, reporters, 
television stations and radio outlets were fed 
tips and stories to further Hoover’s secret 
domestic war on activists.  Agents around the 
country in FBI field offices were directed to 
cultivate reporters who could be used to plant 
stories and provide the Bureau with intelligence information.

The Post-Intelligencer quotes from the so-called 
“Albany memo” of August 25, 1967, sent by Hoover 
to selected FBI field offices in major cities 
launching the “Black Nationalist--Hate Group” Counterintelligence Program.

In the Albany COINTELPRO memo, Hoover, who 
described his office as the Seat of Government, 
ordered media manipulation but gave a warning to agents.

“When an opportunity is apparent to disrupt or 
neutralize black nationalist, hate-type 
organizations through the cooperation of 
established local news media contacts or through 
such contact with sources available to the Seat 
of Government, in every instance careful 
attention must be given to the proposal to insure 
the targeted group is disrupted, ridiculed, or 
discredited through the publicity and not merely publicized.”

The Seattle newspaper did some digging into the 
FBI’s manipulation of news outlets and discovered 
the Memphis newspaper aided the COINTELPRO agents.

“[T]he Commercial Appeal’s reporters might also 
want to request FBI documents about their own 
publication’s role in the FBI’s campaign to 
discredit and divide civil rights and black power movement leaders.”

The Post-Intelligencer also quotes from secret 
COINTELPRO memorandums from the Special 
Agent-in-Charge of the Memphis FBI office to 
Hoover to back up its claims.  One COINTELPRO 
memo from February 26, 1969 candidly discussed manipulation of news in Memphis.

“Due to the success of the counterintelligence 
program whereby the Memphis Office has been 
furnishing a reliable newspaper source of the 
Memphis Office information regarding the black 
militant organization known as the Invaders, as 
set out hereinafter, the Memphis Office is giving 
consideration to increasing this type of 
counterintelligence activity and a preliminary 
contact has been made with a representative of 
the Memphis “Commercial Appeal” who has always 
been cooperative with this Bureau in an effort to 
determine his interest in writing articles
.This 
contact appears to be receptive.”

Hoover gave the okay to planting stories in the 
Memphis Commercial Appeal and on May 8, 1969 
another COINTELPRO memo from Memphis to Hoover bragged about success.

“Cooperative reporters on the Commercial Appeal, 
daily morning newspaper, and Press Scimitar, 
daily afternoon newspaper, Memphis, have written 
a series of stories pointing out the violence-prone nature of the Invaders.”

<http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/cdg.examiner2.national/;tt=cointelpro;plc=national;chn=politics;subc=government;sect=government;nid=26675816;top=politics;top=government;ed=national;uid=124891;etid=47718;pgtp=article;tile=2;pos=2;sz=300x250;kw=;adtest=adtest;ord=132403758?>
[]




Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/ppnews_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20101203/8e0b72d3/attachment.htm>