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<h2><font size=4><b>Seattle Post-Intelligencer outs Memphis Commercial
Appeal over COINTELPRO link</b></font></h2><font size=3>December 3rd,
2010 12:20 pm ET<br>
By <a href="http://www.examiner.com/user-richardsonreports">Michael
Richardson</a>, COINTELPRO Examiner<br>
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<a href="http://www.examiner.com/cointelpro-in-national/seattle-post-intelligencer-outs-memphis-commercial-appeal-over-cointelpro-link" eudora="autourl">
http://www.examiner.com/cointelpro-in-national/seattle-post-intelligencer-outs-memphis-commercial-appeal-over-cointelpro-link<br>
<br>
<br>
</a></font><font size=3>Earlier this year the <i>Memphis Commercial
Appeal</i> 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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
However, the <i>Seattle Post-Intelligencer</i> 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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
The <i>Post-Intelligencer</i> 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.<br><br>
In the Albany COINTELPRO memo, Hoover, who described his office as the
Seat of Government, ordered media manipulation but gave a warning to
agents.<br><br>
“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.”<br><br>
The Seattle newspaper did some digging into the FBI’s manipulation of
news outlets and discovered the Memphis newspaper aided the COINTELPRO
agents. <br><br>
“[T]he <i>Commercial Appeal’s </i>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.”<br><br>
The <i>Post-Intelligencer</i> 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.<br><br>
“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.”<br><br>
Hoover gave the okay to planting stories in the <i>Memphis Commercial
Appeal</i> and on May 8, 1969 another COINTELPRO memo from Memphis to
Hoover bragged about success.<br><br>
“Cooperative reporters on the <i>Commercial Appeal</i>, daily morning
newspaper, and <i>Press Scimitar</i>, daily afternoon newspaper, Memphis,
have written a series of stories pointing out the violence-prone nature
of the Invaders.”<br><br>
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