CHAPTER 9
Counterintelligence & Repression
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“It is my hope that activists will . . . feel a sense of historical grounding as they come to understand that the state and media have a certain number of weapons. . . . Then, once dissident citizens know what these weapons are, they can more successfully strategize how to sidestep the sharper edges of suppression and become more effective activists. The state and its collaborators will never be able to fully suppress dissent.”147
—Jules Boykoff, Beyond Bullets

CITIZENS’ COMMISSION TO INVESTIGATE THE FBI

It’s the dead of night, March 8, 1971.148 A group of people wearing business suits are quietly breaking into an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania.

This group has spent months surveilling the office, mapping the neighborhood and recording routines, planning escape routes.149 A woman in the group even posed as a college student looking for an FBI job to get a look at the inside of the office.150 Their lock-picker learned his craft from library books and made his own tools to avoid leaving a paper trail.151

The burglars do their work quickly and efficiently, disappearing before dawn. When the FBI agents show up for work they find their office meticulously ransacked, their desks and filing cabinets empty.152

The stolen files reveal a secret FBI “COinterINTELligence PROgram” (COINTELPRO) meant to infiltrate, disrupt, and suppress social movements across the country. The FBI, activists begin to learn, has used a score of dirty tricks that run the gamut from implanted news stories all the way through to direct violence and assassination. They have especially tried to create fights and schisms within social movements, worsening personal disagreements and sending phony letters to incite anger and conflict. COINTELPRO has been targeting everyone from the women’s movement to the New Left, from nonviolent peace protesters to Black militants.

The burglars dub themselves “The Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI.” In the weeks after the burglary, they send manila envelopes without return addresses to the offices of major newspapers and the groups named in the files. A few newspapers and magazines are bold enough to break the story in spite of government threats.

The FBI is deeply embarrassed; not out of moral regret, but because they got caught. In the months that follow, the FBI shuts down 103 of 538 offices out of fear that they are vulnerable to similar break-ins.153 Soon, FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover officially announces the end of COINTELPRO. Coming from a professional liar, this means less than nothing. (COINTELPRO is disrupted, but in the years to follow it quietly resumes in other forms.)

A government investigation of the break-in goes on for six years (and itself generates some 33,000 pages of paperwork). Hundreds of FBI agents are tasked with finding the burglars. But no evidence is found; no member of the Citizens’ Commission is ever identified or captured. (Only in 2014 will members of the group publicly come forward.) The underground group, in a single, perfectly executed stroke, exposed and disrupted a program that fragmented many movements and killed many revolutionaries. Aboveground groups now have a chance to learn about the secret programs arrayed against them, and to fight back.

■    ■    ■

The day I began writing this chapter an old friend went to prison.

She went to jail for trying to organize a protest against the G20 meetings in Toronto in 2010. She was arrested before the protests even began, along with dozens of other organizers in a series of midnight raids. Community organizers (and a few shocked neighbors) were pulled out of their beds by police at gunpoint in the middle of the night. (In the next few days, over one thousand people were arrested for participating in protests or simply walking down the street.)

For trying to mobilize opposition to the G20, those organizers were charged with “conspiracy”—a nebulous charge that is difficult to defend against. The activists were kept in prison for weeks, in some cases months, without bail. Once they were allowed out of jail, it was only under draconian house-arrest conditions in which the activists’ own families were required by the state to keep watch and report any potential breach of bail.

I’m not telling you this story because it’s unique. I’m telling you because it is not.

The history of resistance is also the history of repression. Dictators do not stay in place merely out of inertia, but because they are willing to use the baton, the rack, the surveillance camera, the infiltrator, and the solitary confinement cell. Any system of profound inequality and exploitation perpetuates itself through a combination of deception, subtle coercion, and naked violence.

Military writer John Collins observes that revolutions are best crushed when they are young. “The first, and by far the most important, requirement is to prevent revolutions from flowering. That task can best be accomplished by attacking insurgent causes at the grass roots level before revolutionary signs appear.”154 The earlier repression is carried out, the more effective it is.

When the G20 “conspiracy” arrestees finally went to court, they were able to learn the true extent of the state’s effort to attack them and their communities. They learned of intensive surveillance, of infiltrators put in place eighteen months in advance to organize alongside them, of the kinds of operations a billion dollars in security funding will buy. And they saw firsthand the way that the resources of the courts, the media, and the intelligence apparatus can be used to warp reputations and taint public opinion. In the end, the G20 group agreed to a plea deal that sent six of those charged to prison while avoiding further jail time for the rest.

I will use their case and many others in this chapter to explain how state repression tactics work.

It is said that repressive attempts to fracture our movements will only work if we let them. There is truth in that. But combating repression and COINTELPRO-type tactics requires more than force of will. It requires a real understanding of how those tactics work, so that we can recognize and counter them when we see them at work.

Though all our movements should use at least some rudiments of security culture, discussed in the chapter on Security & Safety, such practices are mostly passive. They are defensive in nature. Security culture guidelines are about what not to do, what not to discuss. It’s good, but it’s not enough.

Successful movements need to be proactive, and they need to go on the offensive. They need to actively anticipate and counteract the methods used by governments, corporations, and intelligence agencies to infiltrate, sabotage, or otherwise destroy a resistance movement. They need people to specialize in studying and recognizing the patterns of COINTELPRO-style disruption. Programs like COINTELPRO rely on secrecy and ignorance to prevent their targets from responding appropriately. Their techniques and manipulations are much less effective if the people targeted understand what is going on.

Remember that those in power rule by divide and conquer, and that their response to social movements is to try to break them into smaller, manageable parts. COINTELPRO is the ultimate expression of that strategy. Its own documents spell that out clearly. (See sidebar: The FBI’s Counterintelligence Program.)

We can divide repression tactics into seven categories. Here I list them in roughly escalating order:155

The FBI’s Counterintelligence Program

The FBI strategy for dealing with movements is best enumerated in a memo on counterintelligence against Black liberation groups, which they called “Black nationalist hate groups.”

The memo specifies five main goals, given here verbatim:

  1. Prevent a coalition of militant Black nationalist groups. In unity there is strength; a truism that is no less valid for all its triteness. An effective coalition of Black nationalist groups might be the first step toward a real “Mau Mau” in America, the beginning of a true Black revolution.
  2. Prevent the rise of a “messiah” who could unify, and electrify, the militant Black nationalist movement. Malcolm X might have been such a “messiah”; he is the martyr of the movement today. Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, and Elijah Muhammed all aspire to this position. Elijah Muhammed is less of a threat because of his age. King could be a very real contender for this position should he abandon his supposed “obedience” to “white, liberal doctrines” (nonviolence) and embrace Black nationalism. Carmichael has the necessary charisma to be a real threat in this way.
  3. Prevent violence on the part of Black nationalist groups. . . . Through counterintelligence it should be possible to pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them before they exercise their potential for violence. [The talk of avoiding violence is ironic, since “neutralize” is a common COINTELPRO euphemism for arranged assassination.]
  4. Prevent militant Black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining respectability, by discrediting them to three separate segments of the community. . . . You must discredit these groups and individuals to, first, the responsible Negro community. Second, they must be discredited to the white community, both the responsible community and to “liberals” who have vestiges of sympathy for militant Black nationalist[s] simply because they are negroes. Third, these groups must be discredited in the eyes of Negro radicals, the followers of the movement. This last area requires entirely different tactics from the first two. Publicity about violent tendencies and radical statements merely enhances Black nationalists to the last group. . . .

“A final goal should be to prevent the long-range growth of militant Black nationalist organizations, especially among youth. Specific tactics to prevent these groups from converting young people must be developed.”156

These tactics have been used by military, police, intelligence agencies, and public relations firms for decades and even centuries. As we’ll come back to later in the chapter, documents leaked from PR firms like Stratfor have shown the same divide-and-conquer approach is used today.

1. SURVEILLANCE

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Pervasive surveillance underlies COINTELPRO; fundamental intelligence is needed to plan and carry out other means of repression.

In 1976, US government investigations relied on human informants 85 percent of the time, while electronic surveillance was used in only 5 percent of cases.157 In the decades since, this ratio has probably inverted. Mass electronic surveillance is so easy that even apolitical people can assume nearly all their electronic communications are being tracked and analyzed, if not by the government then by corporations for marketing purposes.

Most of us live in surveillance states, and we know it. Indeed, we’re meant to know it. Surveillance isn’t just meant to gather information. Conspicuous surveillance is used against activists to intimidate them and to create fear and suspicion that will stop them from building networks or taking action effectively. FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover wanted activists to believe that there was “an FBI agent behind every mailbox.”

Surveillance can be effective both to stall or prevent action and to create divisions in movements. Psychological research shows that people who know they are under surveillance are more likely to condemn others for breaking behavioral norms.158 Conspicuous surveillance undermines good relationships between moderates and militants, between liberals and radicals.

From the beginning, government surveillance has been meant to suppress dissent as much as to monitor crime. When hidden cameras were first introduced in Britain, they were used not against common criminals but to photograph suffragist protesters. (Captured suffragists were also the subjects of early propaganda “photoshopping.” Photographs of suffragists being choked by police were retouched so the chokeholds were covered over with ladylike scarves.)

Underground groups can respond to the surveillance threat by trying to make themselves invisible. Aboveground groups instead use security culture or, if appropriate, keep a low profile. Resisters can use a wide variety of surveillance countermeasures (see Further Resources). Some of these are physical (like having sensitive conversations face-to-face) and some are electronic (like encrypting email or browsing the web anonymously).

It’s important to remember that for aboveground groups, the main goal of surveillance isn’t to catch people in crimes, but to make them fearful, paranoid, and inactive. If you want to combat surveillance, then work to overcome paranoia and isolation. We can monitor these efforts, expose them, and engage in public counter-surveillance. Crucially, we must take action despite their attempts to intimidate us. That’s more important than any technical countermeasure.

2. PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE AND PROPAGANDA

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Counterintelligence agencies use psychological warfare to disrupt movements internally. And they try to undermine and discredit movements externally through the use of propaganda and the media, aiming to alienate resisters from potential supporters.

In his book War at Home: Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About It, attorney Brian Glick writes: “The FBI and police used myriad other ‘dirty tricks’ to undermine progressive movements. They planted false media stories and published bogus leaflets and other publications in the name of targeted groups. They forged correspondence, sent anonymous letters, and made anonymous telephone calls. They spread misinformation about meetings and events, set up pseudo movement groups run by government agents, and manipulated or strongarmed parents, employers, landlords, school officials, and others to cause trouble for activists.”159

In a 1968 memo, FBI head J. Edgar Hoover observed that “[t]here is a definite hostility among [Students for a Democratic Society] and other New Left groups toward the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA), and the Progressive Labor Party (PLP). This hostility should be exploited wherever possible.” So Hoover ordered agents to instigate or take advantage “of personal conflicts or animosities existing between New Left leaders” as well as leaders in other movements.160

These FBI tricks often worked, in part because of the existing fractures in progressive movements. Phony letters and anonymous letters were favorites of the FBI. If you were an activist leader, they might send you a letter from “an anonymous friend” warning that one of your allies was out to get you, or that another activist was bad-mouthing you, or even that another activist group wanted to kill you.

Sometimes counterintelligence agencies use “black propaganda”—phony publications or statements meant to misrepresent and discredit resistance groups. For example, the FBI printed a racist coloring book ostensibly from the Black Panther Party that was designed to inflame the fears of white people and alienate Black allies.

Much of the long-term damage done by COINTELPRO happened because of this divisive psychological warfare. Brian Glick writes that “COINTELPRO often convinced its victims to blame themselves and each other for the problems it created,”—horizontal hostility—“leaving a legacy of cynicism and despair that persists today.” Furthermore, “the FBI and police were able to severely weaken domestic political opposition without shaking the conviction of most US people that they live in a democracy, with free speech and the rule of law.”161

Counterintelligence agencies also use “gray propaganda” or disinformation: false or misleading information released to the press. For example, in his New Left COINTELPRO memo, Hoover ordered “[t]he use of articles from student newspapers and/or the ‘underground press’ to show the depravity of New Left leaders and members. In this connection, articles showing advocation of the use of narcotics and free sex are ideal to send to university officials, wealthy donors, members of the legislature and parents of students who are active in New Left matters.” COINTELPRO tried to seize any opportunity they could to attempt to marginalize radicals, regardless of whether their allegations were based in fact or not. They wrote phony letters to the editor and ordered puppet journalists to smear activists, with the goal of making reactionary attitudes seem more widespread than they were. Modern online “sock puppet” programs allow state and corporate agencies to impersonate thousands of internet users, achieving a much stronger effect.

Their approach to disinformation was sometimes petty. Hoover ordered agents to: “Be alert for opportunities to confuse and disrupt New Left activities by misinformation. For example, when events are planned, notification that the event has been cancelled or postponed could be sent to various individuals.” Other dirty tricks targeted the family or employers of organizers. One letter to an activist’s employer ostensibly came from a bystander who claimed to have heard the activist talking on the bus about printing off radical pamphlets at work. Both the bystander and the alleged conversation were fabricated, but the activist was fired anyway.

The corporate media constantly engages in disinformation about progressive groups as a matter of policy, even apart from any particular COINTELPRO operation. If you have tried to organize a media campaign you know that the corporate media tend to downplay coverage of progressive groups, misquote interviews, give incomplete or misleading information, and report without proper context. Some of this is intrinsic to media structure. (These issues are covered in greater detail in the Communications chapter, so I won’t repeat myself here.)

It may be worth trying to counter propaganda in the mass media, especially if it’s particularly nasty. But remember: the mass media doesn’t thrive on nuanced and thoughtful perspectives. Corporate and state propaganda doesn’t have to be sophisticated, just repetitive and aggressive. That’s especially true when resisters are equated with foreign threats or with criminals. (That’s “bi-level demonization.”)

Consider this 1970 television interview transcript with then California Governor (and later President) Ronald Reagan, about now-legendary resister Angela Davis:

Reporter: Governor Reagan, would you consider Angela Davis dangerous?
Reagan: Yes, she is a Communist.
Reporter: Tell me Governor, how did the police department determine the guns used in the Marin County Massacre [a police shoot-out with Black Panthers] were all registered to Angela Davis?
Reagan: Simple, she was a Communist.
Reporter: Governor, it had been rumored that one of the weapons used was in fact a weapon recovered in an earlier raid that was never returned to Angela Davis. Is this true?
Reagan: Is Angela Davis a Communist?
Reporter: Thanks, Governor. Back to you, Tom.162

Reagan’s dogged responses may seem laughable to those of us who aren’t politically brain-dead. But this core approach is very effective, especially when combined with other methods of repression. Remember that Reagan didn’t have to convince the majority of Americans that they should hate Angela Davis, or the Black Panthers. It was enough to cast aspersions on them so that majority of people would simply shrug when other methods—like fabricated evidence or police assassinations—were used against the BPP.

You can fight psychological warfare in your groups by discouraging shallow rumors and mean-spirited gossip. A culture of baseless rumors or gossip is bad for our morale, and it offers fertile ground for COINTELPRO-style psychological warfare. (Agents watch for disagreements that are aired publicly or in front of informers, and then make use of those when planning psychological warfare. This is a good reason for interpersonal conflicts to be dealt with privately and tactfully.) If a significant disruptive rumor does come your way, it may be best to seek out the most accurate, verifiable information you can find and discourage others from passing on the rumor until the truth can be found out.

Any suspicious or disturbing rumor, email, letter, phone call, or other message should be investigated before action. If you hear a harmful rumor about interpersonal conflict, it’s often best to get those involved to communicate personally to defuse the situation, even if doing so is uncomfortable. If you suspect a pattern of possible counterintelligence interference in your community, report this to your activist allies and friends. They may have experienced some of the same problems, and together you may be able to connect the dots.

Often those in power need merely exacerbate existing but genuine grievances between groups. We need to defuse this by dealing openly and effectively with issues of injustice and discrimination, particularly around ethnicity, gender, class, and so on, to prevent rifts from being exploited by counterintelligence agencies.

Underground and other militant groups have an important role to play, as well. It’s true that liberal groups often go out of their way to condemn radical activities, which is exactly what the COINTELPRO types want. But militants do that as well. Some members of the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers celebrated militancy for the sake of militancy, needlessly alienated potential allies, and denigrated good community work. Groups from the entire spectrum of resistance need to hold together and demonstrate solidarity—or at least refrain from publicly attacking one another—in order to fight off psychological warfare from those in power.

3. INFILTRATION AND INFORMERS

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Infiltrators and informers are perhaps the most insidious and destructive of the counterintelligence agents. Their aim is both to gather information and to quietly wreak havoc on our movements from the inside.

As Brian Glick writes, “[a]gents and informers did not merely spy on political activists. Their main purpose was to discredit and disrupt. Their very presence served to undermine trust and scare off potential supporters. The FBI and police exploited this fear to smear genuine activists as agents.”163 As discussed in the chapter on Security & Safety, this smearing is sometimes called “bad-jacketing” or “snitch-jacketing.”

Sometimes this happened through anonymous letters and rumors. Other times the police would concoct elaborate plans such as arresting an activist, putting them in a police car, and “accidentally” letting them overhear a phony radio communication that would seem to out someone they knew as an informer.

COINTELPRO-type tactics also disrupt movements through the use of agents provocateurs, who, as Gary Marx puts it, “encourage internal divisiveness and lines of action that are self-defeating or not in the best interests of the organization.”164 Agents provocateurs push for reckless escalation or try to direct resistance groups into traps, or courses of action that will bring down more repression than the movement can cope with. (Brandon Darby in New Orleans did this constantly.) Indeed, the FBI seems to spend more time setting up phony “terrorist stings” than preventing any real attacks.

Infiltration was used against the American Indian Movement to devastating effect in the 1970s (after the official end of COINTELPRO). The FBI’s infiltrators included a man named Douglas Durham, who wormed his way deep into the core of the organization. In addition to gathering information, Durham used bad-jacketing and other techniques of psychological disruption to fragment the group and induce a paralytic fear of infiltration.

According to John William Sayer, “[b]y 1975, AIM had become increasingly wary of its own membership, and open debate over future plans and recruitment of new members had all but ceased.”165 As leaders and core members became isolated or disconnected from new members, the movement was caught in a vicious circle of fragmentation and division. As Jules Boykoff writes: “The closing down of debate . . . leaves social movements open to charges that they are anti-democratic and run by a handful of power-hungry leaders. Ironically, once debate is crippled, and a small circle of powerful leaders emerges, groups are even more vulnerable to the work of agents provocateurs, if the agent is able to infiltrate this power circle.”166

You might assume that intelligence reports from an infiltrator are mostly about planned actions, incriminating statements, or the like. But if you read disclosures or court documents from long-term infiltrators, you’ll notice another pattern: they’re absolutely full of gossip. Infiltrators write and report on who is having an argument, who is sleeping with whom, and generally try to collect intimate psychological details on members of the community they are spying on. Long-term infiltrators are enormously costly for the state, but intelligence agencies obviously consider it a priority to gather this kind of information so that they can drive wedges between organizers or exert psychological pressure on particular people.

Warning signs of informers and infiltrators

There are several different types of infiltrators and informers. One type is the turned activist; someone with a genuine history as an activist who has decided to collaborate, either because of threats or bribes. Another is the undercover professional, a person with police or intelligence training who has been instructed to make their way into legitimate groups. This second type may also be a private investigator or the like. A third type might be someone who has gotten in trouble with the law and is trying to lighten their charges; and there are some infiltrators who don’t fit tidily into any of those categories.

We can learn a lot from cases in Ontario, Canada, where multiple intelligence agencies worked together to surveil and infiltrate activist groups prior to the 2010 G20 meetings. Two of the infiltrators were sent to Guelph, Ontario, in January of 2009, a year and a half before the G20 meetings. (A third was sent to Ottawa.) Guelph likely received this attention because of radical action that had taken place there in preceding years, including Earth Liberation Front and anarchist activity.

The backstories of the two infiltrators were tailored to manipulate the sympathies of activists. Infiltrator Khalid was a person of color; when he was eventually challenged as a suspected infiltrator he “played the race card” to try to divert suspicions. Infiltrator Brenda claimed that she had moved from the UK to escape an abusive relationship. People welcomed her into the aboveground community and respectfully avoided probing questions about her background. (Brenda also hinted at being queer.)

The infiltrators were given a list of specific organizations to infiltrate, and a list of nearly two dozen “persons of interest” involved in radical organizing. At first, organizers were surprised at the sudden arrival of new activists, older than the average in those groups, who behaved oddly. But because of their backstories and because of a desire to include people who didn’t match the activist stereotype, the infiltrators were mostly welcomed. They ingratiated themselves into many activist groups, and developed personal relationships—often very close—with members of the community.

The infiltrators gathered huge amounts of information, thousands of pages of intelligence files and recordings of conversations at organizing meetings that included organizers from across Ontario and Quebec. This information was the foundation of the conspiracy charges laid against organizers in June 2010, and the arrests I mentioned at the start of this chapter.

When the infiltrators suddenly disappeared and the whole arrangement was revealed after mass arrests, people were deeply hurt and shocked, because many people had trusted those infiltrators. But they began to put together the pieces of what had gone wrong. I interviewed about twenty different people who had worked in the infiltrated groups and communities, including some of those who were charged and imprisoned.

Their recollections and analysis revealed warning signs and patterns. I’ll mostly use Brenda and Khalid as examples here, but these are patterns that often occur with infiltrators (and informers):

Fake friendliness and poor boundaries. Brenda and Khalid sometimes seemed inappropriately friendly. They arranged a lot of social visits, but seemed to try too hard. “Fun hangouts weren’t fun,” one person explained to me. However, Brenda was supportive to people having tough times, and was successful ingratiating herself that way. They were good at meeting and keeping track of new people: “Khalid always remembered names, even uncommon ones.” (At least once he correctly used the name of someone he had never met before, recognizing them from surveillance files.)

Sometimes these phony relationships are even more disturbing. Mark Kennedy, a British police infiltrator who spied on environmental activists in the UK and Europe, spent seven years undercover. During that time he had romantic and sexual relationships with a number of female activists without disclosing his identity as a police officer.167

Informer Brandon Darby, as Lisa Fithian writes, “was a master of manipulation, and worked both women and men. He would draw them into his sometimes-twisted perspective by cultivating them through coffee, cigarettes, alcohol, revolutionary rhetoric, emotional neediness, or his physical presence—either seductive or intimidating.” She adds: “When a group of the women in leadership challenged his behavior and asked that he stop sleeping with volunteers, he said ‘I like to fuck women, so what.’ Our concerns were disregarded.”

Lack of vouch or screening. Neither Brenda nor Khalid was formally screened or vouched for in their organizations, even when an organization had a screening process. Brenda attended the first meeting of one important new organization, so she was “grandfathered” in without a vouch. Khalid was initially assumed to be safe because he carried out other illegal activities involving drugs, and (falsely) claimed someone had vouched for him. This lack of screening made it easier for the infiltrators to penetrate other aboveground organizations; the infiltrators would namedrop people from Guelph to make connections in other cities. (Clearly, vouches should always be double-checked.)

Shallow knowledge. Police who are trained to be infiltrators over a few weeks or months can’t achieve the depth of integrated knowledge that activists gain after many years of organizing, reading, and discussion. Brenda prepared for her task by reading a couple of books. To people around them, Brenda and Khalid appeared to have only a superficial understanding of political issues; that was at odds with their apparent level of commitment to organizing and their regular attendance at meetings. (This pattern may not apply to informers or turned activists who had legitimate experience prior to collaboration.) And while Brenda was always willing to help, she almost never contributed ideas for projects or actions.

Talented infiltrators are naturally skilled con artists, smooth and fast talkers able to conceal their shallow understanding of the issues by sounding superficially knowledgeable. They may throw out some token facts and figures without real understanding, or simply change the subject to something they feel more comfortable with.

Small inconsistencies. Infiltrators often betray themselves through minor inconsistencies that are overlooked at the time, but that seem glaring later on. Infiltrator Brenda cultivated the persona of a “pseudo-hippie” interested in animal rights. It seemed strange to some that she was so interested in the G20 and pushing confrontational demonstrations. Her style of dress didn’t seem to match her persona.

Sometimes they gave conflicting personal information; Brenda gave different backstories to different people, but no one put it together until afterward. (Brenda also framed her personal history as “secret” to discourage people from comparing notes.) Khalid once spelled his own name wrong. Khalid claimed to have a wife and daughter who lived elsewhere, and also claimed to work out of town. In retrospect, he didn’t have any clear reason to be living in Guelph in the first place.

Contradictions and shallow understanding come out in what people do as much as in what they say. Consider the case of the Arizona Five, ecodefenders arrested in 1989, where suspicions were sparked but ignored. The group was infiltrated by an FBI agent who acted as an informer and provocateur. A woman in the group went out dancing with him, and while they were walking along the road a scorpion ran over her foot. Excitedly, she pointed it out to the undercover agent. Without hesitation he crushed it. Later, she realized that she should have paid attention to this unlikely behavior from a radical environmentalist.

That UK infiltrator, Mark Kennedy, was eventually exposed when he left his real passport lying around his house.

Rich in resources without visible means of support. Khalid frequently offered help, rides in his large passenger van, a digital projector, and free printing and laminating (his lamination and photocopying, it turned out, was done at RCMP headquarters in Toronto). He frequently bought people drinks when they went out. The infiltrators always had cash, but claimed to work out of town, so no one ever saw them working. Their out-of-town “work” absences covered vacations to their real lives. But they had a lot of time; Brenda was a “super-activist” interested in every group and subcommittee, who showed up at every protest, social event, and court solidarity action.

British infiltrator Mark Kennedy was nicknamed “Flash” because he always had so much money.

Infiltrators often worm their way in by offering much-needed resources. Infiltrator Anna, in the Green Scare case of Eric McDavid, offered an entire house for their cell’s use. That house was completely wired with surveillance to record the incriminating conversations that Anna bullied people into.

Suspicious behavior and absences. Brenda’s apartment was oddly empty, except for a few posters. (In intelligence documents personal effects like these are referred to as “props.”) Brenda never wanted to be dropped off at her apartment. This was in part because she met with her handlers for briefing and debriefing before and after attending activist events. Khalid and Brenda always had two undercover police standing by. Infiltrators may give themselves away by their need to frequently meet and communicate with handlers, and their need for poorly explained absences while they take time off. At one point Brenda rented a room in an activist’s house, but only slept there a handful of times.

Deep-cover infiltrators working for a very long time have fewer unexplained absences. Mark Kennedy spent seven years in his phony persona, unusually long; reportedly his handlers lost control of him and he became a “freelancer.”

Violating security culture, pushing for reckless illegal action. Infiltrators often break security culture rules by talking about things they shouldn’t and by asking about things they don’t need to know. They may also be prone to machismo as they try to provoke rash actions or statements they can record.

In a campaign against the urban sprawl of a new business park, Khalid would loudly (and unnecessarily) proclaim: “We’re gonna stop the business park, and if it takes burning machinery, so be it.” Khalid encouraged people to buy firearms which he proposed he would store in his apartment (no one took him up on the offer). He gave unsolicited advice on sabotage. He would try to get people drunk by buying them alcohol, or offering to drive them to get drugs. Paradoxically, this made some people trust him more, because they assumed a person involved with drugs or drug-dealing could not be police.

Sometimes, if a spy is an activist informer rather than a police infiltrator, such reckless behavior can be an indicator of how they were turned in the first place. Like Jake in the Green Scare (chapter 6), they may have nonpolitical criminal charges that they are trying to bargain down through police cooperation. Warning signs could include drug addiction, a tendency toward petty crime that violates security culture, or extreme debts (such as from a gambling addiction).

Remember that to acquire incriminating evidence, infiltrators typically need to wear a wire at some point, or otherwise make recordings of actions and conversations. They try to bully or intimidate people into making incriminating statements. They also want the group to do illegal things in order to justify their infiltration (and as part of larger police-state propaganda campaigns like the Green Scare). An infiltrator may not actually be wearing a recording device; they may arrange to have conversations in a place that they know to be bugged, such as the house so kindly offered by “Anna.” The infiltrator may need to guide or provoke conversations that can be considered incriminating. If these things seem to be happening to the extent that you suspect someone is an informer, steer the conversation away from sensitive areas and end it as soon as possible before taking further steps as described shortly.

Disrupting the group or singling people out. Khalid would try to single people out as “leaders” even in nonhierarchical and antiauthoritarian organizations. He would single out one experienced organizer in particular; and when that organizer appeared at meetings, Khalid would proclaim: “Oh, our fearless leader! The king himself!” Brenda tried to get the same person to run for mayor. Infiltrators who want to be disruptive will often flatter people to their face and then trash-talk them when they aren’t around. Disruptive infiltrators try to encourage unproductive group dynamics and trigger feelings of distrust. To draw attention away from themselves, they might even accuse other people of being informers, manipulators, or otherwise untrustworthy.

Brandon Darby showed many of the same behaviors. Lisa Fithian writes about a training session in which Darby “insisted that one of the participants was an undercover cop and demanded that [Fithian] ask that person to leave. High drama around other people being undercover is behavior I’ve learned to associate with informants as a way to divert attention from them. It also breeds distrust and is destabilizing of collective efforts.” Darby also “insisted on being the person in charge. He demanded a chain of command with him at the top. At one point he tried to create a central committee to ensure that only a select few would be in any position of power. This style put him out front whether it was the media or a group of volunteers who would be doing the heavy lifting while he talked.”

Seizing the spotlight—or getting access to important jobs or positions—are important steps for an infiltrator who wants to disrupt.

Khalid eventually did get kicked out of the Guelph organizing community because of his generally bad behavior and because people strongly suspected him of being an infiltrator. When he was asked by a woman of color to leave, he accused her of being a racist. Because Khalid was so obviously strange, he drew attention away from Brenda, who remained until the day of the G20 protests. Organizers assumed that there would only be one police infiltrator.

After he was asked to leave, Khalid relocated to the nearby city of Kitchener-Waterloo. There he was able to get access to the activist community by claiming that he had been kicked out of Guelph because Guelph activists were racist and classist. People in Kitchener-Waterloo welcomed him in; they believed his story in part because there were some tensions about organizing style between the two communities, and a lack of strong ties and trust. Also, people in Guelph didn’t publicize their fears that Khalid was an infiltrator, in part because they didn’t want to accidently bad-jacket someone. (Despite this, Khalid was exposed as an infiltrator in Kitchener-Waterloo a few weeks before the G20 protests.)

So how can aboveground organizers balance the need to recruit and welcome new people against the threat posed by infiltrators? There are important actions to consider:

Take the threat seriously, and develop active counterintelligence. When I asked those involved in Guelph about what lessons they had learned, they told me that activists need to recognize that the risk is real. “We need to take ourselves more seriously, because the state takes us seriously.” Some people in Guelph who encountered the infiltrators said: “This is sketchy. But it’s not my problem.” But it is our problem, collectively. If people had talked to each other more they would have noticed inconsistencies. Some discussions took place, but they were more about venting or releasing steam over bad behavior. None of the discussions led to background checks, investigations, or other action.

Passive security culture is not enough to defeat well-funded state-run infiltration, entrapment, or systematic disruption. Communities of resistance will only be able to stop these attempts when small groups of experienced activists (who trust each other completely) join to build active counterintelligence capacity. That means studying the history of state counterintelligence and repression. That means actively gathering intelligence (as discussed in the preceding chapter) and being alert for threats. In retrospect, there were warning signs that Guelph in particular was being targeted for infiltration. (For example, before the infiltrators were assigned, police tried to recruit activists arrested at a protest near Guelph, offering money for information about activists who owned firearms.)

Building counterintelligence also means making sure that there is a process in place if infiltration is suspected, and that members of the community are alert. It also means contacting people who are experienced and knowledgeable about the subject (perhaps, depending on your circumstances, a lawyer).

Immunize your community. Everyone in an activist community should know basic security culture and follow it. They should know not to talk to police or intelligence agents. They should know what to do and who to contact if agents knock on their doors. They should understand the potential costs of successful infiltration. And everyone should discourage gossip or spreading rumors which can feed into the intelligence database for creating social schisms. (Brenda was part of the “gossip train” and always wanted to know who was flirting, who was kissing who, and so on.)

Healthy communities of resistance find a middle ground between total inclusion of new people and reclusive paranoia. Don’t be unfriendly, but don’t mindlessly accept everything about people you don’t know. Don’t assume that a person who knows some of the same people as you is trustworthy. Be willing to ask questions about new people. This is also part of genuinely getting to know new activists and making them feel welcome and included.

“If we want to create communities of resistance, they actually have to be communities,” one person from Guelph told me. “Organize with your loved ones,” suggested another. Several people expressed a greater desire to recruit neighbors rather than strangers who appear out of nowhere.

It’s also important that we immunize not just overtly political people, but also our families and even our neighbors. Police may knock on their doors to try to gain information about activists; we should prime them not to simply answer any questions from police.

Investigate and respond to concerns, but don’t snitch-jacket. Radical communities need a process through which group members can report concerns without provoking a witch-hunt or paranoia. Snitch-jacketing is bad, but so is staying silent about real concerns. Members of the Guelph community could probably have identified the infiltrators early if they’d shared some concerns and contradictions privately.

If an infiltrator is suspected in the group they need to be investigated by a small trusted group and dealt with rapidly. Action should be decisive but not hasty. If suspicion seems initially reasonable, the person under investigation should quietly be isolated from important information. If there are major operations pending, it may be appropriate to delay them while investigation takes place. Investigations shouldn’t be announced. First of all, it’s divisive and inappropriate to cast someone as a possible infiltrator without hard evidence. Second of all, if that person actually is working with the authorities, what will happen if they find out the group is aware of them? If they have yet to gather serious incriminating evidence, that informer may simply disappear. On the other hand, if they have gathered incriminating information, warning them that they might be exposed will trigger an immediate crackdown and arrests.

During an investigation (especially in aboveground groups), the organization still needs to deal directly and openly with any problems—such as divisive statements or disruptive activities—that a possible informer causes. And remember, the great majority of people who behave inappropriately in activist groups are not actually government agents, but are potentially naïve, inexperienced, confused, overly enthusiastic about public militancy, or emotionally troubled.

Investigators should look for hard evidence. The intelligence chapter discusses various methods used to investigate people such as looking into their history, supposed contacts, actions, relatives, and employment. Some groups have watched or followed suspected infiltrators to wait for them to meet with their handlers. Subtle attempts can be made to catch the suspected infiltrator out in a lie or contradiction. Consider passing on disinformation that would expose the source of a leak. Protect your investigation files and evidence carefully.

Warn others of a confirmed infiltrator and evaluate your process. If you have hard evidence that someone is an infiltrator and plan to expose them, make sure to warn your group as well as colleagues in other communities so that person can’t simply relocate as Khalid did. If you can’t intervene in time and people are arrested, you should still share information so others can learn from it. Some infiltrated groups will go to the media, post photos and information about the infiltrator online, and so on. (You must be very certain if you do these sorts of things.)

Any affected groups and people will want to take their own measures to protect themselves, such as changing locks or passwords.

A retroactive investigation needs to take place if the infiltrator found their way into sensitive groups. Was there a flaw in the screening process? Was that person’s activist history genuine? Were they vouched for by another individual? Infiltrators are often introduced to a group by a disgruntled member who chooses to collaborate with the police (and then who may themselves leave the group afterward). Steps need to be taken to close the breach and prevent other infiltrators in the future. (Many of these are also potential weak points that can be investigated before the infiltrator is positively identified.)

Build a community based on mutual support for radical action, not on self-righteousness and bullying. In this world, the need for militant action is real and urgent. But no one should bully others or allow other people to be bullied into illegal action. Pep talks, encouragement, and motivational speeches are one thing. But nothing good will come from pushing someone into an action they aren’t psychologically prepared for. A person bullied into action may be unable to cope with the stress involved, or with police questioning. A person coerced into high-risk action is a liability, an informer waiting to happen. Don’t bully or trash-talk your comrades, and don’t tolerate trash-talking.

Build strong movements and deal openly with issues of oppression. Infiltrator Khalid was able to move to a new community and new group using the excuse of race and class. But a lack of strong ties and strong communication meant that people in Kitchener-Waterloo didn’t know about the infiltration concerns in Guelph.

Those groups were vulnerable in part because they didn’t have the full security benefits of either the aboveground or the underground. They lacked the compartmentalization and rigid screening of successful underground groups, so the infiltrators had free access. But the vulnerable groups also lacked the communications channels that make aboveground groups strong, so they weren’t able to respond effectively in time. (It’s worth noting that Brenda and Khalid failed to access underground organizing that was happening around the same time.)

A lack of communication and a failure to address issues of oppression will make resistance movements vulnerable. True security for the aboveground comes not from being isolated, but from strengthening relationships and dialogue and from facing uncomfortable issues.

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Armed underground groups have, historically, dealt with infiltrators and informers in more drastic ways. Michael Collins’s neutralization of the British spy network through surgically precise violence was among the most effective (counter-) counterintelligence operations of any resistance group in history. Collins identified infiltrators and informers as a major reason Ireland’s previous uprisings had failed, so his goal was to “put out the eyes” of the British intelligence system. Collins explains his rationale for the approach as a necessary extension of other parts of the Irish struggle for independence: “We took their arms and attacked their strongholds. We organised our army and met the armed patrols and military expeditions which were sent against us in the only possible way. We met them by an organised and bold guerrilla warfare. But this was not enough. . . . England could always reinforce her army. She could replace every soldier that she lost.

“But there were others indispensable for her purposes which were not so easily replaced. To paralyse the British machine it was necessary to strike at individuals. Without her spies England was helpless. It was only by means of their accumulated and accumulating knowledge that the British machine could operate.

“Without their police throughout the country, how could they find the men they wanted? Without their criminal agents in the capital, how could they carry out that removal of the leaders that they considered essential for their victory? Spies are not so ready to step into the shoes of their departed confederates as are soldiers. . . . And even when the new spy stepped into the shoes of the old one, he could not step into the old one’s knowledge.”168

In World War II, the SOE advised resistance organizers in a typically blunt way: “If after checking and testing a man it is clear that he is a traitor, the organizer can either frighten him or pay him off (both risky) or kill him.” The problem with brutal practices like kneecapping, according to veterans of European resistance, was that it left informers both able to move and talk, hardly a way to deal with a serious security risk. The SOE concluded: “The best method . . . is to prevent double crossing taking place by stressing the ruthlessness and long arm of the organization at an early stage. Although the agent only knows a few people that he can betray, his superiors are well aware of his activities and can always take vengeance.”

Of course, if that precaution didn’t work, according to M.R.D. Foot, “SOE’s advice was—had always been, right from the start—that they were to be disposed of straight away, no shriving time allowed. No one in an SOE circuit was likely to be in a state to take and keep prisoners.”169 Resisters who didn’t have the stomach for that learned the hard way: “Notoriously, some French miliciens [Nazi paramilitaries] who were taken prisoners by maquisards . . . [and later] rescued by the Germans, went round the local villages afterwards and pointed out to their Gestapo companions the men who had saved their lives: conduct only to be expected of Gestapo narks.”170 It doesn’t take much imagining to picture the tortures and death that befell the merciful maquisards (and likely, their families).

Various resistance groups have been quite brutal when dealing with informers and infiltrators. I wrote in the security chapter about the practice used by some South African militants of burning collaborators alive with a tire and gasoline. The original IRA typically shot informers, although some were tarred and feathered before being tied to church railings as a warning.

There are obvious problems with this approach. The moral issues are profound. Historical resistance movements who killed infiltrators did so because they felt that they were saving lives. But this approach can also go horrifyingly wrong very quickly, especially if COINTELPRO agents use bad-jacketing to turn activists against each other.

The murder of Anna Mae Aquash is a heartbreaking example. A brilliant activist and organizer by all accounts, Aquash worked with the American Indian Movement for years. Probably because she was so effective, she was targeted for bad-jacketing by infiltrators in AIM. The exact details and people involved are heavily disputed, but the outcome is clear: Anna Mae Aquash was abducted and murdered, seemingly by AIM members who were supposed to be her comrades.171 Her murder left two young daughters as orphans. No one can bring her back, or heal the damage to her family and her community. Remember that.

4. THE LEGAL SYSTEM

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Those in power use the legal system to attack resisters through politically motivated arrests, interrogations, and criminalization. According to Glick, as part of COINTELPRO the “FBI and police abused the legal system to harass dissidents and make them appear to be criminals. Officers of the law gave perjured testimony and presented fabricated evidence as a pretext for false arrests and wrongful imprisonment. They discriminatorily enforced tax laws and other government regulations and used conspicuous surveillance, ‘investigative’ interviews, and grand jury subpoenas in an effort to intimidate activists and silence their supporters.”172 (Such things go hand in hand with psychological warfare operations more generally.)

Jules Boykoff explains: “Dissidents are arrested for minor charges that are often false, and that are sometimes based on obscure statutes that have remained on the books, buried and dormant but nevertheless vessels for legal persecution. Harassment arrests can have a devastating effect. Such charges, even if false, thrust dissidents into legal labyrinths that consume social-movement resources, divert activists from the social-change goals, undermine morale of social-movement participants, and discourage support from potential recruits or bystander publics, as these groups often tense up at the possibility of consorting with alleged criminals.”173

Boykoff cites a particular FBI order to target civil rights activists: “An internal FBI memo from 1968 lavished praise on the Philadelphia Field Office for its success in having local dissidents ‘arrested on every possible charge until they could no longer make bail’ and therefore ‘spent most of the summer in jail.’ In another internal memo, FBI agents were counseled that because the purpose of such harassment charges ‘is to disrupt’ that ‘it is immaterial whether facts exist to substantiate the charge.’”174

This approach was not a new innovation of the 1960s, of course. In the Groups and Organization chapter we discussed how mass arrests of members of the Industrial Workers of the World in the early 1920s drained the resources of the organization. The FBI used the same approach to try to empty the coffers of the Black Panthers.

Drug use and apolitical crimes can make activists more vulnerable to harassment from the legal system. J. Edgar Hoover ordered the following: “Since the use of marijuana and other narcotics is widespread among members of the New Left, you should be alert to opportunities to have them arrested by local authorities on drug charges. Any information concerning the fact that individuals have marijuana or are engaging in a narcotics party should be immediately furnished to local authorities and they should be encouraged to take action.”175

Sometimes legal system harassment takes the form of show trial or public spectacle. “Are you, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?” as Senator Joseph McCarthy demanded of those called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). HUAC didn’t need to prove anything or even legally charge or prosecute people. Their powers were sufficient to permanently blacklist people from employment or public service. Without any oversight or accountability they were able to destroy careers, families, and lives (including suicides resulting from HUAC persecution).176

In the current US climate, the grand jury fills an analogous role. Activists may be called before a grand jury and compelled to testify. They have no right to a lawyer, nor to cross-examine witnesses. The “jury” is not screened for bias. Those who refuse to answer questions about themselves or allies—asserting their theoretical right to silence—can be arbitrarily punished and imprisoned for their noncooperation.

These grand juries go hand in hand with the extreme laws, like the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which equate nonviolent economic sabotage with armed terrorism in the law. They also allow for extreme punishments, including lengthy jail sentences and isolation for those convicted. (For a detailed look at how grand juries and extraordinary laws have been used against radical environmentalists and animals rights activists, see Will Potter’s excellent book, and blog, Green is the New Red.)

Such extreme laws usually remain on the books indefinitely, to be used whenever popular discontent wells up. Alexander Cockburn writes: “Emergency laws lie around for decades like rattlesnakes in summer grass.”177 They also lay groundwork for more openly authoritarian forms of population control and martial law.

When faced with harassment through the legal system, activists need legal help and they need solidarity. The first form of solidarity is to say nothing to police or the courts when questioned, to stay silent and refuse to give information (especially information about our comrades). Police use all kinds of tricks to try to convince people to talk when they should stay silent.

If faced with criminal charges, resisters need legal help. The different types of legal attacks, differing legal contexts in various countries, and the vast quantity of precedents and legislation mean that I won’t discuss legal tactics here. That’s what lawyers are for, and thankfully there are many progressive and radical lawyers doing good work for communities of resistance around the world. (And some resisters facing significant jail time, from the ANC to the Green Scare, have chosen to go underground as fugitives rather than try to engage in a legal battle.)

Any effective movement will bring down repression and that means prison time, especially for dedicated organizers and frontline activists. Prisoner solidarity is absolutely critical. “A movement that doesn’t support prisoners is a sham movement,” as Sara Falconer explained to me (paraphrasing political prisoner Ojore Lutalo). Fortunately, there is a resurgence in prisoner solidarity in North America, in part a response to the very kind of repression noted above.

There are a great many prisoners hungry for outside contact. You can get lists of their cases and mailing addresses online to write them a letter. (The website of Denver Anarchist Black Cross is a great place to start: denverabc.wordpress.com.)

A benefit of doing prisoner solidarity work is that it helps to demystify prison. Prison can be a frightening thing, but talking to current and former political prisoners helps people to understand that prison time doesn’t mean the end of the world. It’s a risk that serious activists routinely face; resisters should learn about it so they can decide for themselves whether it’s a risk they are willing to take.

Current and former prisoners can also offer a lot of useful tips on coping with incarceration. (I’ve compiled some of those in Further Resources.)

5. ILLEGAL VIOLENCE

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When their manipulation of the so-called “justice system” is not enough, counterintelligence agencies move on to extra-judicial violence and coercion. According to Brian Glick: “The FBI and police threatened, instigated, and themselves conducted break-ins, vandalism, assaults, and beatings. The object was to frighten dissidents and disrupt their movements. In the case of radical Black and Puerto Rican activists (and later Native Americans), these attacks—including political assassinations—were so extensive, vicious, and calculated that they can accurately be termed a form of official ‘terrorism.’”178

Physical violence is always part of the arsenal of repression. In many parts of the world—at many points in history—authoritarians have not bothered with the subtleties of long-term surveillance, or the manipulation of social and political schisms. They simply apply violence directly; beatings, torture, and murder.

Sometimes the counterintelligence agencies try to provoke internecine violence instead of using it themselves. The Cairo Gang, sent by the British in 1920 to target the IRA, planned to assassinate high-ranking officials in the aboveground Sinn Féin, and then blame it on the IRA to create the impression of a battle between Irish moderates and extremists. The Lord Mayor of Cork was actually murdered in this fashion, but the Irish people saw through the ploy and refused to fall for it.

Violent attacks on resistance groups don’t necessarily come from governments alone. Oftentimes, governments will encourage that violence from other parties by actively facilitating it or simply allowing it to happen. The police in the South routinely helped the KKK during the civil rights era. Fascists often take this approach, as well, encouraging the development of fascist gangs or paramilitary groups

I wrote in chapter 3 about Judi Bari, the environmentalist, feminist, and labour leader working in Northern California. She was an organizer with Earth First! in their campaigns to stop logging of ancient redwood forests, and also organized through the Industrial Workers of the World to try to bring timber workers and environmentalists together.179 In 1990, she was organizing for Redwood Summer, a national campaign of civil disobedience against that logging.180

On May 24, 1990, a motion-activated pipe bomb exploded in Bari’s car; it nearly killed her and also injured her colleague Darryl Cherney. The pipe bomb, wrapped in nails, was located under Bari’s seat. The FBI and Oakland Police arrested them within minutes and publicly claimed that they were “terrorists,” injured when their own bomb accidentally went off. For months, the FBI and the police held press conferences in which they released further claims about the guilt of Bari and Cherney, while simultaneously carrying out a sham “investigation.”

While this was going on, the timber industry created and distributed fake Earth First! press releases and pamphlets supposedly signed by Cherney. These materials advocated attacks on timber industry workers, community members, and the media.181 Local media and some national media reported the phony materials as real. This was a form of psychological warfare designed to turn the public against Earth First! and provoke fear and anger in the public. (Some media saw through the fakes, noting that the language “read like a bad Hollywood version of what radicals talk like” and that Cherney’s name was misspelled.)

The FBI and police “investigations” continued for two months, during which they overlooked obvious real evidence and fabricated new evidence to support their case. There were obvious logical inconsistencies in the case. Why would Bari, who had previously received death threats that she reported to police, carry a motion-activated pipe bomb under her own seat? The lack of real evidence meant that the district attorney refused to file criminal charges against the two activists.

If the FBI did try to kill Bari by bombing her, it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve used that tactic. In Seattle in 1970, the FBI recruited war veteran David Sannes to help with an investigation. But Sannes turned whistleblower when he realized the plan was to lure in a radical activist and then blow them up and blame the explosion on the victim. In a radio interview he stated that “[m]y own knowledge is that the FBI along with other federal law enforcement agencies has been involved in a campaign of bombing, arson and terrorism in order to create in the mass public mind a connection between political dissidence of whatever stripe and revolutionaries of whatever violent tendencies.”182 That same year, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee leader Ralph Featherstone was killed by a bomb in his car. The FBI claimed that he was transporting a bomb, but colleagues say that was nonsense and later drew parallels between his case and that of Judi Bari.183

Indeed, some of the same people were associated with both bombings. The investigation into Bari and Cherney’s bombing was led by FBI San Francisco director Richard W. Held, son of Richard G. Held. Both of the Helds were prominently involved in the original COINTELPRO apparatus. The senior Held is associated with the murder of Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, while the junior allegedly framed Panther Geronimo Pratt on murder charges.184 A year after the bombing, Bari and Cherney filed a civil rights lawsuit against the FBI and police to clear their names. Richard W. Held was named in the suit.

Judi Bari died of breast cancer in 1997. To this day, no one knows for sure who actually planted the bomb. What is clear is that the FBI failed to investigate the event, preferring to fabricate evidence to frame Bari and Cherney. In 2002, a federal jury confirmed this by returning a guilty verdict against six FBI and police defendants in Bari and Cherney’s civil lawsuit, and ordered a settlement of $4.4 million. It’s tragic that Bari didn’t live to see that vindication.

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The state has the ability to mobilize overwhelming violence at any particular point. This capacity is greater than what a movement can defend against at a fixed position. To deal with this, aboveground and underground groups use divergent strategies to cope with extralegal violence.

Both aboveground and underground groups can build their organizational strength, solidarity, and mutual aid to increase resilience in the face of state violence. Communities of resistance need to be built such that support can be offered to those targeted by violence, and to their families.

Both kinds of organizations also need to structure themselves so that they don’t depend on one or two critical people (which is also part of good succession planning). If you have unique skills or knowledge, you should try to share that knowledge and teach other people. Some organizations will have a “deputy” or “understudy” for people in key roles, to learn what that person does so they can step in. With these approaches, if a group loses someone (due to an arrest or a violent attack) the group can continue to function.

And both groups should engage in good security practices (beyond mere security culture) if people believe they are likely to be targeted for attack by those in power. This might include bodyguards, sentries, searches for planted bombs and booby traps, changing travel routes or meeting places frequently, watching for tails and, if necessary, going underground for a time.

There are differences between aboveground and underground groups, of course. Aboveground groups in particular need to use state violence to maximize public support and sympathy. This means using the media (both mass and alternative) and other means to expose the wide use of violence and drum up support, the way that civil rights activists did in Birmingham when children were attacked by police dogs and fire hoses.

Underground groups can’t garner media sympathy very effectively. So they protect themselves from state violence by being hidden, mobile, and engaging in solid counterintelligence.

It may be tempting to use arms or militant language and posturing as a defensive deterrent to state violence. This is what the Black Panthers did, but it’s a double-edged sword. As Curtis J. Austin wrote on the BPP’s use of arms: “It cannot be overstated how the group’s readiness for battle kept alive many of its members across the country. At the same time, it obviously increased police fear to the point of hysteria.”185 Militant posturing can make police attacks seem justified to some members of the public. Any group that wants to use arms as a deterrent must be very careful in considering their larger context and strategy.

This deterrent is likely to be more effective in certain situations; for example, when there is significant public sympathy for the resisters; when the threat comes not from the state but from vigilante groups like the KKK; when the resisters have established that they are not afraid to use arms and are skilled in their use; or when groups are highly mobile and can make their opponent hesitate before they slip away.

Of course, the deterrent isn’t always passive; many resistance groups have used their arms for retribution in the hopes of deterring future attacks. But since the state can muster so much violence for its own reprisals, this requires that resisters have the capacity to decisively escalate any retribution in conjunction with other strategies of mass mobilization. Otherwise they risk becoming trapped in an escalating cycle of violence they will be unable to cope with.

Not all state violence is directed specifically at movement organizers, of course. The police, and other agents of state violence, will attack without provocation. The past few years have made this abundantly clear; we’ve seen example after high-profile example of police killing unarmed people of color, especially Black people. State repression is not limited to the formal leaders of resistance; illegal violence is a way to terrorize every member of an oppressed group, of maintaining the dominance of those in power.

Black Lives Matter is a critical example of an organization that has struggled—very effectively—against that violence. Black Lives Matter has employed many of the most important strategies and organizing approaches we’ve explored in this book. They’ve built strong grassroots groups and alliances. They’ve used disruptive and confrontational tactics in combination with clear outreach and communication. Their continued work and innovation will offer all movements lessons to learn.

6. MARTIAL LAW AND POPULATION CONTROL

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Once a resistance movement is large and successful enough, those in power may impose martial law or other counterinsurgency methods. Witness the walls and perpetual checkpoints in Palestine, or the series of detention camps the British used against the Mau Mau in Kenya. Or look at the Nazi concentration camps, or the Bantustans in South Africa, or the checkpoints in any totalitarian country.

Population control measures are intended to hamper the resistance and separate its members from their supporters in the general population. Ian Beckett, writing about the Boer War between South African settlers and the British Empire, explains: “The Boer ability to maneuver was restricted progressively by the building of lines of blockhouses and barbed-wire fences across the South African veld. Boer farms and livestock were systematically destroyed; Boer women and children were incarcerated in concentration camps to deprive the commandos of any possible support or supplies.”186 He notes that much of the same approach was used by the Spanish in Cuba, and the United States in the Philippines.

The US Counterinsurgency Field Manual explains: “Population control includes determining who lives in an area and what they do.”187 Population control measures suggested by that manual include:

Martial law or state of emergency legislation may increase police or executive powers, decrease civil rights, and lower legal barriers for arrest, detention, or imprisonment. These powers are used to persecute resistance sympathizers and dissidents of all stripes.

This sort of thing may seem irrelevant to organizers in privileged parts of the world. And perhaps in the decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall it seemed like these sorts of things were on the way out. But we have seen a rise in authoritarianism and xenophobia around the world. And we have seen a backlash against free movement, immigrants, and refugees, especially against the growing number of people escaping from crises caused by colonialism and climate change (like the civil war in Syria).

Further, those of us who have privilege because of where we were born or the color of our skin must remember how population controls like border walls, travel passes, and repressive violence still affect many people—and perhaps a growing number of people—around the world. The situation in Palestine is one prominent example. But the borders of many rich countries have become increasingly militarized, and immigrants or refugees subject to prolonged detention—long before Trump, immigrant advocates warned of a “Fortress North America.”

And if you want to talk about detention, curfews, and travel passes, let’s talk about the prison system. In the United States, about one in thirty-one adults are under some form of “correctional control”—in prison, on parole, or on probation. But that ratio is one in eleven for Black adults in the United States. And for young Black men that has been as high as one in three in some cities.189 It’s an insidious form of racialized martial law that affects many racialized people, and it’s virtually invisible for many people of privilege. (For more on that, check out Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.)

Population control measures serve three purposes. First of all, they hamper the movement of resistance members (perhaps even tracking and identifying them). Second, they serve to harass and intimidate resistance supporters and sympathizers. And third, they intimidate members of the public and force them to change their lives to accommodate the desires of those in power. Japanese internment camps in North America in World War II probably didn’t stop any saboteurs, but they did intimidate people of Asian backgrounds while the US government confiscated the assets, businesses, and property of the detainees. Often population control methods are “security theater” and allow governments to flex their muscles and project authoritarian power with the goal of cowing people into compliance.

Faced with such measures, resistance movements have several options. Aboveground resistance movements and their allies can use the repression to gain support from the general population, appealing to shared public concerns like privacy, freedom of movement, genuine security, and so on. If possible, a campaign of civil disobedience could be organized against population control measures, and registration materials could be destroyed. Sometimes aboveground groups respond by becoming more clandestine. The underground must organize its own countermeasures, which has traditionally included the forgery of identification cards and travel papers and efforts to bypass checkpoints, as well as initiatives to smuggle persecuted people and resistance members past checkpoints.

7. SELECTIVE CONCESSIONS AND CO-OPTATION

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If other efforts to smother resistance fail, those in power may resort to selective concessions or co-optation. That is, those in power appear to give in or concede to some demands of the resistance; or they co-opt or incorporate some of those demands into their own platform.

The distinction between the concessions and co-optation is not always clear. During the Great Depression, as poor people’s movements raged, President Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced a sweeping set of social programs dubbed the New Deal, which offered relief payments for the poor and unemployed. On one hand, it was a concession to demands of vigorous social movements—a win. On the other hand, it was a way of directing popular support and momentum into the base of the Democratic Party, giving them an edge over the Republicans for nearly a generation.

Winning concessions is not the same as victory. But forcing concessions in an imperfect system can be a valuable way of making concrete progress and building momentum.

The biggest danger is when those in power try to co-opt the language and causes of a movement in order to undermine it. The full name of the Nazi Party under Hitler was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party; of course the party was virulently capitalist, not socialist, and as soon as it was in power it did whatever it could to smash unions and undermine workers’ rights. Which is exactly the danger of co-opted language.

As a counterintelligence method, concessions are meant to internally divide resistance movements—to create fracture lines between resisters with different thresholds for success. Sometimes the concessions are intended to present a veneer of change. Sometimes those in power attempt to co-opt part of the resistance cause in order to confuse their supporters and pull the rug out from under the movement. (Counterintelligence expert Frank Kitson advised governments to use the “judicious promise of concessions” combined with force while insisting that “most of the concessions can only be implemented once . . . life . . . returns to normal.”190)

It’s the old divide and conquer.

Some feel that the British treaty with Ireland at the end of the War of Independence—which deliberately excluded Northern Ireland—was an intentional move to divide the nascent republic. If so, it worked; a terrible civil war in Ireland followed the treaty signing.

Those in power may offer selective deals to prisoners or prisoners of war, knowing that if a few prisoners give in the group’s solidarity will break. Nelson Mandela was offered a deal by President Botha for a conditional release in 1985. But Botha wanted him to renounce armed struggle. Mandela refused to agree, and furthermore, refused any deal that would let him out of jail while his fellow political prisoners remained behind bars. “Only free men can negotiate,” he declared. “Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.”

Concessions may also be a theatrical measure to undermine a movement’s outside support. Michael Collins wrote that Britain’s peace offer to the IRA happened because the Crown’s “relationships with foreign countries were growing increasingly unhappy, the recovery of world opinion was becoming—in fact, had become—indispensable. Ireland must be disposed of by means of a generous peace. If Ireland refused that settlement, we could be shown to be irreconcilables. Then, Britain would again have a free hand for whatever further actions were necessary ‘to restore law and order’ in a country that would not accept the responsibility of doing so for itself.”191 Further, he cautioned shortly after the treaty, “This movement by the British Cabinet did not indicate any real change of heart on the part of Britain towards Ireland. Any stirrings of conscience were felt only by a minority.”192 The British concessions happened only because of the use of political force by Irish resisters.

Sometimes the offer of concessions or negotiations is simply tricks designed to put the resistance off their guard. How many times has a threatened colonial power offered negotiations to a resisting Indigenous or enslaved group, only to capture and murder the leaders when they show up to talk?

Often, in more liberal countries, concession offers lead to prolonged periods of “consultation” and phony negotiation. Governments undermine us by trying to flatter us, or to make us feel like part of the process. They want us to direct our energies into nonthreatening and time-consuming government procedures. But resistance movements win by causing disruption of business as usual, and by seizing the initiative—not by letting those in power dictate terms and timetables. They win by taking their issues to the streets, not by sitting politely in town halls. That doesn’t mean movements should never participate in consultations. But if consultations are a sign that governments are willing to concede something, we need to increase our protest and disruption. If we decrease it, then those in power learn that we will give in, be silent, and go away.

The US Field Manual on Counterinsurgency suggests that “[s]killful counterinsurgents can deal a significant blow to an insurgency by appropriating its cause.” Although the authors caution that these causes are sometimes complex and vary from area to area, an effective counterinsurgency operation “must address the legitimate grievances insurgents use to generate popular support.”193

Indeed, co-optation has been perhaps the technique of choice used against promising mass movements in the affluent world in recent decades. Much of the environmental movement has been appropriated or rendered toothless by greenwashing and the semantic obliteration of ideas like “sustainability.” The management of many labour unions have been similarly co-opted. During the Great Depression (as Poor People’s Movements discussed), many relief organizations were hamstrung and dissolved after being co-opted. Those in power can try to co-opt almost any cause with a bit of money and help from some willing liberals.

Responding to concessions and co-optation is far more difficult and complex than dealing with overt attacks. Unlike in the other cases, those in power may actually be giving the resistance what they want. They may only offer small concessions, and it’s unlikely that they offer it out of a real change of heart. But this is still an indicator of success by the resistance movement. And, depending on the nature of the concessions, many people in the movement will be tempted to accept them and stop fighting.

To counter the cynical use of concessions resisters must maintain solidarity. Whenever possible, groups should avoid accepting concessions or negotiating without consulting allies.

Stratfor’s Divide and Conquer

The divide and conquer approach has been used by public relations firms for decades. Pagan International (Stratfor’s precursor) targeted grassroots organizers boycotting Nestlé in the 1980s.

Founder Rafael D. Pagan, a US military intelligence veteran, explained that their goal “must be to separate the fanatic activist leaders . . . from the overwhelming majority of their followers: decent, concerned people who are willing to judge us on the basis of our openness and usefulness,” and to strip radicals of their alliances with other groups.194

Pagan also applied this in campaigns for oil companies doing business in apartheid South Africa; they tried to divide anti-apartheid activists from supportive religious communities, and to split apart alliances. Eventually their plan was exposed, clients fled, and Pagan International went bankrupt in 1990.

Afterward, executives from the defunct firm went on to form other PR companies that eventually merged into Stratfor. And, twenty years after Pagan was exposed, Stratfor was giving the same kinds of advice for oil companies in the tar sands.

The formula used by Strafor and other PR companies, according to both public statements and leaked documents, is to divide movements into four overlapping parts—radicals, idealists, realists, and opportunists—each of whom can be dealt with in different ways:195

Radicals are committed to fundamental change; they are the “fanatic activist leaders.” They want “social justice and political empowerment” and “see the multinational corporation as inherently evil.”196 The radicals are seen as the most dangerous to those in power, because they cannot be bought off or bamboozled, and because they are after long-term change they don’t give up easily after a defeat. Radicals can only be neutralized by isolating them from their supporters and the rest of the movement.

Idealists believe in a moral position for its own sake; they want to see “a perfect world.” Stratfor sees them as altruistic but “naïve.” Idealists have credibility with the public because of their pure altruism—that’s especially powerful when they ally with radicals. But the idealist belief in perfection is also their vulnerability. Stratfor and other PR companies target this by trying to muddy the waters (for example: “It’s better to get oil from Canada than the Middle East. If you oppose tar sands oil, you’re supporting human rights violations in Saudi Arabia!”). The purpose is to confuse idealists, to make perfection seem unattainable, and to convert idealists into “realists.”

Realists, in the vernacular of Stratfor, are those most willing to compromise with the establishment. They want superficial change, rather than deep change. They are a type of liberal, who can be treated “seriously” and pitched against the radicals and idealists. The Stratfor approach is to co-opt “realist” activists and groups; to make them participants in phony coalitions to give a social change veneer to business as usual.

Opportunists are people who want personal gain like money or fame. Some of them mostly want a job (in public policy or nonprofits) while others are real activists who pursue popularity and shallow “wins.” Opportunists tend to change their position with changing trends; they’ll keep to a liberal approach if that will bring respect or donor dollars, but they may switch to a more militant approach if there is a groundswell of public outrage. The Stratfor approach is to buy them off, either by giving them a job or by giving them an easy, superficial concession knowing that they (along with the “realists”) will lose interest and move on.

These categories are imperfect. But we use them to understand how those in power try to dismantle our movements.

We can also take these same categories and invert the Stratfor approach. We can ask: “How do we handle each of these categories to make a movement stronger?”

For radicals, it’s straightforward. Radicals have the strongest commitment to real change; our goal must be to connect them to other parts of the movement. (Only isolation can defeat radicals.) Idealists have to be turned into radicals, by connecting them to vibrant resistance movements and a tradition of action that has brought about genuine change (if not a perfect world).

Realists must be made to understand that the only “real” pathway to lasting progress is through radical change; there can be intermediate stepping-stones on the way to victory, but ultimately success will only come from uprooting entrenched systems of power.

Opportunists are the most dangerous for resistance movements, because they sometimes use radical or militant language, but are actually fickle and prone to selling out. Their worst tendencies must be limited and contained. Opportunists are attracted to positions of unaccountable power, so we should make sure that grassroots movements make participatory decisions. And we should build deep movements with long-term strategy and radical goals.

It’s rather like being in a large group of people who are arrested for political reasons. As long as you stay together, refuse to give information, and refuse to make individual deals, you may get released. But as soon as a few people give up, others will follow, and group solidarity disintegrates.

Framing an appropriate response in the media is also important. For example, if a government publicly offers a partial concession—“We’re willing to give financial compensation to those poisoned by fracking”—resistance movements should not celebrate prematurely. Rather, they need to keep their eyes on the prize and talk about the ultimate issue: “We’re glad that the government has accepted that fracking is harmful, but money can’t restore health—we still need a full ban on fracking to protect people and the land.”

To cope with concessions-as-disruption, a movement also needs to be in some general agreement on what winning actually looks like. What is the goal the resistance movement is struggling for? A lack of clear goals will lead to needless conflict. Groups and movements must take the time to discuss and understand what it means for them to win.

The issue of co-optation is complex and addressing it requires a viable long-term strategy. If those in power actually agree to a demand, what is the next step? Resistance groups often have multiple and complex causes. Those causes need to be integrated into a viable long-term strategy. Those in power shouldn’t be able to pull the rug out from under your group simply by agreeing to a demand or creating a depoliticized version of your own efforts. Have your next move planned in advance.

Dealing with success requires more long-term thinking and conflict-resolution skills than dealing with overt attacks. Counterintelligence and repression can’t be addressed piecemeal. We will only be able to cope with such attacks on our movements if we come to understand our adversary’s strategies for repression, and counteract them accordingly.

We also have to understand how repression affects our ability to sustain our movements. Many of the repressive techniques in this chapter are about separating the combatants or frontline activists in a movement from their base of support. Once that happens, activists can be starved of the resources they need to fight.

To win, we must overcome repression and build the strong support base that viable movements require to fund and sustain themselves. (And we have to overcome traps like the “Nonprofit Industrial Complex” which use external funding to undermine resisters.) That’s the subject we turn to in the next chapter: Logistics & Fundraising.