COINTELPRO

thumb|right|COINTELPRO memo proposing a plan to expose the pregnancy of actress Jean Seberg, a financial supporter of the [[Black Panther Party, hoping to "possibly cause her embarrassment or tarnish her image with the general public". Covert campaigns to publicly discredit activists and destroy their interpersonal relationships were a common tactic used by COINTELPRO agents.]] COINTELPRO (a syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert and illegal projects conducted between 1956 and 1971 by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting American political parties and organizations that the FBI perceived as subversive.

Groups and individuals targeted by the FBI included feminist organizations, the Communist Party USA, anti-Vietnam War organizers, activists in the civil rights and Black power movements (e.g., Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and the Black Panther Party), student organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), environmentalist and animal rights organizations, the American Indian Movement (AIM), Chicano and Mexican-American groups like the Brown Berets and the United Farm Workers, and independence movements (including Puerto Rican independence groups, such as the Young Lords and the Puerto Rican Socialist Party). Although the program primarily focused on organizations that were part of the broader New Left, they also targeted white supremacist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan and the National States' Rights Party.