Documented FBI programs and operations, from COINTELPRO onward. 10 case files in the archive.
The FBI's covert program of surveillance, infiltration, and disruption of US political organizations from 1956 to 1971. Five sub-programs, the King 'suicide letter,' the Hampton killing.
The Philadelphia Police Department's helicopter bombing of the MOVE row house at 6221 Osage Avenue. 11 MOVE members killed including 5 children; 65 row homes destroyed.
The 1968 Lorraine Motel killing. James Earl Ray's guilty plea and lifelong recantation. The 1979 HSCA conspiracy finding. The 1999 King v. Jowers civil verdict for the King family. The 2000 DOJ investigation's contrary finding.
The FBI's internet surveillance packet-sniffer, installed at ISPs to capture a target's email. The over-collection concern, the EPIC FOIA litigation, the 2000 independent review, the DCS1000 renaming, and the 2005 shift to commercial tools.
The FBI's surveillance and harassment of Martin Luther King Jr.: the 1963 wiretap authorization, the hotel-room bugging, the 1964 anonymous 'suicide letter,' the Church Committee findings, and the recordings sealed at the National Archives until 2027.
The December 1969 police killing of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in Chicago, the FBI informant who supplied the floor plan, the discredited 'shootout' account, the COINTELPRO campaign against the BPP, and the 1982 civil settlement.
The FBI campaign against AIM, the 71-day 1973 Wounded Knee occupation, the Pine Ridge 'reign of terror,' the 1975 firefight that killed two FBI agents, and the contested conviction of Leonard Peltier, commuted in 2025.
Nixon's 1970 proposal to coordinate the FBI, CIA, NSA, and DIA against anti-war groups using illegal techniques including burglary and mail-opening. Approved and rescinded within days after Hoover's objection; disclosed via Watergate and the Church Committee.
The FBI's 1999 strategic assessment of potential extremist and apocalyptic violence around the year 2000. The millenarian and domestic-extremist groups it analyzed, the religious-freedom criticism it drew, and what actually happened at the millennium.
The FBI's counterintelligence program against the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists. Its informants and disruption tactics, the troubling case of agent provocateur Gary Thomas Rowe and the murder of Viola Liuzzo, and the Church Committee's assessment.