Introduction Movements Eras Organizations Index Contributions
About Eras
Abolitionism & the Slave Power (1850–1861) The Haymarket Affair & the Anti-Anarchist Era (1886–1903) The First Red Scare (1917–1920) World War II: Japanese Incarceration & the First Smith Act Trials (1941–1945) McCarthyism (1947–1957) COINTELPRO (1956–1971) The Vietnam War Era (1964–1975) The American Indian Movement & Wounded Knee (1973–1977) The Reagan Era (1981–1989) The Anti-Globalization Movement (1999–2001) The War on Terror (2001–) The Green Scare (2005–2010) Occupy Wall Street (2011–2012) Ferguson & the Movement for Black Lives (2014–2016) Standing Rock & the #NoDAPL Water Protectors (2016–2017) J20: The Inauguration Day Prosecutions (2017) The George Floyd Uprising (2020) The Stop Cop City Era (2022–) The Trump-Era Crackdown on Palestine Solidarity (2024–) Civil Rights & Black Power
About COINTELPRO (1956–1971)
The Program: Disruption as Policy (1956–1971) The Media Burglary & the Church Committee (1971–1976) The Panther 21 (1969–1971) Fred Hampton & the Chicago Raid (1969–1982) The Frame-Ups: Geronimo Pratt & Dhoruba bin Wahad (1970–1997)
THE MEDIA BURGLARY & THE CHURCH COMMITTEE (1971–1976)
The Media Burglary & the Church Committee (1971–1976)

On the night of March 8, 1971, eight antiwar activists calling themselves the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI picked the lock of the Bureau's resident agency in Media, Pennsylvania and removed every file in the office. The documents they mailed to journalists — including the first page ever seen bearing the word COINTELPRO — proved that the FBI's mission against dissent was surveillance and disruption, not law enforcement: agents were instructed to intensify "the paranoia endemic in these circles" and leave activists convinced there was "an FBI agent behind every mailbox."

None of the burglars was ever caught; five revealed themselves only in 2014. NBC reporter Carl Stern's FOIA suits forced out the fuller COINTELPRO record, and the Senate's Church Committee (1975–76) documented the program's scope, concluding the Bureau had conducted "a sophisticated vigilante operation" against lawful political activity. The exposure ended the program on paper, produced the FBI guidelines regime, and gave hundreds of defendants and prisoners the documentary basis for reopening their cases.