Editing COINTELPRO (section)

===Uncovering===
{{main|Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI|Church Committee}}
[[File:One Vets Sq Media Delco PA.JPG|thumb|upright=1.1|The building broken into by the Citizen's Commission to Investigate the FBI, at One Veterans Square, Media, [[Pennsylvania]]]]
The program was secret until March 8, 1971, when the [[Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI]] burgled an FBI field office in [[Media, Pennsylvania]], took several dossiers, and exposed the program by passing this material to news agencies.<ref name="church-final-report" /><ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/1971/ |title=1971: Citizens Who Exposed COINTELPRO |last=Hamilton |first=Johanna |date=18 May 2015 |website=PBS: Independent Lens |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924131425/http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/1971/ |archive-date=24 September 2015 |access-date=25 August 2017 |df=dmy-all}}</ref> The boxing match known as the [[Fight of the Century]] between [[Muhammad Ali]] and [[Joe Frazier]] in March 1971 provided cover for the activist group to successfully pull off the burglary. Muhammad Ali was a COINTELPRO target because he had joined the Nation of Islam and the anti-war movement.<ref name="Intercept">{{Cite web |url=https://theintercept.com/2016/06/06/in-1971-muhammad-ali-helped-undermine-the-fbis-illegal-spying-on-americans/ |title=In 1971, Muhammad Ali Helped Undermine the FBI's Illegal Spying on Americans |last=Medsger |first=Betty|author-link= Betty Medsger|date=June 6, 2016 |website=[[The Intercept]] |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170427235216/https://theintercept.com/2016/06/06/in-1971-muhammad-ali-helped-undermine-the-fbis-illegal-spying-on-americans/ |archive-date=April 27, 2017 |access-date=April 17, 2017 |df=mdy-all}}</ref>

Many news organizations initially refused to immediately publish the information, with the notable exception of ''[[The Washington Post]]''. After affirming the reliability of the documents, it published them on the front page (in defiance of the Attorney General's request), prompting other organizations to follow suit. Within the year, Director J. Edgar Hoover declared that the centralized COINTELPRO was over, and that all future [[counterintelligence]] operations would be handled case by case.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.albionmonitor.net/9905a/jbcointelpro.html |title=A Short History of FBI COINTELPRO |last1=Cassidy |first1=Mike |last2=Miller |first2=Will |date=May 26, 1999 |website=Albion Monitor |publisher=Wayward Press |url-status=usurped |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928104133/http://www.albionmonitor.net/9905a/jbcointelpro.html |archive-date=September 28, 2007 |access-date=July 13, 2007}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Weiner|2012|p=293}}.</ref>

Additional documents were revealed in the course of separate lawsuits filed against the FBI by [[NBC]] correspondent Carl Stern, the [[Socialist Workers Party (United States)|Socialist Workers Party]], and a number of other groups. In 1976 the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities of the United States Senate, commonly referred to as the "[[Church Committee]]" after its chairman, Senator [[Frank Church]] (D-[[Idaho]]), launched a major investigation of the FBI and COINTELPRO. Many released documents have been partly or entirely [[Sanitization (classified information)|redacted]].

The Final Report of the Select Committee castigated the conduct of the intelligence community in its domestic operations (including COINTELPRO) in no uncertain terms:

{{blockquote|The Committee finds that the domestic activities of the intelligence community at times violated specific statutory prohibitions and infringed the constitutional rights of American citizens. The legal questions involved in intelligence programs were often not considered. On other occasions, they were intentionally disregarded in the belief that because the programs served the "national security" the law did not apply. While intelligence officers on occasion failed to disclose to their superiors programs which were illegal or of questionable legality, the Committee finds that the most serious breaches of duty were those of senior officials, who were responsible for controlling intelligence activities and generally failed to assure compliance with the law.<ref name="church-final-report" />

Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that ... the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of [[First Amendment]] rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.<ref name=cfr3a/>}}

The Church Committee documented a history of the FBI (initially called BOI until 1936) exercising political repression as far back as World War I, and through the 1920s, when agents were charged with rounding up "anarchists, communists, socialists, reformists and revolutionaries" for deportation. From 1936 through 1976, the domestic operations were increased against political and anti-war groups.