Editing Jean Seberg (section)

== FBI COINTELPRO operation ==
[[File:FBI vs. Jean Seberg1.jpg|thumb|FBI inter-office memo: "... cause her embarrassment and cheapen her image"]]
[[File:FBI vs. Jean Seberg2.jpg|thumb|FBI inter-office memo: "Usual precautions to avoid identification of the Bureau"]]
During the late 1960s, Seberg provided financial support to groups supporting [[Civil and political rights|civil rights]], such as the [[National Association for the Advancement of Colored People|NAACP]] as well as [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Native American]] school groups such as the [[Meskwaki]] Bucks at the [[Meskwaki Settlement, Iowa|Tama County settlement]] near her hometown of Marshalltown, for whom she purchased $500 worth of basketball uniforms.<ref name="LAT2002" /><ref name="Richards">{{cite book|first=David|last=Richards|title=Played Out: The Jean Seberg Story|publisher=Random House|year=1981|isbn=0-394-51132-8|page=204}}</ref>

As part of its extended campaign to smear and discredit [[Black power movement|black liberation]] and [[Anti-war movement|anti-war]] groups, which began in 1968, the [[FBI]] became aware of several gifts Seberg had made to the [[Black Panther Party]], totaling an estimated $10,500 in contributions; these were noted among a list of other celebrities in FBI internal documents later declassified and released to the public under [[Freedom of Information Act (United States)|FOIA]] requests.<ref name="LAT2002" /><ref name="Richards" />

The FBI operation against Seberg, directly overseen by [[J. Edgar Hoover]], used [[COINTELPRO]] program techniques to harass, intimidate, [[Defamation|defame]], and discredit her.<ref name="NYT19810712" /><ref name="LAT2002" /> The FBI's stated goal was an unspecified "neutralization" of Seberg with a subsidiary objective to "cause her embarrassment and serve to cheapen her image with the public", while taking the "usual precautions to avoid identification of the Bureau."<ref>{{cite book|first=Paul|last=Brodeur|title=A Writer in the Cold War|publisher=Faber and Faber|year=1997|isbn=978-0-571-19907-5|pages=[https://archive.org/details/secretswriterinc00brod/page/159 159–65]|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/secretswriterinc00brod/page/159}}</ref> The FBI's strategy and [[modality (linguistics)|modalities]] can be found in its interoffice memos.<ref name="jfk.hood.edu">Ronald Ostrow, [http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/F%20Disk/FBI/FBI%20Cointelpro/Item%2045.pdf "Extensive probe of Jean Seberg Revealed"], ''The Times'' via jfk.hood.edu, January 9, 1980.</ref>

In 1970, the FBI created a false story from a San Francisco-based informant that the child Seberg was carrying was not fathered by her ex-husband [[Romain Gary]], as initially claimed, but by [[Raymond Hewitt]], a member of the Black Panther Party.<ref>Richards 234–38</ref><ref name="Munn90">Munn, p. 90</ref> The story was reported by [[gossip columnist]] [[Joyce Haber]] of the ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'' as a [[blind item]].<ref>Richards, p. 239</ref><ref name= haber-story>[[Joyce Haber|Haber, Joyce]] (May 28, 1970). "[https://www.newspapers.com/image/222417604/ Miss A and Panther to Be Parents]". ''The Courier-News'' (Bridgewater, New Jersey). p. 19.</ref>{{efn|"She is beautiful, she is blonde, and she was born in the state of one of the senators Ted Kennedy just proposed for the 1972 Democratic Presidential nomination... a distinguished diplomat picked her for his wife... her houseguests were often... black nationalists... And now, according to all those really 'in' international sources, topic A is the baby Miss A is expecting, and its father. Papa's said to be a rather prominent Black Panther."<ref name=haber-story/>}} It was also printed by ''[[Newsweek]]'' magazine, in which Seberg was directly named.<ref>Richards, p. 247</ref> Seberg went into [[Preterm birth|premature labor]] and, on August 23, 1970, gave birth to a {{convert|4|lb|kg|abbr=on|adj=on}} baby girl. The child died two days later.<ref>Richards, p. 253</ref> Seberg held a funeral in her hometown with an open casket that allowed reporters to see the infant's white skin to disprove the rumors, though she later acknowledged that a Mexican student revolutionary, Carlos Navarra, was the actual father.<ref>{{cite book|last=Friedrich|first=Otto|title=Going crazy: An inquiry into madness in our time|year=1975|publisher=Simon and Schuster|location=New York|isbn=0-671-22174-4|page=230}}</ref><ref>Richards 234–8</ref>

Seberg and Gary later sued ''[[Newsweek]]'' for [[Defamation|libel]] and defamation, asking for $200,000 in damages. She contended that she had become so upset after reading the story that she went into premature labor, which resulted in the death of her daughter. A Paris court ordered ''Newsweek'' to pay the couple $10,800 in damages, and it ordered ''Newsweek'' to print the judgment in its publication and eight other newspapers.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=HchkAAAAIBAJ&pg=1627,3844237|title=Seberg awarded $20,000 in Newsweek libel suit|date=October 26, 1971|work=The Telegraph-Herald|page=18|access-date=2012-12-02}}</ref>

The Seberg investigation went far beyond the publication of defamatory articles. According to friends interviewed after her death, she experienced years of aggressive in-person [[surveillance]], amounting to constant stalking, as well as burglaries and other means of intimidation. Newspaper reports say Seberg was well aware of the surveillance. FBI files show that she was wiretapped, and in 1980, the ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'' published logs of her Swiss [[Wiretapping|wiretapped]] phone calls.<ref name="jfk.hood.edu" /> U.S. surveillance was deployed while she was residing in France and while traveling in Switzerland and Italy. The FBI files reveal that the agency contacted the FBI legal attachés in the U.S. embassies in Paris and Rome and provided files on Seberg to the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]], [[United States Secret Service|Secret Service]] and [[military intelligence]] to assist in monitoring Seberg while she was abroad.

Two weeks after Seberg's death in 1979, the FBI admitted what it had done nine years previously.<ref name= tried>"[https://www.newspapers.com/image/621393524/ FBI Tried to Smear Actress Seberg]". ''The Sacramento Bee'' (Sacramento, California). September 15, 1979. p. A2.</ref><ref name= admits>{{cite news|last=Rawls|first=Wendell Jr|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1979/09/15/archives/fbi-admits-planting-a-rumor-to-discredit-jean-seberg-in-1970-former.html|title=F.B.I. Admits Planting a Rumor To Discredit Jean Seberg in 1970|work=The New York Times|date=September 15, 1979|access-date=July 12, 2020}}</ref> FBI records show that Hoover kept President [[Richard Nixon]] informed of FBI activities related to the Seberg case through Nixon's [[Domestic policy|domestic affairs]] chief [[John Ehrlichman]]. [[United States Attorney General|Attorney General]] [[John N. Mitchell|John Mitchell]] and [[United States Deputy Attorney General|Deputy Attorney General]] [[Richard Kleindienst]] were also kept informed of FBI activities related to Seberg.<ref name="jfk.hood.edu"/> At the time of the FBI's admission of its activities, Haber was no longer writing a column, having been fired in 1975 for often using unattributed information in her column.<ref>Fireman, Ken (October 3, 1979). "[https://www.newspapers.com/image/244244701 Seberg's Dream Became a Nightmare]". ''Knight-Ridder News Service''. Tallahassee Democrat (Tallahassee, Florida). p. C1, C2.</ref> Following the FBI's admission, Haber said she could not disclose the source of the information from her column and said, "If I were used by the FBI, I didn't know it. ... I am certainly shocked to learn that the FBI engaged in planting stories with news people."<ref name= tried/><ref name= admits/>  This point of view stands in stark contrast to historical analysts of FBI institutional behavior. Researchers Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall stated in their book, ''The Cointelpro Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Domestic Dissent'', that "There is no indication that Richard Wallace Held [Special Agent-in-Charge of the San Francisco FBI Office 1985-1993] ever considered [Seberg-related FBI activities] to be anything other than an extremely successful COINTELPRO operation"<ref name="Churchill 1990">Churchill, Ward and Vander Wall, Jim, The Cointelpro Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Domestic Dissent, South End Press, Boston, MA, 1990.</ref>

===Possible Hollywood blacklisting===
At the peak of her career, Seberg suddenly stopped acting in [[Hollywood (film industry)|Hollywood]] films. Reportedly, she was not pleased with the roles that she had been offered, some of which, she claimed, bordered on pornography.<ref name="filmthreat.com">{{cite web|url=https://www.filmthreat.com/interviews/1181/|title=The Jean Seberg Enigma: Interview With Garry Mcgee|work=Film Threat|access-date=July 17, 2011}}</ref> She was not offered any great Hollywood roles, regardless of their size.<ref name="filmthreat.com"/> Experts on the FBI's actions in the COINTELPRO project suggest that Seberg was "[[Blacklist|effectively blacklisted]]"<ref>FBI Secrets: An Agent's Expose. by M. Wesley Swearinge</ref> from Hollywood films.

===Family reaction to FBI abuse of Seberg===
Seberg's father reacted strongly to the story of FBI abuses, stating that "if this is true, why in the dickens didn't they just shoot her, instead of having all this travail that's gone on. I have this flag in the corner, that I used to put out every morning, and I haven't put it out since."<ref name="60 Minutes">Archived at [https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211211/cYjpjWNcQeg Ghostarchive]{{cbignore}} and the [https://web.archive.org/web/20191120003312/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYjpjWNcQeg Wayback Machine]{{cbignore}}: {{Cite news|last=Mike|first=Wallace|date=1981|title= 1981 Special Report: "Jean Seberg"|work=CBS: Mike Wallace Presents|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYjpjWNcQeg|access-date=2020-09-21}}{{cbignore}}</ref>