Re: [Marxism] Re: SWP offices

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Lance Murdoch wrote:
> Anyhow, I am working on COINTELPRO stuff in draft #2, including the
> FBI informers (at least one out of ten members from 1960-1966),  the
> black bag jobs, the wiretaps (the first being on Farrell Dobbs hotel
> room in 1943), the FBI's "SWP Disruption Program" with its in-party
> informers attempting to sabotage the party, its anonymous letters like
> the one to African-American SWPer Paul Boutelle, supposedly from an
> anonymous SWPer (actually from the FBI) calling him and other other
> blacks in the SWP "party monkeys" whose leaving the SWP would not
> result in much of a "brain drain" and so forth.

That brings back memories! This happened at one of the first SWP branch
meetings I ever went to in NYC. Paul got up in the beginning of the
meeting and asked for a point of privilege. After being recognized, he
invited the person who sent the letter to step outside.

Just around the same time, I got an anonymous postcard from the FBI sent
to my workplace "reminding" me about the next branch meeting of the SWP.
It was signed Comrade X or something like that and said that the meeting
would discuss plans on how to overthrow capitalism. Just the kind of
thing that a programmer trainee in 1968 like me would dread receiving.
As it turned out, largely because of the ferment in the USA, the manager
told me that if I ever got a postcard like that again, to inform him
right away. He would track down the person sending it and make sure that
they didn't work at Met Life any longer. He believed in a
harrassment-free environment.

Years later I got my FBI files through FOIA and discovered not only the
postcard, but a memo from the FBI proposing that such postcards be sent
over a period of months in order "to embarrass" me and to sow division.
I was, as they described it, a grad student with a b+ average and a
programmer trainee who had gotten good performance reviews. It was the
socialism stuff that they didn't care for.

For those of you interested in such stories, I strongly recommend my old
friend Nelson Blackstock's book "Cointelpro". It is the best-selling
book ever written by an SWP member and quite a good read.

--

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