8 Shocking Crimes That Were Secretly Committed By Governments

4. COINTELPRO

Still allegedly being run to this day, COINTELPRO (Short for Counter Intelligence Program) was a campaign of carefully orchestrated infiltrations of political organisations by the American FBI. Confirmed targets of the operations have been the most vocal of civil rights movements, notable journalists opposed to the Vietnam War and, most specifically, Dr Martin Luther King.

After King's landmark march on Washington in 1963, then President Herbert Hoover personally charged the FBI with infiltrating King's organisations, telling the organisation "We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous !*$% of the future in this nation from the standpoint of communism, the !*$%, and national security". Within weeks, King's people were finding bugs and listening devices in every hotel room he was provided. Both journalists and historians have repeatedly claimed that King was sent so-called "suicide packages" by the FBI.

One of which allegedly contained, amongst other things, audio confessions claiming to detail depraved sexual encounters King had had, along with a note that read "there is only one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self is bared to the nation". King declined their kind offer. When King attempted to expose the work of COINTELPRO, government friendly newspapers and political figures themselves branded him "the most notorious liar in America" and blamed any actions on the work of white-supremacists and political activists.