Turner Case Has Echoes of COINTELPRO, but with a Distinct Difference

By Nicholas Stix

Alexander Hart’s VDARE front page story,“Hal Turner Charged with Advocating Violence—But Who was He Really Working for?”, is a conspiracy theorist’s dream, except that it’s apparently true.

White supremacist/neo-Nazi/whatever Hal Turner was for several years a paid agent provocateur in the employ of the FBI. Turner is now charged in state and federal court with advocating violence against two Connecticut state legislators and three federal judges, respectively.

This case recalls the federal “COINTELPRO” ("counterintelligence program") program, which was founded in 1956 by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, was active largely during the 1960s, and was shut down in 1971, or at least the media’s demonization of same.

In COINTELPRO, FBI agents infiltrated revolutionary leftwing groups, and acted as agents provocateur, while in other cases engaging in covert actions from outside groups, seeking to sow dissension within them (e,g., through poison pen letters). The media and socialist, communist, and racist black pols were so upset when they learned about the program, that they demanded and got law enforcement handcuffed in all sorts of ways, the better to help their revolutionary comrades.

But there is one huge difference between the Turner case and COINTELPRO: COINTELPRO typically targeted leftwing groups that were either already violent revolutionaries, or were infested with Communists, such as Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Turner was used to target WN/NN groups that were non-violent.

(Hoover had this crazy notion that the government shouldn’t passively wait around to be destroyed. Since his time, we have made such progress from his madness, that the chief agent seeking to destroy the American government is now secreted at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C. Hoover’s mistake was in inciting already criminal groups to commit further crimes. He would have done better to publicly expose such groups, but the primarily Democratic presidents he worked for during COINTELPRO did not permit him to do so.)

As Hart notes, “Turner is virtually unique among those on the ‘far right’ for his promotion of violence.”

Where “rightwing extremists” are concerned, the feds have long been sleeping with the SPLC (or as we at VDARE call it, the “$PLC”) and ADL.

Imagine all the good folks whom Turner’s lawyer, Michael Orozco, must be planning on subpoenaing: FBI domestic counterterrorism officials, folks from the ADL, my good friend Mark Potok from the $PLC, and yet others.

Even though the MSM could blame this program on the Bush Administration, I would not hold my breath, waiting for them to jump all over this story. But we at VDARE are already on the case.