Ugh, I didn't see that post. Implying that the probability that the US government engaged in COINTELPRO is significantly below 1 requires far more paranoia than

Ugh, I didn't see that post. Implying that the probability that the US government engaged in COINTELPRO is significantly below 1 requires far more paranoia than belief to the contrary, given that the program was exposed, studied and publicly reported on at just about every level of government, and that the FBI itself confirms[1] that COINTELPRO did in fact exist. Unless you meant the poster on here was saying that you'd have to be paranoid to believe that there is any sort of modern form of COINTELPRO. We are quickly going into the unknowable (to outsiders) and therefore faith-based, but certainly I wouldn't call it crazy to think that the US government might be engaging in some sort of covert operations today that are similar to covert-but-exposed operations from 40 years ago. To rule that out as inconceivable or stupid requires quite a lot of faith. The DoJ itself has called various 21st FBI investigations of political dissidents troubling or improper[2]. And as far as I know, not one person in the FBI even so much as lost their job over COINTELPRO, so I'm not sure how one could suggest that we live in a world today where COINTELPRO-like programs simply couldn't exist. Of course the tactics would be different today, but that's probably more a reflection of the fact that technology enables all sorts of surveillance that wouldn't have been imaginable decades ago, than any sort of fundamental shift in what is or isn't considered reasonable or possible by the top echelons of the intelligence and law enforcement communities. [1] http://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro http://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#Post-COINTELPRO_operations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#Post-COINTELPRO_oper...