Thread by @RobertSkvarla

More fun COINTELPRO finds. In the late 1960s the FBI attempted to subvert New Left media by creating their own underground comix and newspapers. The purpose? To discredit the SDS and promote fighting among left-wing groups.

The first proposal, The Workshop, adopted the language of anarchists because their "point of view [was] the most disruptive element in the New Left" and could be used to target anyone. The FBI intended to attack figures like Stokely Carmichael.

That same year, in 1968, it produced a real fake underground paper: Armageddon News. The paper was ostensibly based out of the University of Indiana Bloomington, allowing the FBI to use it to astroturf attacks on left-wing activists on campus.

And a third paper, The Longhorn Tale, was distributed by the San Antonio field office at the University of Texas at Austin. The paper essentially doxed SDS activists deemed "disruptive."

I'd like to give credit here to a friend, Dale Brumfield, who pointed me to some of these documents after I found his writing on the subject and reached out to him. First, his Medium article from 2019:

medium.com/discourse/that…

And an earlier article he wrote for The Austin Chronicle:

austinchronicle.com/news/2013-06-0…

Ah fuck, forgot the funniest one. A Maoist, pro-Che paper initially called Chevara News somehow morphed into an objectivist rag called The Rational Observer.

🤔

Seems like this might blow up, so buy Dale's book on real underground press. He's an amazing researcher/writer.

amazon.com/Independent-Pr…