Cointelpro

[Stephen Colbert]

What is it exactly.

Why do I get the feeling I dont like it.

What is the extent of its existence/power

[Who?]

From Wikipedia:
COINTELPRO (an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_operation), and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Bureau_of_Investigation) (FBI) aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissident) within the United States (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States). The FBI used covert operations from its inception; however, formal COINTELPRO operations took place between 1956 and 1971. The FBI's stated motivation at the time was "protecting national security (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security), preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order."

Basically they tried to put people like us away, for a loooong time.
But I'm pretty sure the whole program is over with, so don't worry.

[Red Commissar]

COINTELPRO was an organized program within the FBI. As Who? showed from the wiki entry it outright breached liberties to gather information on dissidents.

On paper it was made to get all groups who were subversive in some form to the United States government, but one can easily see that it focused its efforts on left-wing groups. It became more pronounced during the Vietnam War when it kept taps on not just communist/socialist groups, but pretty much anyone who had become critical of the government and the Vietnam War, as well as those involved with the Civil Rights movement, such as MLK and Malcolm X.

COINTELPRO observed their targets through a number of methods, through shadows, infiltrating their organizations, intercepting mail, and wiretapping. COINTELPRO also took it upon themselves to smear and spread misinformation about certain figures in their circles to damage their popularity.

Some of this stuff has been declassified and one can see the large amount of documents that was recorded on various figures during that time. Just recently the FBI declassified some documents relating to Howard Zinn during his involvement with the anti-war/establishment trend in the Vietnam War.

COINTELPRO was shut down in 1972, following J. Edgar Hoover's death which saw a number of changes to the FBI. That being said the FBI and other security agencies still watch over groups marked as being subversive, but it's not as blatantly illegal as COINTELPRO did, though but not by much unfortunately.

[ContrarianLemming]

the above covers it, and we all know it still goes on.

[AK]

I'm an agent.