COINTELPRO is one of the largest government surveillance programs in American history. A group of ordinary people found the proof by picking the locks.

The Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI spent months preparing a break-in at a Pennsylvania field office in 1971. One member learned lock picking through a mail-order course. Another spent weeks inside the building posing as a journalism student, mapping which rooms held the files.

What came out of those files reshaped American law. The FBI had sent a letter to Martin Luther King Jr. on the eve of his Nobel Peace Prize, suggesting his only real option was to take his own life. Jean Seberg had FBI-planted letters sent to her husband while pregnant. She later lost the child and, years afterward, her own life. The Church Commission that followed created the Freedom of Information Act.

Topics: COINTELPRO, Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI, Martin Luther King Jr., Jean Seberg, Freedom of Information Act

GUEST: Dr. Lee Kuhnle | http://amazon.ca/Uncover-Up-Think-Clearly-Conspiracies/dp/1770418873

Originally aired on2026-05-20