The FBI Targets the American Indian Movement (1972)

Shortly before the 1972 presidential elections, members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) took over the Washington, D.C. offices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The occupation came at the end of the Trail of Broken Treaties, a months’ long protest to call attention to the United States’ refusal to recognize Native American sovereignty and to protect Indigenous land, religion, and culture. Federal officials considered AIM a threat to national security, leading the FBI to intensify efforts to weaken the movement through infiltration, surveillance, and violence. The FBI’s actions were part of COINTELPRO, a program of counterintelligence used against many leftist and radical activist organizations. When COINTELPRO was exposed in 1971, the FBI was widely criticized for violating activists’ right to free speech and for its actions to discredit and disrupt political organizations. After this criticism, the FBI publicly claimed that it discontinued the program, but it continued to monitor AIM, as this excerpt from an internal FBI memo from December 1972 demonstrates.

In order to obtain the desired information, each division having American Indians located therein should institute a program to develop informants and sources able to furnish information concerning extremists or extremist organizations operating within the American Indian movement as well as advance Information concerning any future demonstrations or other activity on the part of American Indians which could result in violence or criminal activities….All investigations in conjunction with the intelligence-gathering aspect of the American Indian Movement must be most discreet. Nevertheless, it is imperative and essential the Bureau learn of any indications of advance planning or organized efforts to create disturbances and civil unrest by extremist organizations of individuals within the American Indian Movement.