RETRO REPORT: FBI targeted Ohio U student activists

Photo via: COINTELPRO New Left Cincinnati Part 01 of 01 files.

Started by Director J. Edgar Hoover in 1956, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s counterintelligence program—known as Cointelpro—originated as a way to suppress and disrupt the activities of the Communist Party of the United States. As the operation continued, it expanded its focus onto other political groups and individuals considered radical and subversive to the U.S. Government. Those targeted ranged from civil rights activists, environmentalist organizations and feminist groups to the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups. 

Cointelpro consisted of covert and illegal surveillance and disruption efforts into these individuals and groups. These efforts lasted until 1971, when an eight-member activist group, called the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI, broke into a Pennsylvanian FBI office and stole over 1,000 classified documents, exposing the operation and sparking public outcry for all Cointelpro documents to be declassified. 

A particular point of focus of Cointelpro was college and university campuses, which were prominent centers of protest activities in the 1960s. Ohio University was one such campus monitored by the operation, specifically by the FBI’s Cincinnati bureau. 

In the 1960s, Ohio U saw demonstrations against the Vietnam War, for civil rights, for women's rights and for LGBTQ+ rights conducted by various student groups—one of which being Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Originating in 1966, Ohio U’s chapter of SDS was created by students dissatisfied with existing political organizations such as the Young Democrats and Young Republicans. 

“SDS is striving for something other than the communism of Russia or the free enterprise system of the United States where man can not control the society in which he lives,” David Feinberg, a member of SDS at the time, said in the March 3, 1966, edition of The Post.

Photos via: Ohio University Digital Archives. (Left photo from November 6, 1968 edition of The Post and right photo from November 26, 1968 edition of The Post)

The group's main activity was organizing protests against a range of issues they deemed critical. On Election Day in 1968, SDS held a symbolic mock funeral procession on College Green for “the death of democracy.” Later in that same month, they held another protest—a sit-in at Ohio U’s campus police’s office, demanding the campus police be disarmed. 

This sit-in, which resulted in the arrest of all 22 students who participated, gained the attention of the FBI’s Cincinnati bureau.

In the now declassified Cointelpro files from the Cincinnati Bureau, following the sit-in and subsequent arrests, the “bureau authorized Cincinnati to carry out counterintelligence at Ohio University against the SDS chapter there,” page 24 of the files reads. 

The FBI labeled SDS as a part of the “New Left” and launched a surveillance and disruption campaign to force the group and its members into nonaction. 

Using information gained from The Post, other Athens newspapers and the police, the FBI deployed a humiliation tactic to stifle the SDS. “Cincinnati feels activities of the SDS-OU could be disrupted by distributing copies of the newspaper articles identifying the SDS members arrested and their being found guilty of trespassing and anonymously mailing copies of these articles to their parents, to their neighbors, and to the local newspapers covering their communities,” page 44 of the files said.

The declassified documents suggest that no further action was taken against SDS at Ohio U, with the last mention of it on page 66 of the files stating, “At the present time it is felt that the coverage of New Left activities at Ohio University is adequate. However, through contact with [redacted] and [redacted] every effort is being made to identify individuals who can be utilized as sources at OU in the event New Left activity resumes in the coming school year.”

The May 4, 1978, edition of The Post features a story on Ken Light, a Ohio U student from 1969 to 1973 that was targeted by the FBI for being “a security matter, an anarchist, potentially dangerous, an extremist and a White Panther.”

Light became the target of Cointelpro surveillance because of his involvement in the Athens Peace Committee and other New Left activities as well as his alleged membership in both the Black Panther and White Panther parties. Light, though, clarified in the article that while he had friends in both groups, he was never a member himself. He additionally emphasized the non-violent nature of the Athens Peace Committee. 

The FBI’s files concerning Light extensively tracked his personal life, details in the files included everything from his date and place of birth, his parent’s occupations to his high school grades and his future career goals. They additionally contained a transcript of a 1971 phone call Light made to a friend in Kent, Ohio, leading Light to believe the FBI had bugged his phone. 

In the 1978 article, Light expressed disbelief at the FBI's spying on him. “Isn’t that something?” Light said. “The FBI had no concept of what people were doing. The fact that they gave me different classifications shows that. Everything I and a lot of other people did was legal activity guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”