ADVERTISEMENT We now know that the FBI coordinated a series of assassinations as part of its covert domestic programs. The COINTELPRO was set up to surveil and disrupt groups and movements that the FBI found threatening. Though many groups, including anti-war, student, and environmental activists, and the New Left were harassed, infiltrated, falsely accused of criminal activity, the Black community — and particularly the Black Panther Party — bore the brunt of the abuse. The attack on the Black Panthers was one element of the bureau’s efforts, as Hoover himself described it, to “disrupt, misdirect and otherwise neutralize” African American organizations and prevent the possible rise of an influential Black leader — a Black messiah.