New Film: FBI and KKK

ABOUT FBI - KKK



FBI KKK is a personal, one hour documentary about my father, Dargan Frierson, an FBI agent in Greensboro, NC, and his work with George Franklin Dorsett, the Imperial Kludd, or chaplain, of the United Klans of America. From 1964 to 1971, J. Edgar Hoover directed an FBI counterintelligence program called COINTELPRO: White Hate Groups whose goal was to neutralize the Ku Klux Klan.

The program targeted the national leadership of the Klan, and my father soon had Dorsett as his paid informant. As my father has said, “It was easy for me to recruit Klan informants. My grandfather was in the Klan, and I disliked Lyndon Johnson almost as much as they did.”

Dorsett was a housepainter who lived on Trogdon Street in the Glenwood neighborhood of Greensboro. A fiery Baptist preacher, Dorsett was one of the biggest draws at rallies organized by his friends, Catfish Cole, and J. R. Jones, the North Carolina Grand Dragon.

A national leader and one of the most visible faces of the Klan throughout the 1960s, Dorsett would denounce race mixing on the local radio, picket frequently at integrated schools, take the fifth before the House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington in 1965, counter demonstrate at civil rights marches, and fight a lawsuit by the City of Greensboro to take his house. He would also provide invaluable information to the FBI and build the largest Klan splinter group in the state.

When COINTELPRO and Dorsett were ultimately exposed by the Church Committee in 1975, my dad was retired from the FBI, but he was on the Greensboro City Council. The Greensboro News and Record reported that Senator Robert Morgan (D, NC) had confirmed that Dorsett was an FBI informant. Morgan was upset about Dorsett because, while he was on the FBI payroll, he had made inflammatory statements at a Raleigh Klan rally, including: "We' don't intend to have any violence if we have to kill every nigger in America."

After the Senate investigation, FBI agents were given clear directives in 1976 by Attorney General Edward Levi to investigate only specific criminal acts, rather than individuals' political views. These reforms would stand until the events of 9/11 brought an almost total lifting of restrictions on FBI intelligence gathering activities.

Yours truly appears in this film to discuss my findings regarding COINTELPRO-White Hate in North Carolina.

http://www.fbi-kkk.com/index.html