Gang stalking – also known as “organized stalking” – is a slang term for a set of tactics used in counterintelligence operations involving the covert surveillance and harassment of a targeted individual. The goal of such operations – in the parlance of counterintelligence personnel – is to “subvert” or “neutralize” an individual deemed by a government agency (or its informants) to be an enemy.
Strategy and Tactics
Organized stalking methods were used extensively by communist East Germany’s Stasi (state police) as a means of maintaining political control over its citizens. The Stasi referred to the tactics as “zersetzen” (German for “corrode” or “decompose” – a reference to the intended psychological, social, and financial effects upon the victim).
The use of tactics such as electronic surveillance, slander, blacklisting, and psychological operations (“psyops”) methods for counterintelligence purposes – for example, to punish or suppress dissenters and whistle-blowers – has a well-documented history in the U.S. and other nations. For example, in addition to their use by the Stasi, some of the same tactics were used against American citizens during the infamous Cointelpro operations by the FBI, and the Project MK Ultra experiments by the CIA.
In gang stalking, the victim is systematically isolated and harassed in a manner intended to cause sustained psychological torture while creating the least-possible amount of evidence of stalking that would be visible to others. Accomplices – such as neighbors, co-workers, and even friends or relatives of the victim in some cases – are recruited to participate (often unwittingly) by counterintelligence personnel using various means, such as by telling them that the target is a potential threat or that the target is the subject of an “investigation.”
A whole set of psychological operations tactics is used against targeted individuals. These methods, described in detail in the overview below, include such things as threats, verbal harassment, slander, vandalism, abusive phone calls, computer hacking, tormenting the victim with noise, and “mobbing” (orchestrated verbal harassment by strangers, neighbors, or co-workers).
Harassment tactics used in organized stalking (“Cointelpro Version 2.0″) are specifically chosen for their lack of easily-captured objective evidence. Perpetrators use common annoyances such as constant noise by neighbors or rude comments and behavior by strangers, but on a frequent ongoing long-term basis. The cumulative effects of relentless exposure to such tactics can amount to psychological torture for the victim.
Accounts by numerous victims share common specific details – suggesting that the perpetrators of gang stalking are following a well-tested and standardized playbook. Using inconspicuous and difficult-to-prove tactics – sometimes referred to as “no-touch torture” helps keep organized stalking off the radar of potential witnesses and the mainstream news media.
Disinformation
Another factor contributing to the low profile of organized stalking in the media is a disinformation campaign – a common tactic in counterintelligence operations. In the case of organized stalking, the disinformation is mainly intended to mitigate exposure of the program.
Toward that end the Internet has been flooded with websites and forum comments about gang stalking that falsely purport to be from self-proclaimed victims of organized stalking, making irrational claims – references to demons and such. The intended effect is to convey the impression that everyone who claims to be targeted by gang stalking is simply delusional.
An additional disinformation strategy has been the establishment of front groups – most notably, FFCHS (Freedom From Covert Harassment and Surveillance) – ostensibly a gang stalking victims support group, but actually an organization run by counterintelligence operatives.
News Reports About Gang Stalking
Mainstream news media reports about (post-Cointelpro and post-Stasi) gang stalking – in America and abroad – did not begin to appear until the past decade or so. Such reporting is still uncommon, but the frequency of reports by reputable sources has increased dramatically in recent years.
A Newsweek/Daily Beast article in August 2000 described a trend of systematic intense harassment of individuals in their workplaces as part of a phenomenon known as “mobbing” – which is commonly reported by victims as an element of organized stalking.
In the years following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, mainstream news media reports about domestic spying in the U.S. began to appear. In 2004, the PBS news program NOW and Newsweek magazine reported that the Pentagon had quietly resumed its practice of domestic surveillance. (Spying on civilians by the U.S. Army had been one of the scandals which led to the famous Church Committee investigations by Congress in the mid-1970s.)
The U.K. newspaper The Sunday Times published an article in October 2004 about the use of gang stalking tactics (“zersetzen”) by the intelligence agency MI5 to punish whistle-blowers.
In May 2006 The Globe and Mail, a Canadian national newspaper, reported that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) used gang stalking techniques (referred to as “Diffuse and Disrupt” tactics) against terrorism suspects for whom they lacked sufficient evidence to legally prosecute.
The July–September 2006 edition of Revue Internationale de Criminologie et de Police technique et scientifique featured a peer-reviewed academic article by Belgian criminologist Nicolas Desurmont which described how a secret policy of criminal stalking sanctioned by law enforcement authorities is used as an extrajudicial counterintelligence weapon to psychologically terrorize targeted individuals. Desurmont has since published additional papers on the subject, and presented his findings at international conferences on criminology.
In recent years, references to gang stalking in the media have increased. In October 2010, the influential political blog, Daily Kosposted a claim that zersetzen tactics are being used by intelligence agencies in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada.
Two news reports in 2011 described gang stalking operations in California. In January of that year, local TV news broadcasts on KION (Channel 46) and KCBA (Channel 35) featured a report about gang stalking – referred to as such by the reporters and by Lieutenant Larry Richard of the Santa Cruz Police Department. In August, San Joaquin Valley newspaper The Record and KCRA (Channel 3) local TV news reported that the city manager of Stockton, California had been systematcially stalked by local police after a break-down in contract negotiations between the city and the police union.
An article in the Sun Sentinel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper in Florida, appeared in December 2012 about the organized stalking of a police officer by other officers and sheriff’s deputies from multiple jurisdictions. The victim of the stalking had cited an off-duty police officer for reckless driving. The stalking – which included illegally snooping on the victim’s private data and efforts to harass and intimidate her – was apparently done in retaliation.
The brazen use of gang stalking tactics for personal vendettas by law enforcement personnel in the Stockton, California and Florida cases seem to suggest that the officers involved were familiar with the effectiveness of the methods and were also used to getting away with such behavior.
At least two articles in 2013 alleged that the FBI’s infamous Cointelpro operations have re-emerged in full force. In January, an article inCounterPunch magazine asserted that “Cointelpro is alive and well.” In June, an article in the Nation (America’s oldest continuously-published weekly magazine) examined the case of journalist Barrett Brown. He currently faces a potential jail sentence of 105 years in connection with his efforts to expose the activities of private security/intelligence firms. The article’s author wrote: “One might think that what we are looking at is Cointelpro 2.0 – an outsourced surveillance state – but in fact it’s worse.”
The cover article of the October 2013 issue of the magazine Fortean Times is about “State-Sponsored Gangstalking” in the U.S. The author – a professor at California State University Long Beach – explored the case of a former U.S. military service member who stole some equipment and information from the U.S. military, and was then targeted for long-term intense harassment using psychological operations tactics and electronic weapons.
A local TV news report in November 2013 on WDTV Channel 5 (a CBS affiliate in West Virginia) presented a report on “organized stalking.” The broadcast featured testimony from two individuals from Pennsylvania who appeared to be credible and sincere, discussing their constant harassment by perpetrators using gang stalking tactics.
Scope of Operations
According to crime survey statistics (linked below) from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request, in 2006 there were an estimated 446,790 stalking incidents involving three or more perpetrators stalking a single individual. Of those incidents, it was estimated – based on victims’ reports – that at least 40 percent involved apparent coordination of the stalking among the multiple perpetrators.
Such statistics suggest the existence of activities whose scope cannot be explained simply as stalking by criminals – especially given that the otherwise-comprehensive index of crime categories in the DOJ’s website conspicuously makes no mention of this type of stalking.
An Internet search-engine query of the term “gang stalking” – as of October 2013 – yields well over six million results. Many of those references are obvious examples of deliberate disinformation (as mentioned above, and explored in detail in the overview below).
Organizational Structure of Counterintelligence Operations
The FBI ran a secret illegal counterintelligence program (“Cointelpro”) in the U.S. from 1956 until it was exposed by civilian activists in 1971. The program mainly targeted political dissidents. Apparently, a more sophisticated and larger scale counterintelligence program is now in effect.
Assuming that Cointelpro operations were in fact suspended after the U.S. Senate’s Church Committee investigations into the scandal in the 1970s, evidence suggests that they resumed a short time later. Ted L. Gunderson, a former high-level FBI official who became a whistle-blower, asserted that a much more sophisticated version of Cointelpro began to re-emerge in the 1980s. A link to Gunderson’s affidavit on the subject is provided in the overview below.
Based on news reports, accounts of self-proclaimed victims, and the DOJ statistics cited above, the apparent sophistication and scope of current organized stalking operations would require the acquiescence of multiple federal and local government agencies (including the FBI and the Department of Justice, among others). Federal law enforcement agencies, America’s 16 intelligence agencies, and local police departments now share crime and national security information via a nationwide network of “data fusion centers” – part of the extensive post-9/11 homeland security infrastructure.
Numerous job listings by intelligence/security contractor corporations for “surveillance role players” with active security clearances and training in counterintelligence (links and details in the overview below) strongly suggest that federal law enforcement agencies have largely outsourced these operations – which would be consistent with other security programs. A June 10, 2013 article in USA Today noted that about 1.4 million Americans have top-secret security clearances.
Federal and local law enforcement agencies – as well as intelligence agencies – also make extensive use of criminal informants (who are in large supply in America, with its extraordinary per capita incarceration rate). It would be natural for such informants to be used in a counterintelligence program. Indeed, the original Cointelpro was found by the U.S. Senate’s Church Committee investigations to have delegated some activities to organized crime groups. First-hand accounts of self-proclaimed victims of gang stalking support this assumption: by their appearance and behavior, many street-level perpetrators seem to be ex-convicts.
A national counterintelligence program would require acquiescence by the DOJ – just like the first Cointelpro did. U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy approved some of the Cointelpro operations.
Target Selection
Gang stalking apparently targets American citizens deemed to be dissidents or whistle-blowers (and perhaps potential dissidents and whistle-blowers), although others might be targeted for other reasons – such as for experimental or training purposes. For perspective, it should be remembered that for two decades the CIA performed secret illegal experiments on U.S. and Canadian citizens (the infamous MK Ultra program). Those experiments included physical and psychological torture.
It is entirely possible that some people targeted by America’s counterintelligence program are chosen simply because they crossed someone (or a corporation) connected with the program who is exploiting the counterintelligence system as a personal or corporate weapon. The intelligence industry no doubt has its share of the sort of opportunists who would abuse the enormous secret powers available to them.
An example of this occurred in April 2012, when USA Today reported that one of their reporters and an editor were slandered by a secret disinformation campaign waged by an intelligence contractor firm to discredit them because the newspaper had investigated and reported on that contractor (a company which conducted propaganda campaigns for the U.S. military). Similarly, in August 2013 it was reported that at least a dozen National Security Agency (NSA) employees had used their surveillance system access to spy on their current and former spouses and partners.
Implications
In addition to being morally reprehensible, gang stalking – just like the original version of the FBI’s Cointelpro operations – is illegal. It violates criminal laws in all fifty states against stalking, as well as grossly violating the U.S. Constitution’s prohibitions against unreasonable searches and punishment without a trial.
While the vast majority of Americans are never personally targeted by gang stalking, they should still be concerned about the existence of such programs. Even if secret extra-judicial punishment were constitutionally legitimate (clearly it is not), it would still have an enormous potential for abuse as a personal or political weapon by its practitioners.
Ending this abhorrent practice by law enforcement agencies, intelligence agencies, and their parasitic corporate contractors will require exposing what is happening to the public. For anyone reading this, if you can assist with that exposure – even by simply sharing this information with relatives and friends – please do so.
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