Revealed: how UK targeted American civil rights leader in covert campaign

Secret Foreign Office unit distributed literature from fake sources to discredit Stokely Carmichael

The British government targeted the American civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael and sought to weaken the Black Power movement with covert disinformation campaigns, recently declassified documents have revealed.

The effort was the work of a secret unit known as the Information Research Department, based in London and part of the Foreign Office, which created and distributed literature from fake sources as part of a broader effort to destabilise cold war enemies.