While actresses are often known for their looks and talents, Jean Seberg is remembered as a victim of COINTELPRO.

The COINTELPRO program, which took place in 1956-1971, was a series of secret and sometimes illegal campaigns conducted by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to monitor, infiltrate, discredit, and circumvent. broken political organizations in the country.

COINTELPRO targets groups and individuals that the FBI deems threatening the government, including feminist organizations, civil rights activists or rights activists of color, protection organizations. environment and animal rights. The program also targeted the superior white party Ku Kuux Klan in 1964.

Jean Seberg was born in Marshalltown, Iowa in 1938 to a family with parents as pharmacists and teachers. After graduating from high school, Seberg entered the University of Iowa majoring in film theater. In 1956, Saberg's neighbors applied her name to a group of 18,000 actresses applying for director Otto Preminger's film. She was selected and first appeared on the big screen in 1957.

She resonated as Patricia, the girlfriend of an American criminal, in the French film Breathless directed by Jean-Luc Godard. The film was successful worldwide, a film magazine praised her as "the best actress in Europe". Seberg then returned to the United States to film but was not as successful as his career in France.

In the late 1960s, Seberg was said to have supported the Black Panther party of $ 10,500 and kept in touch with its leader. The Black Panther Party operated in 1966-1982 with the purpose of creating armed civilian groups, monitoring Oakland police to prevent them from discriminating against black people. The party also distributes free breakfast to children or provides medical care for people of color.

Members of the Black Panther participated in many lethal gun battles with the police. In 1969, the FBI, under the leadership of director J. Edgar Hoover, described the party as "the greatest threat to US domestic security". Scholars describe the Black Panther party as the most influential black organization in the late 1960s. However, some commentators think the group is more like a criminal organization than political.

The FBI believes that Seberg's support of the Black Panther party makes her a threat to the government and they launch a campaign to smear her. Seberg is not the only celebrity to be targeted. Human rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. each was COINTELPRO's top priority. The FBI sent his wife a recording of himself to other women and sent a series of letters threatening him.

In April 1970, when Seberg became pregnant with her second husband, Romain Gary, the FBI provided false information to the Los Angeles Times that the baby in Seberg's belly was not Gary's child but rather the son of a senior black member in Black panther party. The Los Angeles Times did not mention Seberg's name in the news, but only called "Miss A". However, they describe the data making readers understand who they are referring to.

Newsweek magazine then republished the story and mentioned Seberg directly. The actress was criticized as a promoter. The FBI achieved its goal of smearing her image in public.

Rumors that caused Seberg mental breakdown and premature birth. Her daughter, Nina Hart Gary, died two days after birth. At the funeral, she opened a casket to prove her daughter was white and she did not commit adultery. Seberg and Gary later sued Newsweek for libel and were given $ 20,000, but nothing could compensate for their daughter's death.

Seberg was still under surveillance and harassment by the FBI for many years to come. Deciphered FBI records show that she was bugged and often stalked abroad, as in Switzerland and France.

On August 30, 1979, 40-year-old Seberg disappeared in France. Seberg's fourth husband, Ahmed Hasni, told the police that they had gone to the movies the night before and when he woke up the next morning he did not see her. Hasni said Seberg tried to commit suicide several times, like jumping out before a subway train in Paris in July 1979.

On September 8, 1979, Seberg's body was discovered in the back of her car near her apartment in Paris. Police found a bottle of Barbiturat CNS inhibitors (which can be sedative but fatal if used too much), an empty mineral water bottle and a suicide note written in French to his son: "Please forgive me. I can no longer live with this mental state. " Paris police determined that she may have committed suicide.

A few days later, Romain Gary, Seberg's second husband, held a press conference to accuse the FBI of making Seberg's mental health worse. Gary said that Seberg "became psychotic" after the false rumor that her adulteress in 1970. Gary added Seberg repeatedly tried to commit suicide on the day of his daughter's death on 25/8.

Six days after Seberg's body was discovered, the FBI published documents under the Freedom of Information Act, admitting it had launched a campaign of defamation of Saberg, but they confirmed that the activities under Hoover had ended.

Eight years earlier, a group of about 10 people formed the Citizens Committee to investigate the FBI. They broke into the FBI office in Pennsylvania and stole hundreds of documents, revealing the misconduct of COINTELPRO. The group sent the documents to the media, causing the program to be closed in 1971, and the director of FBI Hoover died in 1972.

In his autobiography, Jim Bellows, editor of the Los Angeles Times, described the events leading up to the Seberg article and expressed regret that he had not verified the information carefully.

"The Los Angeles Times did not want to kill Seberg. A strong institution was behind manipulation. The result was a fragile human being who lost his life," wrote David Halberstam, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist.

See also: Model 'hypnotized by CIA'