Chicago Police Spying and `The Chicago Tribune' Historically

Some Chicago Tribune reporters collaborated, historically, with the Chicago Police red squad when it spied on U.S. political activists. As the book Protectors Of Privilege by Frank Donner noted in a section entitled “The Red Squad And The Media”:

“Both the Chicago Tribune and its offspring Chicago Today `cooperated’ with the unit in a familiar trade-off by which reporters…received information about targets…in disfavor with the red squad. In some cases press people were…more cooperative: they supplied information or photographs to the intelligence unit…Others worked as moonlighters for the police…A prosecution witness in the Chicago conspiracy trial, Dwayne Oklepek, infiltrated preconvention protest circles on behalf of Jack Mabley, reporter for Chicago Today.

“The undisputed dean of red squad collaboration was the Tribune’s Ronald Koziol…Koziol became…part of the intelligence system, used not merely to create a favorable image of the red squad’s operations but to discredit its targets, including those…in disfavor with the Daley Administration. When the police came under attack because of their convention-week brutality, the Daley Administration’s response included sharing of the intelligence unit’s files with Koziol…”

(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 8/14/96)

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