Snitch-jacketing (also bad-jacketing) is the deliberate false labeling of a movement participant as a police informant or agent provocateur. It is one of the most effective counterinsurgency tactics documented in the COINTELPRO files: when trust is the organizational principle of resistance — as in affinity groups and informal networks — destroying trust is the most efficient means of destroying the organization.
The tactic works through the structure of suspicion. Once someone is “jacketed” — labeled as a snitch, whether through fabricated documents, planted rumors, or manipulated confrontations — the target is isolated. Other members withdraw, refuse to work with them, and may retaliate. The organization expends energy investigating the accusation, internal conflicts escalate, and the FBI achieves its objective (disruption) without having to prosecute anyone. The tactic is self-sustaining: once suspicion is introduced, movement participants themselves do the work of destruction.
The copjacketing analysis in this library extends the concept: copjacketing is the inverse — labeling someone as a police officer or affiliated with law enforcement — which achieves the same disruptive effects through the same mechanism of manufactured suspicion. Both rely on the same structural vulnerability: movements organized by trust can be attacked by destroying trust, and the destruction does not require evidence, only accusation.