Following the murder of three civil rights workers in the early summer, in September 1964 the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched a secretive and extralegal counterintelligence program known as COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE. This covert action program sought to expose, disrupt, and otherwise neutralize Ku Klux Klan groups in Mississippi whose violent vigilante activities alarmed the national government. The program succeeded in creating an atmosphere of paranoia that turned many Klan members against each other. It helped destroy many Klan groups between 1964 and 1971. Some members of the Klan groups subsequently joined other white supremacist organizations, including Christian Identity.