Bad-Jacketing is "the practice of creating suspicion—through the spreading of rumors, manufacture of evidence, etc.—that bona fide organizational members, usually in key positions, are FBI/police informers, guilty of such offenses as skimming organization funds." Scholar Mark Anthony Neal writes that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under J. Edgar Hoover used the technique against the Black Panther Party and other Black Power organizations as part of its COINTELPRO operations. Neal writes that this technique was effective in isolating key individuals, forcing them out of the organization, and that its effectiveness was enhanced by the tendency of Black Power activists to divide among "rigid racial, ideological, and increasingly gendered" lines.
Jo Durden-Smith claims that this technique was used by U.S. prison guards to undermine targeted prisoners and so making them vulnerable to manipulation.