Results tagged “FBI” from Six Hours A Week: Adventures in American Exile
From Matthew Rothschild's You Have No Rights:The Church Committee hearings (named after Senator Frank Church of Idaho) in 1974 and 1975 revealed widespread FBI spying on political dissidents. One of the FBI's most notorious counterintelligence programs was called COINTELPRO, which infiltrated and disrupted the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement, among other groups. In response to the revelations President Gerald Ford had his attorney general, Edward Levi, draw up guidelines to limit such activities in the future. The 1976 Levi guidelines prohibited the FBI from investigating the First Amendment activities of individuals and groups that weren't advocating violence. And, mindful of the role of FBI agents provocateurs in the 1960s, the guidelines outlawed the disruption of groups and the discrediting of individuals engaged in lawful First Amendment activities. Domestic spying could occur only when there was "specific and articulable facts" that indicated criminal activity.
Under the Reagan administration and that of Bush Senior, these guidelines were loosened somewhat. Then came Ashcroft.
According to the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base, between 1968 and today there were 554 incidents of terrorism perpetuated against the United States domestically and internationally.Last week's FBI report tells us, in the year 2006 alone, with only 12,600 of the nation’s more than 17,000 local, county, state and federal police agencies reporting, there were around 7,500 hate crime incidents.
I've never been a big fan of the "hate crime" designation because of worries about the potential for anti-Bushisms to become "hate speech" for example. But one thing seems clear: intolerance is a much greater threat to America than "terrorism."
While researching FBI surveillance of environmental groups today, I came across this passage in a December 2005 New York Times Article:
'One F.B.I. document indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a ''Vegan Community Project.'' Another document talks of the Catholic Workers group's ''semi-communistic ideology.'' A third indicates the bureau's interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur planned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.'
While llama fur has never put me in Big Brother's sights, the notion of attracting attention due to "semi-communistic ideology" gave me pause. I noted yesterday how this type of surveillance can start with a germ of misperception and spiral out of control, and, well, naive about the draconian period of U.S. history we were entering, I may have inadvertently branded myself a Communist. A Red. A Bathroom Bolshevik Breeder.
