[Mb-civic] US spying isn't new - Sanford Gottlieb - Boston Globe
Op-Ed
William Swiggard
swiggard at comcast.net
Thu Jan 19 10:40:07 PST 2006
US spying isn't new
By Sanford Gottlieb | January 19, 2006 | The Boston Globe
GOVERNMENT SPYING on Americans didn't start with President George W.
Bush and the National Security Agency. I was spied on in the 1960s and
1970s.
While working in 1961 for the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear
Policy, or SANE, a citizens group organized to halt nuclear testing, I
spoke to a small gathering of people at a private home in Skokie, Ill.
One of them was an undercover FBI agent.
He wrote a report about the meeting, which I received years later with
my extensive FBI files through the Freedom of Information Act. His
muddled report managed to convey that I spoke about nuclear testing and
the Kennedy administration's tentative plans for a civil defense
program. Had I been a teacher grading the agent's sloppy paper, I would
have given him an F.
My CIA file, also courtesy of the Freedom of Information Act, revealed
that the CIA had opened my domestic mail. The target of the agency's
mail snoopers was a letter I had sent to Rennie Davis, a radical leader
in the anti-Vietnam War movement. By the mid-'60s, SANE had become the
anchor of the movement's moderate wing, and I was urging Davis to drop
his radical tactics.
I have no idea what the snoopers made of this correspondence, but I know
that domestic spying by the CIA was illegal then and remains illegal today.
One day in 1971, the SANE office in Washington received a phone call
from someone who had recently been discharged from Army Intelligence. He
suggested that we check our mailing list for the name of R. Allen Lee
Associates of Alexandria, Va., a cover for Army Intelligence.
Sure enough, the name was there. In response we conducted a bit of
guerrilla theater at the Bethesda home of then-Defense Secretary Melvin
Laird. With cameras, notepads, and our ''SANE spy scope," we placed his
home under our surveillance. The old Washington Star published photos of
the caper with the headline, ''When turnabout is fair play."
Spying on civilians, however, is not fun and games. It's a violation of
our freedoms whose origin dates back over half a century. Anxiety about
aggressive communism in the early Cold War years led to a host of
government measures presumably designed to prevent espionage and
sabotage. These measures soon spilled over into assaults on free speech
and association.
President Truman's loyalty program to purge communists from government
designated the files of the notorious House Un-American Activities
Committee, filled with hearsay, as an official source of evidence on
federal employees' political ties. The Attorney General's List, a
checklist of organizations accused of communist, fascist, or subversive
views, was used to deny public employment to anyone associated with
these groups. Right-wing groups then used the list to deny private
employment to these individuals.
The Smith Act made it a crime to advocate or teach the violent overthrow
of the US government. Under the act, 11 leaders of the Communist Party
were convicted of conspiracy to teach the violent overthrow of the
government. Guilty they were of abject obedience to the Kremlin, but
conspiracy to teach?
Truman directed the FBI in 1950 to ''take charge of investigative work
in matters relating to espionage, sabotage, subversive activities and
related matters." Subversive activities remained ill-defined. But J.
Edgar Hoover revealed what he had in mind: ''(Communists) utilize
cleverly camouflaged movements, such as some peace groups and civil
rights organizations, to achieve their sinister purposes." Within 10
years the FBI, whose director was feared by successive presidents, was
infiltrating and disrupting some of these groups. The FBI went on to
wiretap Martin Luther King Jr.
Now we learn that such groups as the ACLU, Greenpeace, and People for
the Ethical Treatment of Animals have been under FBI surveillance. If
this is the danger we face, it's our intelligence agencies that need
scrutiny.
Sanford Gottlieb was executive director of SANE and is author of
''Defense Addiction: Can America Kick the Habit?" He was on President
Richard Nixon's ''Enemies List."
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/01/19/us_spying_isnt_new/
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