On the bedside table:
Spying is old-hat for the Right
Amendment IV -The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The American Revolution was led by men who had grown tired of their government invading their privacy. Especially offensive was the Brits widespread use of "writs of assistance," which were sweeping warrants authorizing government agents to enter and search people's homes and businesses. So they fought a war to stop it. Once free of that government, they created a new one based on laws to protect liberty. Hence, the Fourth Amendment.
Presently we are in a new, very troublesome, period where our privacy is concerned. The Bush/Cheney regime are ignoring the Fourth Amendment by launching the biggest domestic spy program since the Nixon Administration, at least that we know of! Dick "Buckshot" Cheney, architect of the power grab, has said "The president of the United States needs to have his constitutional powers unimpaired."
Their push includes a White House program of domestic spying so sweeping that it would make Nixon blush; an audacious claim of a unilateral executive right to suspend treaties and ignore U.S. laws; an insistence that a president can seize U.S. citizens with no due process of law and imprison them in CIA interrogation sites or send them to foreign regimes to be tortured; the repression of both internal dissenters and outside protestors; an all-out assault on the public's right to know; and…well, way too much more.
Richard Nixon is the godfather of the BushCheney philosophy of executive supremacy. "Well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal," Tricky Dick explained to us some 30 years ago. This power corrupted view of the American presidency is behind the unilateral, secret, and illegal directive issued by Bush in 2001, ordering the NSA to spy on Americans. We also know , through the courage of whistle blower Mark Klein, that one of the nation's biggest communication companies (AT&T) has been assisting the NSA in this un-constitutional enterprise.
Spying on "We The People" is nothing new to the Right:Martin Luther King, Jr.: A total of 3165 pages of FBI files.
Files are the contents of a 201 page 1977 report by a Department of Justice task force summarizing the FBI's Martin Luther King, Jr., security and assassination investigations. On November 1st, 1975, former FBI Assistant Director, Domestic Intelligence Division, William C. Sullivan said King was the target of an intensive campaign by the FBI to neutralize him as an effective civil rights leader. Sullivan stated that in the war against King, "no holds were barred."
Stanley Levison: The FBI conducted a security investigation of Stanley Levison from the 1950's through the early 1970's. Levison was a close and key advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr. In time the FBI used surveillance of Levison to gather information on King. The files indicate that Levison's office was bugged. Files give insight on planning and strategy of various events in King's life, including the March on Washington and King's Nobel Peace Prize speech preparation. The FBI expressed concern on how close Levison, who the FBI constantly referred to as a "secret member of the Communist Party," and King had become. The files show heightened concern when Levison began to advise King on the conflict. Internal security memos indicate that soon there after Levison's home was also bugged. Memos detail information learned about King through a tap on Levison's phone. After King's assassination, the files chronicle Levison's dealings with Coretta Scott King, and other civil rights leaders.
Roy Wilkins: Roy Wilkins was an influential member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He was a civil rights advocate who became affiliated with Martin Luther King, Jr. Files contain information concerning Wilkins proximity to various civil right events from 1950's through the 1970's. Files chronicle a meeting between Wilkins and an agent at FBI headquarters concerning threats by J. Edgar Hoover to expose King as a "sexual degenerate." The agent told Wilkins that Hoover did not want to destroy the entire civil rights movement, but that the FBI, "deeply and bitterly resented lies and falsehoods told by King." The agent told Wilkins that the FBI was not responsible for the rumors against King, but said, "were certainly in a position to substantiate them." The agent intimated that if Kings' criticism of the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover did not end, this would be the result.
UC Berkeley:
In 1966 Reagan had just been elected Governor. Among other things, he had campaigned to restore order at UC Berkeley, where "beatniks, radicals and "filthy speech advocates" were proof of what he called the "morality and decency gap in Sacramento." In January 1967 he called two senior FBI agents to the governor's mansion in Sacramento, he asked the FBI to tell him "what he was up against."
Hoover had long been concerned about the University of California, the nation's largest public university and operator of top-secret federal nuclear laboratories. In 1960, he warned Congress of an international communist conspiracy plotting to "control for its own evil purposes the explosive force which youth represents."
For years the FBI had denied engaging in spying and slanderous activities at the university. But a 17-year legal challenge brought by a Chronicle reporter under the Freedom of Information Act forced the FBI to release more than 200,000 pages of confidential records covering the 1940s to the 1970s. Those documents describe the sweeping nature of the FBI's activities and show they ranged far beyond the campus and into state politics.
The declassified records reveal that the FBI:
- conspired with the head of the CIA and a senior member of the university's Board of Regents to pressure the board to "harass" faculty and students involved in protests,
- misled the White House by sending the president (Lyndon Johnson) information the bureau knew to be false,
- and mounted covert public relations efforts to manipulate public opinion about campus events and embarrass university officials.
Along the way, the FBI campaigned to destroy the career of UC President Clark Kerr -- even though the bureau's own investigations repeatedly found him to be loyal. The UC Berkeley web site has this to say about Kerr:
"Kerr, who also served as UC Berkeley’s first chancellor, was admired as an elegant thinker of great intellect. His clear, logical vision of both the promise and problems of modern higher education influenced generations of political and education leaders, from California Gov. Edmund G. "Pat" Brown to Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson."
In the end, Reagan removed Kerr from his job as UC Berkeley president in 1967 based on excuses gained from FBI covert ops against him.
At the same time, the FBI forged a close relationship with Reagan -- a more aggressive informer than previously disclosed -- catalyzing his transformation from liberal movie star to the staunch conservative who became one of the 20th century's most powerful figures.
Hollywood FBI Files: 2,000 pages of files copied from FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C., and archived on CD-ROM covering the FBI investigation, Communist Infiltration-Motion Picture Industry (COMPIC). The FBI investigated the Communist Party's infiltration of the motion picture industry from 1942 to 1958. Ten motion picture personalities (AKA Hollywood Ten), who were subpoenaed before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947, were convicted of contempt of Congress for refusal to answer whether or not they belonged to the Communist Party. The Files give the FBI's history of Communists and leftists in the motion picture industry back to the 1930's.
Files include FBI "reviews" of main stream films it believed communist writers, directors, and actors successfully inserted communist propaganda into. Analysis of the plot points of Frank Capra's movie "It's a Wonderful Life", finds communist tricks to make bankers and the rich look bad. Analysis cites a comparison of the movie to a Russian film made 15 years earlier titled "The Letter."
Files include reporting from informers, including president of the Screen Actors' Guild Ronald Reagan. Files names hundreds of influential writers, actors, directors, producers, union leaders, and studio executives. Investigations chronicle the working of major studios such as Paramount, RKO, and Warner Brothers, and the power struggles between the studios and studio management and labor unions.
John Lennon: 248 pages of files copied from FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C., Files cover an investigation conducted when the FBI learned that John Lennon contributed $75,000 to a group it believed was planning to disrupt the Republican National Convention in 1972. The files cite Lennon's overseas drug conviction, John and Yoko Ono's immigration problems, Files indicate bureau’s desire to see a local police department arrest Lennon on drug charges to help the deportation case.
Other notable targets of the FBI snooping and harassment: Elvis Presley, JFK, Harry Bridges, Eleanor Roosevelt, Cesar Chavez, Frank Lloyd Wright, Eugene O'Neill......
Oh, I almost forgot, there was also that little scandal known as Watergate.
(Whistle Blower Outs NSA Spy Room - Wired April 7, 2006)
(Martin Luther King Jr. FBI Files: Paperlessarchive.com)
(Reagan, Hoover and the UC Red Scare- SF Chronicle June 9, 2002)
(Hollywood/Film Industry Surveillance FBI Files-paperlessarchives.com)
(John Lennon FBI Files - paperlessarchives.com)
Be seeing you....
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