QUOTE OF THE DAY
Whenever you have efficient government, you have dictatorship.
--Harry Truman
Rhino here:
Following is an excerpt of a Village Voice column by long time political
journalist Nat Hentoff. Now 73, Hentoff was friend of the late Malcolm X,
has authored many books on politics and jazz and wrote the liner notes for
Bob Dylan's second album. Here he compares the potential of the current
revamping of the intellegence community to COINTELPRO, the
counter-intelligence operation of the 50's and 60's. I wish he were wrong,
but I'm afraid he's not.
'There Would Be No Place to Hide' - Unleashing the FBI
by Nat Hentoff
Village Voice - Friday, 31 June, 2002
As usual, television--broadcast and cable--got it wrong. The thrust of what
they call reporting on the reorganization of the FBI focused on the 900 or
so new agents, the primacy of intelligence gathering over law enforcement,
and the presence of CIA supervisors within the bosom of the FBI. (It used to
be illegal for the CIA to spy on Americans within our borders.)
But the poisonous core of this reorganization is its return to the time of
J. Edgar Hoover and COINTELPRO, the counter-intelligence
operation--pervasively active from 1956 to 1971--that so disgraced the
Bureau that it was forced to adopt new guidelines to prevent such wholesale
subversion of the Bill of Rights ever again.
Under COINTELPRO, the FBI monitored, infiltrated, manipulated, and secretly
fomented divisions within civil rights, anti-war, black, and other entirely
lawful organizations who were using the First Amendment to disagree with
government policies.
These uninhibited FBI abuses of the Bill of Rights were exposed by some
journalists, but most effectively by the Senate Select Committee to Study
Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities. Its
chairman, Frank Church of Idaho, was a true believer in the constitutional
guarantees of individual liberties against the government--which is why we
had a Revolution.
In 1975, Church told the nation, and J. Edgar Hoover, that COINTELPRO had
been "a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the
exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association." And Church
pledged: "The American people need to be reassured that never again will an
agency of the government be permitted to conduct a secret war against those
citizens it considers a threat to the established order."
Frank Church, however, could not have foreseen George W. Bush, John
Ashcroft, FBI director Robert Mueller, and the cowardly leadership,
Republican and Democratic, of Congress. (Notable exceptions are John Conyers
of Michigan, and Russell Feingold and James Sensenbrenner, both of
Wisconsin.) ...
TO SEE THE ENTIRE ARTICLE GO TO:
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0223/hentoff2.php
Reprinted under the Fair Use doctrine of international copyright
law ( http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html ).
All copyrights belong to original publisher.
Rhino's Weblog is the responsibility of The Rhino.
Gary Rhine
rhino@kifaru.com
http://www.kifaru.com
http://www.dreamcatchers.org
http://radio.weblogs.com/0103207/
“If we don’t change direction, we’re gonna wind up where we’re
headin’.”
Reuben A. Snake Jr. (Winnebago)
7:37:42 AM
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