The FBI's Dirty War on Black America

I found this last week, but held off posting until the very last day of Black History Month.  That's because it's the story of  one of the ugliest, darkest episodes in American history.  Nothing to be proud of here, but it's important that this period, complete with all the players involved, be made public yet again.  From TruthOut:

Thanks to a CNN documentary airing this week, the tale of FBI informant Ernest Withers is now well known. The black photographer spent years busily documenting the civil rights movement and capturing candid images of its leaders, most notably Martin Luther King, Jr.

Whether through flattery or the naiveté of his subjects, Withers and his camera were able to get close— very close— to the movement’s inner circles. He got so close that King and others trusted him to record their most intimate moments—ones that Withers would dutifully report back to his FBI handlers.

Withers’s case was not exceptional. At that time, the woods were full informants, both men and women. Their existence was possible not only because of a corrupt, paranoid FBI that was intent on making life hell for civil rights leaders and others during the turbulent 1960s, but because they had the tacit blessing of three U.S. presidents: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. All three men firmly believed that the battle against domestic subversives—that is, communists, socialists, black nationalists, Black Panthers and civil rights leaders, most notably King—justified bending and ultimately breaking the law, civil liberties be damned.

There is also ample evidence in the correspondence, internal memos and discussions made public by historians and former White House staffers, to suggest that Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon never believed moderate civil rights leaders like King posed any real threat to the established order. Yet they still winked and nodded as John Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, launched a top secret and blatantly illegal counterintelligence program, COINTELPRO. It targeted not only the civil rights movement but other more radical leaders and organizations as well.

The mandate of that program, spelled out in the stacks of secret documents released by Senate investigators in 1976, was to "disrupt, misdirect, discredit, and neutralize" groups and individuals the FBI considered politically objectionable. Yet in nearly all of the cases, those targeted by COINTELPRO were neither foreign spies, terrorists nor criminals.

The FBI patterned COINTELPRO on the methods used by its counterintelligence division and internal security sections during the 1940s and '50s. The arsenal of dirty tactics they used included unauthorized wiretaps, agents provocateur, poison-pen letters, “black-bag jobs” (breaking and entering to obtain intelligence) and the compiling of secret dossiers.

 I said it was ugly and dark, didn't I?  Read the rest HERE.

Sometimes it is most embarrassing to be an American, given how virtuous we portray ourselves around the world. 

NOTE: The image above is the closest I could find to represent this era.  (Click the image to embiggen)

And so it goes.

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Weekend's End

As I walked to work yesterday I noticed roofing shingles, garbage cans, tree limbs and other debris cluttering the streets, in some cases blocking traffic movement entirely. It was all gone when I walked home.  Not a sign of where the transformer exploded the night before, either.  It only impacted the north side of the town.  Lucky us.

Didn't check the mailbox on Friday and when I got home last evening the poor thing was bulging to bursting. Stuffed it into a bag and went up to the apartment. Most was information about the Medicare supplemental insurance plans that now number 14, received in the last 3 weeks. I didn't realize so many companies had their grubby fingers in the business. 

Opening the door, I noticed that a large painting had come crashing down from its place on the wall.  Seems those stick-on picture hooks aren't as good as they're cracked up to be.  There are 4 other paintings/photos hung in the same manner, I guess it's only a matter of time for them, too. At least the paintings are glass-free, so only frames require replacement.  Not so for the photos and watercolors.

There was a message from Verizon on the answering machine, too.  Seems the fed has added a new fee for both phone and DSL usage.  I guess they need the extra money for wiretapping, dont'cha know. 

Everything is still this Sunday morning.  Only the cardinals are raising a racket outside. A walk on the boardwalk will be a nice way to start the work day.

More later.
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Testing the Tunnel?

It's curious that this story didn't go national, I mean, three times in one month? This from WABC in NYC.

During last Friday evening's rush hour, the discovery of two suspicious bottles filled with an unknown liquid and glued to the median forced Port Authority police to close down the Lincoln Tunnel for hours.

Police records we've obtained show it was the third such incident in a month. The first one occurring four weeks ago, when someone placed "3 plastic heart shaped bottles" of an unknown liquid on the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel. One bottle had a ''gray wire inside" and a message, "don't look at me." And then again last Wednesday, two "red sealed bottles were glued" near a lamp post.

"I would say they're studying what's going on at the tunnel," said Paul Nunziato of the Port Authority P.B.A. "Because they've been able to do it, 7 bottles placed on one of the busiest roadways in the world and no one sees them no one caught an eye on them, including the cameras."

There is video at the link above.

And so it goes.
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What JFK Would Say to Bush...

...If He Were Alive Today.

I found this at YouTube while searching for something totally different. Enjoy. And yes, we really need to take our country back.

And so it goes.
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No Spying

PFAW (People for the American Way) has released a new video regarding the FISA bill and the immunity of the Telecoms. I don't know where it is airing, but it's had nearly 5,000 hits since its posting last evening.



Senator Tom Carper (DINO) Delaware, voted for immunity. Rep. Mike Castle (R) Delaware is likely to do the same.

Carper and Castle have to go. Enuf said.

And so it goes.
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We Will Not Cower in Fear!

The Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Silvestre Reyes, writes Bush a very un-Valentine letter chastising him for his attempts to protect the telecoms at the expense of the safety of Americans. Finally someone in Congress with stones to call him on his fear mongering. Here's the money quote:

I, for one, do not intend to back down – not to the terrorists and not to anyone, including a President, who wants Americans to cower in fear.

We are a strong nation. We cannot allow ourselves to be scared into suspending the Constitution. If we do that, we might as well call the terrorists and tell them that they have won.

Thank you, Congressman, I needed that. Go and read the whole letter. It will make you feel proud, at least a bit.

And so it goes.
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Prepare for Martial Law?

I think Amerika will enjoy Martial Law, judging by the number of gas-guzzling vehicles still sporting Bush/Cheney Stickers.

A public-private partnership program on infrastructure preparedness and protection run by the Federal Bureau of Investigation allegedly has briefed its corporate members on the possibility of martial law and the use of lethal force, according to an exclusive report in the magazine The Progressive.

"One business owner in the United States tells me that InfraGard members are being advised on how to prepare for a martial law situation—and what their role might be," writes Matthew Rothschild in the Feb. 7 report, quoting an anonymous whistleblower on the program. "'Then they said when—not if—martial law is declared, it was our responsibility to protect our portion of the infrastructure, and if we had to use deadly force to protect it, we couldn’t be prosecuted,' he says."

I suppose we shouldn't be surprised. After all, look how far BushCo has taken us in just 7 years. Spying, Torture, and 2 Wars. Nice. Next! You can read the rest of the scary story HERE.

George McGovern: Impeach Bush!

WOW! Here's a bit from the end of his Op-Ed piece in WaPo.

Today, after five years of clumsy, mistaken policies and U.S. military occupation, Iraq has become a breeding ground of terrorism and bloody civil strife. It is no secret that former president Bush, his secretary of state, James A. Baker III, and his national security adviser, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, all opposed the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.

In addition to the shocking breakdown of presidential legal and moral responsibility, there is the scandalous neglect and mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe. The veteran CNN commentator Jack Cafferty condenses it to a sentence: "I have never ever seen anything as badly bungled and poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans." Any impeachment proceeding must include a careful and critical look at the collapse of presidential leadership in response to perhaps the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.

Impeachment is unlikely, of course. But we must still urge Congress to act. Impeachment, quite simply, is the procedure written into the Constitution to deal with presidents who violate the Constitution and the laws of the land. It is also a way to signal to the American people and the world that some of us feel strongly enough about the present drift of our country to support the impeachment of the false prophets who have led us astray. This, I believe, is the rightful course for an American patriot.

As former representative Elizabeth Holtzman, who played a key role in the Nixon impeachment proceedings, wrote two years ago, "it wasn't until the most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) -- and argued that, as Commander in Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override our country's laws -- that I felt the same sinking feeling in my stomach as I did during Watergate. . . . A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law -- and repeatedly violates the law -- thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors."

I believe we have a chance to heal the wounds the nation has suffered in the opening decade of the 21st century. This recovery may take a generation and will depend on the election of a series of rational presidents and Congresses. At age 85, I won't be around to witness the completion of the difficult rebuilding of our sorely damaged country, but I'd like to hold on long enough to see the healing begin.

There has never been a day in my adult life when I would not have sacrificed that life to save the United States from genuine danger, such as the ones we faced when I served as a bomber pilot in World War II. We must be a great nation because from time to time, we make gigantic blunders, but so far, we have survived and recovered.

Are you listening, Nancy? Harry? Anybody?

Nope, guess not.

More later.

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Senator Dodd and the FISA Bill

Chris Dodd was the only presidential candidate to rush back to DC to fight this bill which, as it stands now would give immunity to the Telecoms rather than make them accountable. Here's what the NYT has to say:

Senator Christopher J. Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat and presidential candidate, spent much of the day attacking the idea of giving immunity to the phone companies, and he took credit for the delay.

“Today we have scored a victory for American civil liberties and sent a message to President Bush that we will not tolerate his abuse of power and veil of secrecy,” Mr. Dodd said in a statement.

“The president should not be above the rule of law, nor should the telecom companies who supported his quest to spy on American citizens,” he said. “I thank all my colleagues who joined me in fighting and winning a stay in the rush to grant retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies who may have violated the privacy rights of millions of Americans.”

Where in hell were Hillary, Obama, and McCain? Are they OK with the bill as it reads now? Maybe someone should ask them about this. Uh huh, like that's going to happen.

More later.

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UPDATE: I just received an email from Senator Dodd thanking me for supporting his effort. In the message he included a link to a video he posted last night thanking everyone (seems Congress received more than five hundred thousand messages over the last few days).

Anyway, here's the link to the video

More later.
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Wish We Had YouTube in the 60s

This brings back such vivid memories of that other unfortunate war, the one in South East Asia and it brought my blood back to the boil that I am proud to say, made me want to do more. Alas, I am far older than the targeted audience, but the memories are strong and so I am grateful to feel the passion again.




More later.
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This editorial from the NY Times is fascinating - and scary. What I want to know is ---who is watching the watchers?

September 6, 2007

Editorial

Watching Orwell

It should surprise no one that England’s Special Branch — the police intelligence unit — was watching George Orwell during most of his adult life. It is certainly what Orwell, a student of political paranoia, would have expected.

The file on Orwell, released earlier this week by Britain’s National Archives, is also a testament both to the British sense of convention and a tolerance for eccentricity. According to one sergeant, Orwell’s habit of dressing “in Bohemian fashion,” revealed that the writer was a Communist, a conclusion that will seem strange to anyone who has read “Animal Farm.” Orwell’s file seems to have been rather gently vetted by Britain’s spy agency, MI5, which perhaps understood that a casual dresser is not inevitably an enemy of the state.

This is such an old and forbidding dance, the one between the watchers and the watched. The political life of the past century has been punctuated by one revelation after another, as secret files have been made public, either by legislative fiat or by the accidents of history. The files are nearly always perspicacious — not about the subjects being watched but about the fears of the watchers. This is something Orwell understood perfectly well, how fear enhances perception, but also corrupts it.

There is an obvious irony in Orwell’s being spied on in a way that can only be called Orwellian. That is nearly a universal adjective in these Orwellian days. It’s tempting to say there’s something almost nostalgic about seeing Orwell’s file — a reminder of a less electronic time. Except, of course, that there was nothing nostalgic about the politics of his era. Every age, his as well as ours, seems to live up to its sinister potential.

More later.
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