| Community Leader Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Ann Arbor, MI, USA Gender:  Posts: 834 Level up: 52%, 73 Points needed |  |  The COINTELPRO acronym caught my eye more than anything, so I went to that website. It's maintained by Paul Wolf, an international lawyer. He has done extensive research on the COunterINtelligence PROgram, and posted his findings online with sources. Among them: Quote:
B. The Questions
We have directed our investigation toward answering the, following questions:
Which governmental agencies have engaged in domestic spying?
How many citizens have been targets of Governmental intelligence activity?
What standards have governed the opening of intelligence investigations and when have intelligence investigations been terminated?
Where have the targets fit on the spectrum between those who commit violent criminal acts and those who seek only to dissent peacefully from Government policy?
To what extent has the information collected included intimate details of the targets' personal lives or their political views, and has such information been disseminated and used to injure individuals?
What actions beyond surveillance have intelligence agencies taken, such as attempting to disrupt, discredit, or destroy persons or groups who have been the targets of surveillance?
Have intelligence agencies been used to serve the political aims of Presidents, other high officials, or the agencies themselves?
How have the agencies responded either to proper orders or to excessive pressures from their superiors? To what extent have intelligence agencies disclosed, or concealed them from, outside bodies charged with overseeing them?
Have intelligence agencies acted outside the law? What has been the attitude of the intelligence community toward the rule of law?
To what extent has the Executive branch and the Congress controlled intelligence agencies and held them accountable?
Generally, how well has the Federal system of checks and balances between the branches worked to control intelligence activity?
C. Summary of the Main Problems
The answer to each of these questions is disturbing. Too many people have been spied upon by too many Government agencies and to much information has been collected. The Government has often undertaken the secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when those beliefs posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power. The Government, operating primarily through secret informants, but also using other intrusive techniques such as wiretaps, microphone "bugs" surreptitious mail opening, and break-ins, has swept in vast amounts of information about the personal lives, views, and associations of American citizens. Investigations of groups deemed potentially dangerous -- and even of groups suspected of associating with potentially dangerous organizations -- have continued for decades, despite the fact that those groups did not engage in unlawful activity. Groups and individuals have been harassed and disrupted because of their political views and their lifestyles. Investigations have been based upon vague standards whose breadth made excessive collection inevitable. Unsavory and vicious tactics have been employed -- including anonymous attempts to break up marriages, disrupt meetings, ostracize persons from their professions, and provoke target groups into rivalries that might result in deaths. Intelligence agencies have served the political and personal objectives of presidents and other high officials. While the agencies often committed excesses in response to pressure from high officials in the Executive branch and Congress, they also occasionally initiated improper activities and then concealed them from officials whom they had a duty to inform.
Governmental officials -- including those whose principal duty is to enforce the law --have violated or ignored the law over long periods of time and have advocated and defended their right to break the law.
The Constitutional system of checks and balances has not adequately controlled intelligence activities. Until recently the Executive branch has neither delineated the scope of permissible activities nor established procedures for supervising intelligence agencies. Congress has failed to exercise sufficient oversight, seldom questioning the use to which its apropriations were being put. Most domestic intelligence issues have not reached the courts, and in those cases when they have reached the courts, the judiciary has been reluctant to grapple with them.
Each of these points is briefly illustrated below, and covered in substantially greater detail in the following sections of the report.
1. The Number of People Affected by Domestic Intelligence Activity
United States intelligence agencies have investigated a vast number of American citizens and domestic organizations. FBI headquarters alone has developed over 500,000 domestic intelligence files, 11 and these have been augmented by additional files at FBI Field Offices. The FBI opened 65,000 of these domestic intelligence files in 1972 alone. 12 In fact, substantially more individuals and groups are subject to intelligence scrutiny than the number of files would appear to indicate, since typically, each domestic intelligence file contains information on more than one individual or group, and this information is readily retrievable through the FBI General Name Index.
The number of Americans and domestic groups caught in the domestic intelligence net is further illustrated by the following statistics:
-- Nearly a quarter of a million first class letters were opened and photographed in the United States by the CIA between 1953-1973, producing a CIA computerized index of nearly one and one-half million names. 13
-- At least 130,000 first class letters were opened and photographed by the FBI between 1940-1966 in eight U.S. cities. 14
-- Some 300,000 individuals were indexed in a CIA computer system and separate files were created on approximately 7,200 Americans and over 100 domestic groups during the course of CIA's Operation CHAOS (1967-1973). 15
-- Millions of private telegrams sent from, to, or through the United States were obtained by the National Security Agency from 1947 to 1975 under a secret arrangement with three United States telegraph companies. 16
-- An estimated 100,000 Americans were the subjects of United States Army intelligence files created between the mid 1960's and 1971. 17
-- Intelligence files on more than 11,000 individuals and groups were created by the Internal Revenue Service between 1969 and 1973 and tax investigations were started on the basis of political rather than tax criteria. 18
-- At least 26,000 individuals were at one point catalogued on an FBI list of persons to be rounded up in the event of a "national emergency". 19
| Source: Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Final Report of the Senate Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities
Comment: if they were doing it then, who's to say they aren't doing it NOW, especially since we have the PATRIOT Act? Quote:
COINTELPRO began in 1956, in part because of frustration with Supreme Court rulings limiting the Government's power to proceed overtly against dissident groups; it ended in 1971 with the threat of public exposure. 1 In the intervening 15 years, the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence. 2
Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that. The unexpressed major premise of the programs was that a law enforcement agency has the duty to do whatever is necessary to combat perceived threats to the existing social and political order.
A. "Counterintelligence Program": A Misnomer for Domestic Covert Action
COINTELPRO is an acronym for "counterintelligence program."
Counterintelligence is defined as those actions by an intelligence agency intended to protect its own security and to undermine hostile intelligence operations. Under COINTELPRO certain techniques the Bureau had used against hostile foreign agents were adopted for use against perceived domestic threats to the established political and social order. The formal programs which incorporated these techniques were, therefore, also called "counterintelligence." 2a
"Covert action" is, however, a more accurate term for the Bureau's programs directed against American citizens. "Covert action" is the label applied to clandestine activities intended to influence political choices and social values. 3
B. Who Were the Targets?
1. The Five Targeted Groups
The Bureau's covert action programs were aimed at five perceived threats to domestic tranquility: the "Communist Party, USA" program (1956-71) ; the "Socialist Workers Party" program (1961-69) ; the "White Hate Group" program (1964-71) ; the "Black Nationalist-Hate Group" program (1967-71) ; and the "New Left" program (1968-71).
| Source: COINTELPRO: The FBI's Covert Action Programs Against American Citizens, Final Report of the Senate Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to Intelligence Activities, Book III |