01.16.14

COINTELPRO Never Really Ended, It Just Changed Identity

Posted in Law at 5:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: The enemy of the state appears to be clever, politically-aware people who are eager to pursue justice, based on what we are learning about surveillance

CIVIL disobedience is necessary as means of challenging abuse of power. Sometimes people may also have to break the law in order to expose violations of the law (at a much higher level, with crimes of high severity). Now that we remember Martin Luther King (born January 15^th, 1929) we should recall that the FBI recorded him and then played a recording back to him, urging him to commit suicide. Surveillance was used for blackmail as part of what we now know as COINTELPRO.

How do we know about COINTELPRO? Well, some professors and others chose to investigate what the FBI had been doing at the time. We now know this because they came forward [1,2,3,4,5,6], revealing that anti-war (or pro-peace) activism was treated as some kind of crime by the FBI. Now that the NYPD mimics the FBI [7] (CIA agents were reported to be embedded in NYPD) and the CIA uses FBI staff [8] we should all be concerned. Moreover, we can see how in New York City (i.e. NYPD) protest against corruption by banks is now treated like terrorism and activists are put under surveillance [9-11] on behalf of banks. This is beyond unjust; it’s tyrannical. The domestic population is treated like an enemy if it wants justice.

A year ago we discovered that Aaron Swartz too had been put under secret surveillance as though he was some kind of terrorist. He was then crushed and bullied by the system, to the point where even his parents’ house was in jeopardy (collective punishment), and then he committed suicide. The FBI could not make Martin Luther King commit suicide, but eventually he was assassinated anyway.

People now remember Aaron Swartz and even march in his memory [12-23] (see some new revelations of cover-up in the news). This case showed how far the system of surveillance still goes and who it really targets. It’s not about terrorism, it’s about control. The corporations use surveillance to impose their will on everyone and hound dissidents. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Burglars who embarrassed FBI in unsolved document heist come forward (+video)

2. Activists Who Took FBI Files in 1971 Praise Edward Snowden, Defend How He Blew the Whistle

   The shrill brigade of critics opposed to National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden have repeatedly emphasized their belief that if he truly thought he was engaged in civil disobedience he should have remained in the United States and allowed himself to be jailed and prosecuted like Daniel Ellsberg or even Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But now, this argument should be even more difficult for critics to make.

3. Burglars Who Took on F.B.I. Abandon Shadows

4. Remembering an earlier time when a theft unmasked government surveillance

5. Peace Activists Admit to Role in FBI Burglary That Exposed COINTELPRO

   One of the great mysteries of the Vietnam War era has been solved. In 1971, a group of peace activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, and lifted files that helped reveal the FBI’s elaborate program of illegally spying on political groups. The documents, given to journalists at the time, provided the first hints of a secret counter intelligence program, or COINTELPRO, the FBI’s secret program to infiltrate, monitor and disrupt social movements. The burglars called themselves the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI. They were never caught. But decades later, a number of them are coming forward for the first time. The idea for the burglary came from William Davidon, a physics professor and leader of civil disobedience against the Vietnam War. Davidon died last year. Also involved were a social worker named Bob Williamson and John and Bonnie Raines, a married couple with children. Convinced the FBI was infiltrating peace groups, they hatched a plan to stage the break-in on the night of a major championship boxing match. Another of the burglars, Keith Forsyth, described his motivation in a video produced by Retro Report.

6. Stealing J. Edgar Hoover’s Secrets

   On March 8, 1971, a group of eight Vietnam War protestors broke into a Federal Bureau of Investigation field office in Media, Pennsylvania and stole hundreds of government documents that shocked a nation.

   The stolen memos, reports and internal correspondence provided the first tangible evidence that J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI was systematically targeting and harassing hundreds of American citizens then known collectively as “the New Left.”

7. NYPD Decides To Ape FBI’s Tactics And Cite The ‘Mosaic Theory’ As The Reason It Won’t Disclose Budget Data

8. Intelligence: American Spies Told To Clean Up And Get Persecuted

   The CIA has another intelligence collecting scandal to deal with. This time it was the November 2013 revelation that a former FBI agent (Robert Levinson) who disappeared while visiting Iran in 2007 was actually working for the CIA. Well, sort of. It seems Levinson was being paid by some CIA analysts to seek out some specific information while visiting Iran. The analysts were not using Levinson as a professional spy but as a professional observer.

9. How a major bank and the U.S. government joined forces to spy on Anonymous

10. Bank of America employs 20 full-time social media spies, watches anarchists and occupy protesters

    Bank of America works with fusion centers, the FBI, state and local police, and campus security to monitor public protest in the United States, newly disclosed documents confirm.

11. Open Letter To OWS: You Were Right All Along

    The first thing I’d like to do as I conclude this open letter to the Occupy Movement is to congratulate every single person who consider themselves part of it. Contrary to the false narrative the corporate state has been trying to propagate so desperately, the Occupy Movement was enormously effective and successful if one takes into consideration the massive amount of resources the corporate state invested in suppressing it.

12. Join us as we walk across the state of New Hampshire to bring awareness to the central issue that binds us all.

    As the first step in rebelling against a broken system and a dysfunctional Congress, the NHRebellion invites you to continue Granny D and Aaron’s work by walking down through New Hampshire. On January 11, 2014—15 years after Granny D began her walk, and beginning on the day Aaron died—we will walk the state from the top to the bottom, recruiting as many citizens in New

13. One-Year Later: In Remembrance of Aaron Swartz

    Although our hearts remain heavy, on the one-year anniversary of his death we are reflecting as an organization and as individuals on how we can honor Aaron’s legacy by redoubling our commitment to the struggle for a more just and equitable world.

14. Noam Chomsky: MIT Shares Blame For Aaron Swartz Tragedy

    The Massachusetts Institute of Technology bears some of the blame for the tragedy of Internet activist Aaron Swartz’s suicide, according to author and activist Noam Chomsky, who has spent his academic career at the university.

15. Why We’re Marching Across New Hampshire to Honor Aaron Swartz

16. Lawrence Lessig Walking Across New Hampshire In Memory Of Aaron Swartz

17. Aaron’s Walk: The New Hampshire Rebellion

    A system of corruption, not particular crimes. Our focus is not Rod Blagojevich; it is the system of campaign funding in which fundraising is key, and the funders represent the tiniest fraction of the 1%. That system, we believe, corrupts this democracy. (We, and 71% of Americans according to a recent poll.) And until that system changes, no sensible reform on the right or the left is possible. Politicians may continue to play this fundraising game. We believe that New Hampshire can change it.

18. Prosecutors used this cybercrime law against Aaron Swartz. Now a senator wants to strengthen it.

    A high-ranking Democratic senator is trying to beef up the law that let prosecutors go after Internet activist Aaron Swartz.

    Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) on Wednesday introduced the Personal Data Privacy and Security Act, making it the fifth time since 2005 that the chairman of the powerful judiciary committee has brought the bill forward. The bill’s key aim is to standardize the disclosure rules governing businesses that have been hacked.

19. Eric Holder Criticized On Anniversary Of Aaron Swartz Death

20. Lawmakers to Holder: ‘Inconsistencies’ in Reports of Swartz Prosecution ‘Require Serious Responses’

21. Why They Mattered: Aaron Swartz

    In January we lost Aaron Swartz, 26, to suicide. Or better, as the breadth of his work was wide and its depth, profound: In January we all lost Aaron Swartz to suicide.

22. Losing Aaron

    After his son was arrested for downloading files at MIT, Bob Swartz did everything in his power to save him. He couldn’t. Now he wants the institute to own up to its part in Aaron’s death.

23. A suicide’s fractured narrative: The death of computer programming whiz Aaron Swartz

    Suicides, by their nature, are difficult stories to tell. Unless the deceased leaves a note explaining everything, there is only a story with a terrible question mark at the end. Reporters have a natural tendency to focus on one event that must have prompted the decision to end it all. Depression is seldom so tidy.

Permalink  Send this to a friend