This story first appeared at ProPublica, and was produced in partnership with the MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
Is there anything that ProPublica can’t unveil?
Wonderful story.
Police, FBI and any other force’s surveillance of lawful protest has been going on for many years.
It is a reason for some to avoid protest.
This is deeply evil.
Back in the 60s, my parents’ phone was somehow not working the night my name appeared as a primary source for a front-page story in Walter Annenberg’s Philadelphia Inquirer about a Penn protest of germ warfare research in SE Asia. I later understood the Army Corps of Engineers was used for domestic wiretaps at this time.
Amazing piece and thank you TPM for posting it. J Edgar Hoover lives. All of this is too familiar to those of us who grew up in the 60’s.
Remember COINTELPRO – 1956-1957? Govnt used the now defunct Army Security Agency to do wiretaps on dissidents and who knows who.
It was absolutely illegal at the time.
35 members of Congress signed a letter sent to DEA, FBI, CBP and National Guard Bureau demanding they stop spying on people participating in protests
— Jason Leopold (@JasonLeopold) June 9, 2020
The letter cites our @BuzzfeedNews report about the DEA being granted authority to conduct covert surveillance pic.twitter.com/EmiqF0vbVK
" The intended effect of the FBI’s COINTELPRO was to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, or otherwise neutralize” groups that the FBI officials believed were “subversive”[55] by instructing FBI field operatives to:[56]
This FBI operation was busted in 1971.
But the domestic spying did not stop but continued under different guises.
" While COINTELPRO was officially terminated in April 1971, domestic espionage continued.[94][95][96] Between 1972 and 1974, it is documented that the Bureau planted over 500 bugs without a warrant and opened over 2,000 pieces of personal mail. More recent targets of covert action include the American Indian Movement (AIM), Earth First!, and Committees in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador.[97] Documents released under the FOIA show that the FBI tracked the late David Halberstam—a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author—for more than two decades.[98] “Counterterrorism” guidelines implemented during the Reagan administration have been described as allowing a return to COINTELPRO tactics.[99] Some radical groups accuse factional opponents of being FBI informants or assume the FBI is infiltrating the movement.[100] COINTELPRO survivor Filiberto Ojeda Rios was killed by the FBI’s hostage rescue team in 2005,[101] his death described by a United Nations special committee as an assassination.[102]"
(Wiki is the source for quoted materials.)
Nixon’s enemies list. I was on it for no other reason than I was a member of The Center Of Democratic Institutions and we had financially supported the proposal by Rexford Guy Tugwell of a suggested new U.S. Constitution.
Any federal crime?
Does that include the crimes by Grump and his GOP gang?
Just asking for a friend…
The Police Have Been Spying on Black Reporters and Activists for Years.
I Know Because I’m One of Them.
I wonder if he can guess who else knew.
Good for them and us.
“…But the domestic spying did not stop but continued under different guises…”
“Wire tapping” back in the 30’s was just that – alligator clips on someone’s phone lines in or outside the house.
Today it’s just so damned easy to spy on people and so hard to recognize spying it’s just too tempting for law enforcement to do it warrantless. CCTV, email and cell phone taps, GPS devices attached to a car – to name just the obvious ones. Privacy – what’s left of it – went out the window at least as far back as the 50’s if not before.
OT a bit maybe: I had a very high level clearance decades ago.
Some neighbors told me about questions asked by background investigators: What movies I liked? Who did I vote for? How were such things relevant? Fuck if I know, but I obviously passed because i got the clearance.
My father worked at ORNL for 35 years and had a Q-clearance. I can’t remember any kind of pressure from authorities when his renewals came up.
I have lived in Memphis for all but 26 of my 82 years and did not know about this. However, sometime in the 1980s a young black man with a new driver’s license rear-ended my car. I called the police and also my husband from a drugstore phone. One of the two officers who responded was black also–but that didn’t stop them from throwing the young man to the ground and hitting him. I begged them to stop, for I myself have rear-ended cars a couple of times. I had just wanted to be sure that this didn’t go on my record and that my insurance would pay if he didn’t have any. He did, but the officers took him to prison against my pleas not to do so, and also against my husband’s request to let the kid go with a summons. I gave the young man my phone number, and later his mother called to thank me and give me their insurance information. I apologized profusely, and asked if I could do anything else to help. She said no, that they were going to release him the next morning. I called back the next day, and he had been fined and released, and the family’s insurance had been cancelled. This event haunts me even to this day, I often wonder what became of that young man.
I never felt “pressure”.
And tax fraud and perjury and …
