10,
January 2014
FBI abuses under Hoover
The recent release of “The Burglary:
The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI,"
showcases the massive abuses the FBI
perpetrated on unsuspecting political activists during the Vietnam War. The FBI
used the program to infiltrate, monitor and disrupt social and political
movements. In a desperate attempt to halt the abuses, several activists raided
the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, hoping to find incriminating documents.
One of the activists, John Raines who was recently interviewed by Amy Goodman
of Democracy Now, explained that “we knew the FBI was
systematically trying to squash dissent. And dissent is the lifeblood of
democracy”. One of the documents
revealed a group of FBI agents who were told “to
enhance the paranoia in the antiwar movement and to create an atmosphere that
there’s an FBI agent behind every mailbox”. Many of the
techniques were clearly illegal - burglaries, forged blackmail letters and
threats of violence. David
Brinkley, a prominent newscaster, commented that no one was spared in the
massive FBI surveillance including “diplomats, government
employees, sports figures, socially prominent persons, senators and
congressmen”. Another prominent newscaster, Walter Cronkite, observed that “the
FBI at one time sought to blackmail the late Martin
Luther King into committing suicide”. Tragically, countless lives had been
destroyed by the FBI. The activists decided to break their long silence out of
concern that the NSA is conducting far more sophisticated methods to invade the
privacy of ordinary Americans and US allies which has caused so much
consternation and moral outrage.
No comments:
Post a Comment