THE TOUCHABLES
COMPILATION AND COMMENTARY
BY LUCY WARNER
JUNE 24, 2020
A BLACK MAN ACTING TOO WHITE, SPECIFICALLY FOLLOWING A CAREER AS
A FULL-TIME NASCAR RACE DRIVER, HAS BEEN HARASSED OR THREATENED, ACCORDING TO
HOW IT STRIKES THE VIEWER. TO ME, IT’S A THREAT. A NOOSE WAS FOUND HANGING BY
HIS CAR. THE SUBJECT OF THIS BLOG, THOUGH, IS THE FBI’S ROLE IN THE INVESTIGATION.
THEY HAVE DECLARED WITH A STRAIGHT FACE THAT SUCH AN OPEN REFERENCE TO LYNCHING
IS “NOT A HATE CRIME.”
I GET SO TIRED OF HEARING THINGS LIKE THIS. IT’S TIME IMPLIED
THREATS SHOULD BE CONSIDERED A CRIME, JUST AS A VERBAL OR WRITTEN THREAT IS. HAVING
SAID THAT, I TRIED TO VERIFY WHAT THE LEGAL STATUS OF MAKING THREATS AS A CRIME
IS TODAY. ACCORDING TO WIKIPEDIA, INTIMIDATION, WHICH IS HOW I SEE THIS,
IS A CRIME IN SOME STATES BUT NOT ALL. THAT MUST BE WHY BERNIE HAS SPOKEN FOR A
FEDERAL HATE CRIME LAW.
IT’S LIKE THE SITUATION SURROUNDING THE RIGHT TO VOTE. AS A
PRACTICAL MATTER, A STATE BY STATE LAW WILL NEVER, NOT EVER, PROVIDE UNIVERSAL
SUFFRAGE AS LONG AS MANKIND IS EVIL. WE NEED FEDERAL ELECTION LAWS WHICH MUST
BE FOLLOWED IN ALL STATES. WE HAD IT, BUT A FEW YEARS AGO IN THE SHELBY COUNTY
V. HOLDER CASE THE SUPREME COURT TOOK IT AWAY. READ ABOUT IT IN https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/07/how-shelby-county-broke-america/564707/.
THE SUPREME COURT ACTUALLY HAS TOO MUCH POWER, JUST AS THE
PRESIDENT TODAY DOES. WE NEED TO TWEAK THE LAWS ON A REGULAR BASIS, RATHER THAN
EVERY 200 YEARS OR SO. IF WE DID THAT, PERHAPS THERE WOULD BE NO NEED FOR “THE
BLOOD OF PATRIOTS AND TYRANTS” TO BE SPILLED IN THE CAUSE OF DEMOCRACY. OUR
NATURAL POLITICAL FERTILIZER WOULD BE SUFFICIENT TO KEEP IT GROWING AND HEALTHY.
WE PUT OUT QUITE A LOT OF THAT ON THE AVERAGE NEWS DAY.
By ELIZABETH ELKIND CBS
NEWS June 24, 2020, 11:37 AM
Bubba Wallace says he's "being tested each and every
day" after NASCAR's Confederate flag ban and FBI noose probe
NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace said he is "being tested each
and every day" after dealing with back-to-back controversies that saw
racially-charged backlash over his vocal support of the Black Lives Matter
movement.
"That's how life is. People want to dethrone you from the
pedestal that you're on when you have a platform and when you have a
voice," he told "CBS This Morning" Wednesday. "But I still
know the path that I am destined to be on, and I'm walking that proudly with my
head held high."
Days after his successful campaign to get the Confederate flag
banned from NASCAR events, the sport's only full-time
black driver at the top level was told by NASCAR leadership that a noose had
been found in his racing garage. The subsequent FBI investigation found that
the rope had been there before Wallace was assigned the garage, and that no
federal hate crime was committed.
"But they said absolutely it is a noose. Not a functioning
noose, but it is a noose. And they were curious on why that was even hanging,
as well," he said.
Wallace expressed "relief" that he was not targeted,
though he doubted the conclusion that the rope was part of a "garage
pull."
The athlete also vehemently denied the notion that the noose was
staged.
"They want to turn it into a hoax when I was just —
rational thoughts off the factual information that I was given," he said.
After NASCAR's Confederate flag ban, some fans expressed
outrage. One driver even said he would end his professional career after the
2020 season.
"Some have taken it like we're getting rid of that out of
their personal lives. So, I don't understand that
logic on thinking, but you can't help some people in today's world,"
Wallace said.
Wallace credited his "strong support system" of his
mother, sister, father and girlfriend for helping him get through recent weeks,
and said the display of support he received from his fellow drivers at
Talladega was "emotional."
"Definitely a moment that will stand out for me for
forever," he said. "Knowing that, you know, we have that family
support — that's how NASCAR is. It was good to see, and I definitely appreciate
that."
While he said he was looking forward to the coming weekend's
races as a way to "get away from the issue," Wallace vowed his
calls for reform would continue.
"We'll keep moving on and pushing the needle and fighting
for what's right in this sport. And I'll continue to stand proudly where I
am," he said.
© 2020 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
ONLY 100 PLUS MORE THUMBS UP THAN DOWNS OCCUR HERE, WHICH IS AN
UNUSUAL NUMBER OF NEGATIVES. THAT MAY BE “THE WHITE BACKLASH” IN ACTION, I’M
AFRAID. ALSO, THE FACT THAT THE FBI DECIDED THE NOOSE PLACEMENT BESIDE HIS CAR
WAS “NOT A HATE CRIME" IS DISTURBING. "IT’S A STRANGE CASE. I DO HOPE THE FBI IS
NOT TRULY CONTAMINATED, BUT THE STORY THAT THE NOOSE HAD BEEN THERE FOR MONTHS
SOUNDS EXTREMELY UNLIKELY. MAYBE THE FBI CAN ADD SOME OF THEIR OWN FERTILIZER
TO THE PILE.
4:48 MIN.
FBI Determines No Hate Crime in Bubba Wallace Case | The View
4,672 views • Jun 24, 2020
UPS 353 DOWNS
232
The View
867K subscribers
After the FBI determined driver Bubba Wallace “was not the
target of a hate crime” according to a statement from NASCAR on Tuesday, the
co-hosts weigh in on Wallace speaking out.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: http://bit.ly/2Ybi4tM
MORE FROM 'THE VIEW':
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THE INNER LIFE OF THE FBI HAS ALWAYS BEEN SECRETIVE, AND IN SOME
WAYS ANYWAY, DESTRUCTIVE OF WHAT MANY OF US FEEL TO BE THE FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION.
MY PROBLEM WITH ABSOLUTE FREEDOM IS THE OPEN SEASON LICENSE IT GIVES TO BAD
PEOPLE. UNDER COINTELPRO, THE FBI INFILTRATED THE KKK. THAT WAS GOOD. UNFORTUNATELY THEY
ALSO ATTACKED OTHER MOVEMENTS THAT SEEMED TO BE GAINING SOME POWER TO CHANGE
THE STATUS QUO. QUOTING THIS WIKI ARTICLE, “ACCORDING TO A SENATE REPORT, THE
FBI'S MOTIVATION WAS "PROTECTING NATIONAL SECURITY, PREVENTING VIOLENCE, AND
MAINTAINING THE EXISTING SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ORDER".[17]” THAT DOESN’T
LEAVE MUCH ROOM FOR SOCIAL PROGRESS AND FREEDOM FOR ALL PEOPLE.
COINTELPRO
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
COINTELPRO (syllabic abbreviation derived from COunter
INTELligence PROgram) (1956–1979, and beyond) was a
series of covert and illegal[1][2] projects conducted by the United States
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating,
discrediting, and disrupting American political organizations.[3][4] FBI
records show that COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals that
the FBI deemed subversive,[5] including feminist organizations,[6] the
Communist Party USA,[7] anti–Vietnam War organizers, activists of the civil
rights movement or Black Power movement (e.g. Martin Luther King Jr., the
Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party), environmentalist and animal
rights organizations, the American Indian Movement (AIM), independence
movements (such as Puerto Rican independence groups like the Young Lords), and
a variety of organizations that were part of the broader New Left. The program
also targeted the Ku Klux Klan in 1964.[8]
In 1971 in San Diego, the FBI financed, armed, and
controlled an extreme right-wing group of former members of the Minutemen
anti-communist para-military organization, transforming it into a group
called the Secret Army Organization that targeted groups, activists, and
leaders involved in the Anti-War Movement, using both intimidation and violent
acts.[9][10][11]
The FBI has used covert operations against domestic political
groups since its inception; however, covert operations under the official
COINTELPRO label took place between 1956 and 1971.[12] COINTELPRO tactics are
still used to this day and have been alleged to include discrediting targets
through psychological warfare; smearing individuals and groups using forged
documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful
imprisonment; and illegal violence, including assassination.[13][14][15][16]
According to a senate report, the FBI's motivation was "protecting
national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and
political order".[17]
Beginning in 1969, leaders of the Black Panther Party
were targeted by the COINTELPRO and "neutralized" by being
assassinated, imprisoned, publicly humiliated or falsely charged with crimes.
Some of the Black Panthers affected included Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, Zayd
Shakur, Geronimo Pratt, Mumia Abu-Jamal,[18] and Marshall Conway. Common tactics
used by COINTELPRO were perjury, witness harassment, witness intimidation, and
withholding of evidence.[19][20][21]
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover issued directives governing
COINTELPRO, ordering FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit,
or otherwise neutralize" the activities of these movements and especially
their leaders.[22][23] Under Hoover, the agent in charge
of COINTELPRO was William C. Sullivan.[24] Attorney General Robert F.
Kennedy personally authorized some of the programs.[25] Although Kennedy only
gave written approval for limited wiretapping of Martin Luther King's phones
"on a trial basis, for a month or so",[26] Hoover extended the
clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for evidence in any
areas of King's life they deemed worthy.[27]
History
Centralized operations under COINTELPRO officially began in
August 1956 with a program designed to "increase factionalism, cause
disruption and win defections" inside the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).
Tactics included anonymous phone calls, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audits,
and the creation of documents that would divide the American communist
organization internally.[7] An October 1956 memo from Hoover reclassified the
FBI's ongoing surveillance of black leaders, including it within COINTELPRO,
with the justification that the movement was infiltrated by communists.[28] In
1956, Hoover sent an open letter denouncing Dr. T. R. M. Howard, a civil rights
leader, surgeon, and wealthy entrepreneur in Mississippi who had criticized FBI
inaction in solving recent murders of George W. Lee, Emmett Till, and other
African Americans in the South.[29] When the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC), an African-American civil rights organization, was founded
in 1957, the FBI began to monitor and target the group almost immediately,
focusing particularly on Bayard Rustin, Stanley Levison, and eventually Martin
Luther King Jr.[30]
INSERT -- The "suicide letter",[31] that the FBI
mailed anonymously to Martin Luther King Jr. in an attempt to convince him to
commit suicide [GO TO WEBSITE]
After the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Hoover
singled out King as a major target for COINTELPRO. Under pressure from Hoover
to focus on King, Sullivan wrote:[32]
“In the light of King's powerful demagogic speech. ... We must
mark him now if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the
future in this nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national
security.”
Soon after, the FBI was systematically bugging King's home and
his hotel rooms, as they were now aware that King was growing in stature daily
as the most prominent leader of the civil rights movement.[33]
In the mid-1960s, King began to publicly criticize the Bureau
for giving insufficient attention to the use of terrorism by white
supremacists. Hoover responded by publicly calling King the most
"notorious liar" in the United States.[34] In his 1991 memoir
Washington Post, journalist Carl Rowan asserted that the FBI had sent at least
one anonymous letter to King encouraging him to commit suicide.[35] Historian
Taylor Branch documents an anonymous November 21, 1964 "suicide
package" sent by the FBI that contained audio recordings obtained through
tapping King's phone and placing bugs throughout various hotel rooms over the
past two years,[36] and that was created two days after the announcement of
King's impending Nobel Peace Prize.[36] The tape, which was prepared by FBI
audio technician John Matter,[36] documented a series of King's sexual
indiscretions combined with a letter telling him: "There is only one way
out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self
is bared to the nation".[37] King was subsequently informed that the audio
would be released to the media if he did not acquiesce and commit suicide prior
to accepting his Nobel Peace Prize.[36] When King refused to satisfy their
coercion tactics, FBI Associate Director, Cartha D. DeLoach, commenced a media
campaign offering the surveillance transcript to various news organizations,
including Newsweek and Newsday.[36] And even by 1969, as has been noted
elsewhere, "[FBI] efforts to 'expose' Martin Luther King Jr. had not
slackened even though King had been dead for a year. [The Bureau] furnished
ammunition to opponents that enabled attacks on King's memory, and ... tried to
block efforts to honor the slain leader."[37]
During the same period the program also targeted Malcolm X.
While an FBI spokesman has denied that the FBI was "directly"
involved in Malcolm's murder in 1965, it is documented that the Bureau worked
to "widen the rift" between Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad through
infiltration and the "sparking of acrimonious debates within the
organization", rumor-mongering, and other tactics designed to foster
internal disputes, which ultimately led to Malcolm's assassination.[38][39] The
FBI heavily infiltrated Malcolm's Organization of Afro-American Unity in the
final months of his life. The Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Malcolm X by
Manning Marable asserts that most of the men who plotted Malcolm's
assassination were never apprehended and that the full extent of the FBI's
involvement in his death cannot be known.[40][41]
Amidst the urban unrest of July–August 1967, the FBI began
"COINTELPRO–BLACK HATE", which
focused on King and the SCLC, as well as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC), the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), the Deacons for
Defense and Justice, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Nation of
Islam.[42] BLACK HATE established the Ghetto Informant Program and
instructed 23 FBI offices to "disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise
neutralize the activities of black nationalist hate type organizations".[43]
A March 1968 memo stated the program's goal was to "prevent
the coalition of militant black nationalist groups"; to
"Prevent the RISE OF A 'MESSIAH' who could unify ... the militant black
nationalist movement"; "to pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize
them before they exercise their potential for violence [against authorities].";
to "Prevent militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining
RESPECTABILITY, by discrediting them to ... both the responsible
community and to liberals who have vestiges of sympathy..."; and to
"prevent the long-range GROWTH of militant black organizations, especially
among youth". Dr. King was said to have potential to be the
"messiah" figure, should he abandon nonviolence and integrationism,[44]
and Stokely Carmichael was noted to have "the necessary charisma to be
a real threat in this way" as he was portrayed as someone who espoused
a much more militant vision of "black power".[45] While the FBI was
particularly concerned with leaders and organizers, they did not limit their
scope of target to the heads of organizations. Individuals such as writers
were also listed among the targets of operations.[46]
This program coincided with a broader federal effort to
prepare military responses for urban riots and began increased
collaboration between the FBI, Central Intelligence Agency, National Security
Agency, and the Department of Defense. The CIA launched its own domestic
espionage project in 1967 called Operation CHAOS.[47] A particular target
was the Poor People's Campaign, a national effort organized by King and the
SCLC to occupy Washington, DC. The FBI monitored and disrupted the campaign
on a national level, while using targeted smear tactics locally to undermine
support for the march.[48] The Black Panther Party was another
targeted organization, wherein the FBI collaborated to destroy the party
from the inside out.[46]
Overall, COINTELPRO encompassed disruption and sabotage of the
Socialist Workers Party (1961), the Ku Klux Klan (1964), the Nation of Islam,
the Black Panther Party (1967), and the entire New Left social/political
movement, which included antiwar, community, and religious groups (1968).
A later investigation by the Senate's Church Committee (see below)
stated that "COINTELPRO began in 1956, in part because of frustration
with Supreme Court rulings limiting the Government's power to proceed overtly
against dissident groups."[49] Official congressional committees and
several court cases[50] have concluded that COINTELPRO operations against
communist and socialist groups exceeded statutory limits on FBI activity and
violated constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and association.[1]
Program exposure
Main articles: Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI and
Church Committee
PHOTOGRAPH -- The building broken into by the Citizen's
Commission to Investigate the FBI, at One Veterans Square, Media, Pennsylvania
The program was secret until 1971, when the Citizens'
Commission to Investigate the FBI burgled an FBI field office in Media,
Pennsylvania, took several dossiers, and exposed the program by passing this
material to news agencies.[51] The boxing match known as the Fight of
the Century between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in March 1971 provided cover
for the activist group to successfully pull off the burglary; Muhammad Ali was
himself a COINTELPRO target due to his involvement with the Nation of Islam and
the anti-war movement.[52] Many news organizations initially refused to
publish the information. Within the year, Director J. Edgar Hoover declared
that the centralized COINTELPRO was over, and that all future
counterintelligence operations would be handled on a case-by-case basis.[53][54]
Additional documents were revealed in the course of separate
lawsuits filed against the FBI by NBC
correspondent Carl Stern, the Socialist Workers Party, and a number of other
groups. In 1976 the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations
with Respect to Intelligence Activities of the United States Senate,
commonly referred to as the "Church Committee" after its chairman,
Senator Frank Church of Idaho, launched a major investigation of the FBI
and COINTELPRO. Many released documents have been partly or entirely redacted.
The Final Report of the Select Committee castigated the conduct
of the intelligence community in its domestic operations (including COINTELPRO)
in no uncertain terms:
“The Committee finds that the domestic activities of the
intelligence community at times violated specific statutory prohibitions and
infringed the constitutional rights of American citizens. The legal questions
involved in intelligence programs were often not considered. On other occasions,
they were intentionally disregarded in the belief that because the programs
served the "national security" the law did not apply. While
intelligence officers on occasion failed to disclose to their superiors
programs which were illegal or of questionable legality, the Committee finds
that the most serious breaches of duty were those of senior officials, who were
responsible for controlling intelligence activities and generally failed to
assure compliance with the law.[1] 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
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.[49]”
The Church Committee documented a history of the FBI exercising
political repression as far back as World War I, through the 1920s, when agents
were charged with rounding up "anarchists, communists, socialists,
reformists and revolutionaries" for deportation. The domestic operations
were increased against political and anti-war groups from 1936 through 1976.
Intended effects
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]
*Create a negative public image for target groups (for example
through surveilling activists and then releasing negative personal information
to the public)
*Break down internal organization by creating conflicts (for
example, by having agents exacerbate racial tensions, or send anonymous letters
to try to create conflicts)
*Create dissension between groups (for example, by spreading
rumors that other groups were stealing money)
*Restrict access to public resources (for example, by pressuring
non-profit organizations to cut off funding or material support)
*Restrict the ability to organize protest (for example, through
agents promoting violence against police during planning and at protests)
*Restrict the ability of individuals to participate in group
activities (for example, by character assassinations, false arrests,
surveillance)
SHADOWY FBI ACTIVITIES WERE PUT BEFORE THE PUBLIC EYE BY THESE
PEOPLE, ONE OF WHOM WAS A WOMAN. THE UNTOUCHABLE FBI IS A MYTH, AS PROVEN
AGAIN. I VAGUELY REMEMBER THIS SITUATION AND THE CHURCH COMMITTEE. THAT
HAPPENED A LONG TIME AGO, SO I GUESS IT’S TIME TO GO THROUGH IT ALL AGAIN NOW.
Burglars Who Took On F.B.I. Abandon Shadows
By Mark Mazzetti
Jan. 7, 2014
VIDEO -- One night in 1971, files were stolen from an F.B.I.
office near Philadelphia. They proved that the bureau was spying on thousands
of Americans. The case was unsolved, until now.
PHILADELPHIA — The perfect crime is far easier to pull off when
nobody is watching.
So on a night nearly 43 years ago, while Muhammad Ali and Joe
Frazier bludgeoned each other over 15 rounds in a televised title bout viewed
by millions around the world, burglars took a lock pick and a crowbar and broke
into a Federal Bureau of Investigation office in a suburb of Philadelphia,
making off with nearly every document inside.
They were never caught, and the stolen documents that they
mailed anonymously to newspaper reporters were the first trickle of what would
become a flood of revelations about extensive spying and dirty-tricks
operations by the F.B.I. against dissident groups.
The burglary in Media, Pa., on March 8, 1971, is a historical
echo today, as disclosures by the former National Security Agency contractor
Edward J. Snowden have cast another unflattering light on government spying and
opened a national debate about the proper limits of government surveillance.
The burglars had, until now, maintained a vow of silence about their roles in
the operation. They were content in knowing that their actions had dealt the
first significant blow to an institution that had amassed enormous power and
prestige during J. Edgar Hoover’s lengthy tenure as director.
“When you talked to people outside the movement about what the
F.B.I. was doing, nobody wanted to believe it,” said one of the burglars, Keith
Forsyth, who is finally going public about his involvement. “There was only one
way to convince people that it was true, and that was to get it in their
handwriting.”
Mr. Forsyth, now 63, and other members of the group can no
longer be prosecuted for what happened that night, and they agreed to be
interviewed before the release this week of a book written by one of the first
journalists to receive the stolen documents. The author, Betty Medsger, a
former reporter for The Washington Post, spent years sifting through the
F.B.I.’s voluminous case file on the episode and persuaded five of the eight
men and women who participated in the break-in to end their silence.
Unlike Mr. Snowden, who downloaded hundreds of thousands of
digital N.S.A. files onto computer hard drives, the Media burglars did their
work the 20th-century way: they cased the F.B.I. office for months, wore gloves
as they packed the papers into suitcases, and loaded the suitcases into getaway
cars. When the operation was over, they dispersed. Some remained committed to
antiwar causes, while others, like John and Bonnie Raines, decided that the
risky burglary would be their final act of protest against the Vietnam War and
other government actions before they moved on with their lives.
“We didn’t need attention, because we had done what needed to be
done,” said Mr. Raines, 80, who had, with his wife, arranged for family members
to raise the couple’s three children if they were sent to prison. “The ’60s
were over. We didn’t have to hold on to what we did back then.”
A Meticulous Plan
The burglary was the idea of William C. Davidon, a professor of
physics at Haverford College and a fixture of antiwar protests in Philadelphia,
a city that by the early 1970s had become a white-hot center of the peace
movement. Mr. Davidon was frustrated that years of organized demonstrations
seemed to have had little impact.
In the summer of 1970, months after President Richard M. Nixon
announced the United States’ invasion of Cambodia, Mr. Davidon began assembling
a team from a group of activists whose commitment and discretion he had come to
trust.
The group — originally nine, before one member dropped out —
concluded that it would be too risky to try to break into the F.B.I. office in
downtown Philadelphia, where security was tight. They soon settled on the
bureau’s satellite office in Media, in an apartment building across the street
from the county courthouse.
That decision carried its own risks: Nobody could be certain
whether the satellite office would have any documents about the F.B.I.’s
surveillance of war protesters, or whether a security alarm would trip as soon
as the burglars opened the door.
The group spent months casing the building, driving past it at
all times of the night and memorizing the routines of its residents.
“We knew when people came home from work, when their lights went
out, when they went to bed, when they woke up in the morning,” said Mr. Raines,
who was a professor of religion at Temple University at the time. “We were
quite certain that we understood the nightly activities in and around that
building.”
But it wasn’t until Ms. Raines got inside the office that the
group grew confident that it did not have a security system. Weeks before the
burglary, she visited the office posing as a Swarthmore College student
researching job opportunities for women at the F.B.I.
The burglary itself went off largely without a hitch, except for
when Mr. Forsyth, the designated lock-picker, had to break into a different
entrance than planned when he discovered that the F.B.I. had installed a lock
on the main door that he could not pick. He used a crowbar to break the second
lock, a deadbolt above the doorknob.
After packing the documents into suitcases, the burglars piled
into getaway cars and rendezvoused at a farmhouse to sort through what they had
stolen. To their relief, they soon discovered that the bulk of it was hard
evidence of the F.B.I.’s spying on political groups. Identifying themselves as
the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the F.B.I., the burglars sent select
documents to several newspaper reporters. Two weeks after the burglary, Ms.
Medsger wrote the first article based on the files, after the Nixon
administration tried unsuccessfully to get The Post to return the documents.
Other news organizations that had received the documents,
including The New York Times, followed with their own reports.
Ms. Medsger’s article cited what was perhaps the most damning
document from the cache, a 1970 memorandum that offered a glimpse into Hoover’s
obsession with snuffing out dissent. The document urged agents to step up their
interviews of antiwar activists and members of dissident student groups.
“It will enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and will
further serve to get the point across there is an F.B.I. agent behind every
mailbox,” the message from F.B.I. headquarters said. Another document, signed
by Hoover himself, revealed widespread F.B.I. surveillance of black student
groups on college campuses.
But the document that would have the biggest impact on reining
in the F.B.I.’s domestic spying activities was an internal routing slip, dated
1968, bearing a mysterious word: Cointelpro.
Neither the Media burglars nor the reporters who received the
documents understood the meaning of the term, and it was not until several
years later, when the NBC News reporter Carl Stern obtained more files from the
F.B.I. under the Freedom of Information Act, that the contours of Cointelpro —
shorthand for Counterintelligence Program — were revealed.
Since 1956, the F.B.I. had carried out an expansive campaign to
spy on civil rights leaders, political organizers and suspected Communists, and
had tried to sow distrust among protest groups. Among the grim litany of
revelations was a blackmail letter F.B.I. agents had sent anonymously to the
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., threatening to expose his extramarital affairs
if he did not commit suicide.
“It wasn’t just spying on Americans,” said Loch K. Johnson, a
professor of public and international affairs at the University of Georgia who
was an aide to Senator Frank Church, Democrat of Idaho. “The intent of
Cointelpro was to destroy lives and ruin reputations.”
Senator Church’s investigation in the mid-1970s revealed still
more about the extent of decades of F.B.I. abuses, and led to greater
congressional oversight of the F.B.I. and other American intelligence agencies.
The Church Committee’s final report about the domestic surveillance was blunt.
“Too many people have been spied upon by too many government agencies, and too
much information has been collected,” it read.
By the time the committee released its report, Hoover was dead
and the empire he had built at the F.B.I. was being steadily dismantled. The
roughly 200 agents he had assigned to investigate the Media burglary came back
empty-handed, and the F.B.I. closed the case on March 11, 1976 — three days
after the statute of limitations for burglary charges had expired.
Michael P. Kortan, a spokesman for the F.B.I., said that “a
number of events during that era, including the Media burglary, contributed to
changes to how the F.B.I. identified and addressed domestic security threats,
leading to reform of the F.B.I.’s intelligence policies and practices and the
creation of investigative guidelines by the Department of Justice.”
According to Ms. Medsger’s book, “The Burglary: The Discovery of
J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret F.B.I.,” only one of the burglars was on the F.B.I.’s
final list of possible suspects before the case was closed.
A Retreat Into Silence
The eight burglars rarely spoke to one another while the F.B.I.
investigation was proceeding and never again met as a group.
Mr. Davidon died late last year from complications of
Parkinson’s disease. He had planned to speak publicly about his role in the break-in,
but three of the burglars have chosen to remain anonymous.
Among those who have come forward — Mr. Forsyth, the Raineses
and a man named Bob Williamson — there is some wariness of how their
decision will be viewed.
The passage of years has worn some of the edges off the once
radical political views of John and Bonnie Raines. But they said they felt a
kinship toward Mr. Snowden, whose revelations about N.S.A. spying they see as a
bookend to their own disclosures so long ago.
They know some people will criticize them for having taken part
in something that, if they had been caught and convicted, might have separated
them from their children for years. But they insist they would never have
joined the team of burglars had they not been convinced they would get away
with it.
“It looks like we’re terribly reckless people,” Mr. Raines said.
“But there was absolutely no one in Washington — senators, congressmen, even
the president — who dared hold J. Edgar Hoover to accountability.”
“It became pretty obvious to us,” he said, “that if we don’t do
it, nobody will.”
A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 7, 2014,
Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Burglars Who Took
On F.B.I. Abandon Shadows. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
HERE IS A 2013 RECORDING OF A SONG ABOUT FBI
INTRIGUES. IT’S VERY APPEALING MUSIC, DELICATE ACOUSTIC GUITAR WITH DRUMS, AND
THE LEAD SINGER HAS A GOOD TENOR TO BARITONE VOICE. THE STORY OF THE SONG GOES
ALONG WITH THE THEME OF TODAY’S BLOG.
7:22 MIN.
Silent Bear W/ Kahlil Kwame Bell- F.B.I
( Great Big Lie) 3/5/13
449 views • May 25, 2013
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silentbearvideo
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1 COMMENT
Kahlil Bell
7 years ago
A song that makes one think, reflect, and question is special.
K.
TRACKING SILENT BEAR (I.E., WHO OR WHAT IS SILENT BEAR? IS IT
THE SINGER, OR IS IT THE GROUP?). I FOUND HIM. HE IS A NATIVE AMERICAN ACTIVIST,
WHO IS NOT HIMSELF NATIVE AMERICAN, AND A SINGER.
Boulder Songwriter Silent Bear Sings Out Against Dakota Access
Pipeline
JOSH KRAUS | SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 | 6:27AM
On September 13, Colorado singer-songwriter Silent Bear found
himself singing a new song to a group of Dakota Pipeline protesters in front of
the Boulder County Courthouse.
“I ain’t gonna work on Kelcy’s pipeline no more,” the song
begins. “They’re protectors of the water, they’re protectors of the land,
they’re protecting the rivers from the desecration of man.”
Set to the tune of “Maggie’s Farm,” by Bob Dylan, Silent
Bear’s “The Dakota Access Pipeline Dirty River Blues” is an explicit
condemnation of the $3.8 billion oil pipeline, which continues to pose an
environmental threat to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota.
“We don’t want your dirty crude oil anymore,” the song
continues. “I ain’t gonna work on Kelcy’s pipeline no more.”
RELATED STORIES
Denver Marches in Solidarity with Standing Rock
Passin' Through: Bob Dylan's Ill-Fated Summer in Denver
Flobots' Jamie Laurie on Today's Best Protest Music
THIS YOUTUBE CHANNEL CONTAINS FOUR SILENT BEAR SONGS, ALL
APPARENTLY RECORDED ON MARCH 5, 2013. THE FOLLOWING IS FROM A LEONARD PELTIER AWARENESS CONCERT. THE CASE OF LEONARD PELTIER, TO MANY PEOPLE, IS ANOTHER FBI OVERREACH.
13:30 MIN. -- NOW PLAYING
Pete Seeger- R.I.P. - bring him home-Silent Bear/ Leonard
Peltier Awareness concert 2012
MrLeondo
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1 video 1 view Last updated on Sep 10, 2013
ABOUT LEONARD PELTIER
Leonard Peltier
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Leonard Peltier (born September 12, 1944) is an American
indigenous rights activist and an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain
Chippewa, and also of Lakota and Dakota descent.[1] After being extradited from
Canada through a false witness statement, he was convicted in a controversial
1977 trial and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment for
first-degree murder of murdering two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
agents in a June 26, 1975, shooting on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in
South Dakota. As detailed by In the Spirit of Crazy
Horse, his trials and conviction are considered highly controversial and
not credible.[2][3]
Peltier ran for President of the United States in 2004, winning
the nomination of the Peace and Freedom Party, and receiving 27,607 votes, only
on the ballot in California. He is currently running for Vice President of the
United States in 2020, on the Party for Socialism and Liberation and Peace and
Freedom Party tickets with veteran socialist activist Gloria La Riva. Peltier
is a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM).
Peltier's indictment and conviction have been the subject of
much contention; Amnesty International placed his case under the "Unfair
Trials" category of its Annual Report: USA 2010.[4] In his 1999 memoir,
Peltier admitted to involvement in the shootout but denied killing the FBI
agents.[5][6][7][8]
Peltier is incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary,
Coleman in Florida. Peltier became eligible for parole in 1993; his next
scheduled parole hearing will be in July 2024, when Peltier will be 79.[9][10]
On January 18, 2017, the Office of the Pardon Attorney announced that President
Barack Obama had denied Peltier's application for clemency.[11] Peltier was
next eligible for commutation in 2018.[11] Barring appeals, parole, or
presidential clemency, Peltier will remain in prison for the rest of his life.[12]
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