ESTADOS UNIDOS   

Aspectos silenciados sobre de la realidad norteamericana

Sent: Saturday, August 24, 2002 3:23 PM
Subject: [MLL] RE: question from a young comrade


Thomas,

Your questions raise a few questions of my own but I will let time and
dialogue bear them out.

In your question, "Although the precious few know the full extent of their
knowledge, how much can we know that they monitor?"

What exactly do you mean, the "precious" few? Also, at least for me, this
question seems very broad and therefore somewhat difficult to answer.

I can definitely say that the political police monitor as much as they
possibly can.  The USA Patriot Act has given the political police the
authority to merely conduct their business of surveillance in an overt
manner.  The USA Patriot Act has not established anything new, just merely
legalized what the political police have been doing illegally and covertly
since FDR and his Attorney General, Homer Cummings created the FBI by
merging the Bureau of Investigation, Prohibition Bureau, and Bureau of
Identification in July 1933.

Prior to this, in 1919, J. Edgar Hoover was hired by A. Mitchell Palmer to
lead the new "General Intelligence Division" in what was called the Red
Scare investigation; Hoover compiled files on 450,000 suspected radicals and
wrote the first government study of communism in 1919, the "Report on
Radicalism."

When in 1924, Harlan Fiske Stone became Attorney General, he succeeded in
temporarily halting the unconstitutional activities of the Bureau, saying:
"When a police system passes beyond these limits [conduct forbidden by law]
it is dangerous to the proper administration of justice and to human
liberty." (quoted in Morton Halperin et al, The Lawless State, p. 95)

World War II brought a return of the FBI to counterintelligence operations
as President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a 1940 memorandum gave the FBI the
power to use warrantless wiretaps against suspected subversives. This was
contrary to a Supreme Court decision of 1937 (Nardone v. U.S.) which stated
that a Congressional statute made it a crime for "any person" to intercept
wire communications applied to federal agents also.

COINTELPRO developed out of the anti-Communist hysteria of the cold war
years, but led to FBI actions against groups that had nothing to do with
Communism. The Church committee reports that COINTELPRO, was set up to
protect "national security" and prevent violence, actually engaged in other
actions "which had no conceivable rational relationship to either national
security or violent activity. The unexpressed major premise of much of
COINTELPRO is that the Bureau has a role in maintaining the existing social
order, and that its efforts should be aimed toward combating those who
threaten that order." (p.7) This meant that the Bureau would take actions
against individuals and organizations simply because they were critical of
government policy.  This singular fact alone is evidence that COINTELPRO is
continued under the USA Patriot Act.

United States intelligence agencies have investigated a vast number of
American citizens and domestic organizations. The following figures are
somewhat outdated so you can imagine that the numbers have increased rather
then decreased!

The FBI headquarters alone has developed over 500,000 domestic intelligence
files, 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.  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.

At least 130,000 first class letters were opened and photographed by the FBI
between 1940-1966 in eight U.S. cities.

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).

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.

An estimated 100,000 Americans were the subjects of United States Army
intelligence files created between the mid 1960's and 1971.

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.

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".

The cultural revolution of the 1960's, and the FBI's reaction to it, were in
many ways a product of "McCarthyism" in the 1950's.  J. Edgar Hoover was a
prominent spokesman of anti-communism and stated:

"The forces which are most anxious to weaken our internal security are not
always easy to identify.  Communists have been trained in deceit and
secretly work toward the day when they hope to replace our American way of
life with a Communist dictatorship.  They utilize cleverly camouflaged
movements, such as peace groups and civil rights groups to achieve their
sinister purposes.  While they as individuals are difficult to identify, the
Communist party line is clear.  Its first concern is the advancement of
Soviet Russia and the godless Communist cause.  It is important to learn to
know the enemies of the American way of life."

Hoover tried to consistently apply this theory to a wide variety of groups
and even reprimanded agents who were not able to find "obvious" communist
connections in the civil rights and anti-war groups.  During the entire
historical period of COINTELPRO, the political police never did find any
links between the Soviet Union and the social movements they were trying to
destroy.

The commitment of the FBI to undermine and destroy popular movements is
extensive and is proportional to the strength and promise of the social
movements. The US bourgeoisie will not allow individuals or groups to
threaten their existing social order so the degree of repression by the
political police is determined by the influence individuals and groups have
on changing that social order.  In this case, it is difficult to determine
precisely how extensive the monitoring of the political police is but it is
sufficient to understand that it exists and we must learn to identify their
tactics.  The political police of today are just as determined to
"undermine, expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize"
those they determine are enemies of the State.

Even though "officially" COINTELPRO was disbanded after the Church Committee
hearings, the political police made it clear that political oppression would
continue:

"Over the years, our approach to investigative problems in the intelligence
field has given rise to a number of new programs, some of which have been
most revolutionary, and it can be assumed that with a continued aggressive
approach to these problems, new and productive ideas will be forthcoming.
These ideas will not be increased in number or improved upon from the
standpoint of accomplishments merely through the institution of a program
such as COINTELPRO which is given another name, and which in fact, only
encompasses everything that has been done or will be done in the future."
(J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Director: Memorandum, July 15, 1964)

The US bourgeoisie must constantly find ways to protect their ever shrinking
social order of capitalism from complete destruction so they must invent
ways to do so by creating enemies of their social order.  The "American way
of life" Hoover was willing to murder for is the capitalist social order
that only a few will ever benefit from.  Those who challenge this social
order in any degree, whether they be religious groups or communists will be
identified by the political police as "terrorists."

The Democrats have been willing collaborators in this political repression
inspite of their appearence to the contrary.  John F. Kennedy stated to the
effect, "If we suppress peaceful revolution, then we will have to contend
with violent revolution."  This is the same humanitarian Democrate that
occupied Vietnam and slaughtered millions of people.

The Republicans have had the staunchest supporters of political repression
in the form of Reagan and the "father-like-son" tag team of the Bush's.
Good ol' junior outdoes his dad however and the like the serial killer he
is, has a craving to mass murder which is why he was fraudulently
"nominated" by the highest law enforcement office of the bourgeoisie's
social order, the Supreme Court.  The propensity and cravenous desire to
murder people as shown by Bush is a necessary prerequisite for a fascist
leader, history bears this out.  It is this attribute, a cravenous desire to
murder, that compelled the bourgeoisie to nominate Bush as president in
order to excellerate the push of US fascism in order to protect the rapidly
dying social order of capitalism.

US history is full of examples of the political repression by the US
bourgeoisie and as capitalism continues to die at a more rapid pace, the
political oppression will continue to increase.  Only those who "straddle
the fence" or cower in fear and insecurity will be safe from the repression
of the political police but they will not be safe from the exploitation of
the bourgeoisie and will remain slaves to their social order until it
finally collapses.

Fraternally  M.S.


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