Saul Landau: When J. Edgar Hoover Bugged My Phone Calls with My Father
[Saul Landau is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. He will be presenting his Emmy Award winning film, Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang, at the Fifth Avenue Cinema in Portland, Oregon on January 28 at 7 PM.]
... In addition [to the eavesdropping program], Homeland Security spooks open citizens' letters. In December 2005, retired University of Kansas history professor Grant Goodman told reporter Brock N. Meeks, that he "received a letter from his friend in the Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip of dark green tape bearing the words "by Border Protection" and carrying the official Homeland Security seal. (MSNBC Jan. 6, 2006)
In 1974, I received some of my own correspondence in some 1,400 pages from the FBI and CIA in response to my Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The CIA sent me letters I had sent to friends abroad. I was shocked not only from discovering my disgraceful efforts at prose.
Frivolity aside, the explanations, then and now, for contravening time honored rights, have little resonance with reality. During the Cold War, US leaders referred to "internal subversion," magnified by an external threat of Soviet world domination. This supposed superpower collapsed in 1989 without the United States firing a shot at it.
Robert Scherrer, a former FBI Agent, laughed about the countless hours he spent in the 1960s interviewing "little old Jewish grandmas in the Bronx who had been members of the Communist Party. They were always polite and offered me tea and cookies."
FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover never pursued the Mafia with the vigor he showed in his assault on the left. Reportedly, Mafiosos apparently used against him a photo of the director clad in a tutu while tripping the light fantastic in his living room -- in a house he shared with another high FBI official (male). The Mob also practiced surveillance. Like government prying, Mafia snooping related to extending their power.
When I was a university freshman in the 1950s, the FBI opened a file on me for writing a letter to the student newspaper supporting free speech for communists. The documents I received from the Bureau under the FOIA contained dozens of pages of transcripts of my phone conversations in the 1960s and 70s. I read transcripts of conspiratorial phone conversations I'd had with my father about when I would arrive at his Santa Monica home with my wife and kids and how my mother was doing with her diabetes treatments.
I don't know if anyone actually listened or if the FBI simply recorded and then transcribed these calls. Nor do I know how much it cost the government to carry out wiretapping on thousands of people who did not even contemplate engaging in crime.
In 1956, top FBI leaders invented COINTELPRO, the acronym for Counter Intelligence Program, to target the left and even liberals. COINTELPRO was supposed to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" protest movements and their leaders. The Bureau kept this invasiveness going until 1971.
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and his cronies considered as "subversive" not only those few loonies who declared their intentions of overthrowing the government, but the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whose goal was racial integration. Yes, the Bureau targeted the Ku Klux Klan and handful of Nazis as well.
In those days, the government used the "communist threat" to justify such measures. Today, as in the past, blanket surveillance has no relationship to security. It does, however, produce insecurity. Indeed, it forms part and parcel of the power package that the Bush gang has employed to govern. Bush speech writers use "protecting" as a metaphor for taking away their rights....
Read entire article at counterpunch.com
... In addition [to the eavesdropping program], Homeland Security spooks open citizens' letters. In December 2005, retired University of Kansas history professor Grant Goodman told reporter Brock N. Meeks, that he "received a letter from his friend in the Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip of dark green tape bearing the words "by Border Protection" and carrying the official Homeland Security seal. (MSNBC Jan. 6, 2006)
In 1974, I received some of my own correspondence in some 1,400 pages from the FBI and CIA in response to my Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The CIA sent me letters I had sent to friends abroad. I was shocked not only from discovering my disgraceful efforts at prose.
Frivolity aside, the explanations, then and now, for contravening time honored rights, have little resonance with reality. During the Cold War, US leaders referred to "internal subversion," magnified by an external threat of Soviet world domination. This supposed superpower collapsed in 1989 without the United States firing a shot at it.
Robert Scherrer, a former FBI Agent, laughed about the countless hours he spent in the 1960s interviewing "little old Jewish grandmas in the Bronx who had been members of the Communist Party. They were always polite and offered me tea and cookies."
FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover never pursued the Mafia with the vigor he showed in his assault on the left. Reportedly, Mafiosos apparently used against him a photo of the director clad in a tutu while tripping the light fantastic in his living room -- in a house he shared with another high FBI official (male). The Mob also practiced surveillance. Like government prying, Mafia snooping related to extending their power.
When I was a university freshman in the 1950s, the FBI opened a file on me for writing a letter to the student newspaper supporting free speech for communists. The documents I received from the Bureau under the FOIA contained dozens of pages of transcripts of my phone conversations in the 1960s and 70s. I read transcripts of conspiratorial phone conversations I'd had with my father about when I would arrive at his Santa Monica home with my wife and kids and how my mother was doing with her diabetes treatments.
I don't know if anyone actually listened or if the FBI simply recorded and then transcribed these calls. Nor do I know how much it cost the government to carry out wiretapping on thousands of people who did not even contemplate engaging in crime.
In 1956, top FBI leaders invented COINTELPRO, the acronym for Counter Intelligence Program, to target the left and even liberals. COINTELPRO was supposed to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" protest movements and their leaders. The Bureau kept this invasiveness going until 1971.
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and his cronies considered as "subversive" not only those few loonies who declared their intentions of overthrowing the government, but the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whose goal was racial integration. Yes, the Bureau targeted the Ku Klux Klan and handful of Nazis as well.
In those days, the government used the "communist threat" to justify such measures. Today, as in the past, blanket surveillance has no relationship to security. It does, however, produce insecurity. Indeed, it forms part and parcel of the power package that the Bush gang has employed to govern. Bush speech writers use "protecting" as a metaphor for taking away their rights....