[Mb-civic] US spying isn't new - Sanford Gottlieb - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

  US spying isn't new

By Sanford Gottlieb  |  January 19, 2006  |  The Boston Globe

GOVERNMENT SPYING on Americans didn't start with President George W. 
Bush and the National Security Agency. I was spied on in the 1960s and 
1970s.

While working in 1961 for the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear 
Policy, or SANE, a citizens group organized to halt nuclear testing, I 
spoke to a small gathering of people at a private home in Skokie, Ill. 
One of them was an undercover FBI agent.

He wrote a report about the meeting, which I received years later with 
my extensive FBI files through the Freedom of Information Act. His 
muddled report managed to convey that I spoke about nuclear testing and 
the Kennedy administration's tentative plans for a civil defense 
program. Had I been a teacher grading the agent's sloppy paper, I would 
have given him an F.

My CIA file, also courtesy of the Freedom of Information Act, revealed 
that the CIA had opened my domestic mail. The target of the agency's 
mail snoopers was a letter I had sent to Rennie Davis, a radical leader 
in the anti-Vietnam War movement. By the mid-'60s, SANE had become the 
anchor of the movement's moderate wing, and I was urging Davis to drop 
his radical tactics.

I have no idea what the snoopers made of this correspondence, but I know 
that domestic spying by the CIA was illegal then and remains illegal today.

One day in 1971, the SANE office in Washington received a phone call 
from someone who had recently been discharged from Army Intelligence. He 
suggested that we check our mailing list for the name of R. Allen Lee 
Associates of Alexandria, Va., a cover for Army Intelligence.

Sure enough, the name was there. In response we conducted a bit of 
guerrilla theater at the Bethesda home of then-Defense Secretary Melvin 
Laird. With cameras, notepads, and our ''SANE spy scope," we placed his 
home under our surveillance. The old Washington Star published photos of 
the caper with the headline, ''When turnabout is fair play."

Spying on civilians, however, is not fun and games. It's a violation of 
our freedoms whose origin dates back over half a century. Anxiety about 
aggressive communism in the early Cold War years led to a host of 
government measures presumably designed to prevent espionage and 
sabotage. These measures soon spilled over into assaults on free speech 
and association.

President Truman's loyalty program to purge communists from government 
designated the files of the notorious House Un-American Activities 
Committee, filled with hearsay, as an official source of evidence on 
federal employees' political ties. The Attorney General's List, a 
checklist of organizations accused of communist, fascist, or subversive 
views, was used to deny public employment to anyone associated with 
these groups. Right-wing groups then used the list to deny private 
employment to these individuals.

The Smith Act made it a crime to advocate or teach the violent overthrow 
of the US government. Under the act, 11 leaders of the Communist Party 
were convicted of conspiracy to teach the violent overthrow of the 
government. Guilty they were of abject obedience to the Kremlin, but 
conspiracy to teach?

Truman directed the FBI in 1950 to ''take charge of investigative work 
in matters relating to espionage, sabotage, subversive activities and 
related matters." Subversive activities remained ill-defined. But J. 
Edgar Hoover revealed what he had in mind: ''(Communists) utilize 
cleverly camouflaged movements, such as some peace groups and civil 
rights organizations, to achieve their sinister purposes." Within 10 
years the FBI, whose director was feared by successive presidents, was 
infiltrating and disrupting some of these groups. The FBI went on to 
wiretap Martin Luther King Jr.

Now we learn that such groups as the ACLU, Greenpeace, and People for 
the Ethical Treatment of Animals have been under FBI surveillance. If 
this is the danger we face, it's our intelligence agencies that need 
scrutiny.

Sanford Gottlieb was executive director of SANE and is author of 
''Defense Addiction: Can America Kick the Habit?" He was on President 
Richard Nixon's ''Enemies List."  

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/01/19/us_spying_isnt_new/
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