Mystery of FBI Documents Posted To US Press In 1971 Solved

AHuxley writes "A team of eight antiwar activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania and removed at least 1000 documents. Once removed and sorted, the bulk of the files showed FBI spying on U.S. political groups. COINTELPRO had been found. 43 years later five of the participants have come forward."

Comments

Paging Cold Fjord

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, tell us exactly how these terrorists destroyed America 40 years ago by telling Americans they were being spied on by America.

Re:Paging Cold Fjord

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, tell us exactly how these terrorists destroyed America 40 years ago by telling Americans they were being spied on by America.

They weren't terrorists engaged in violence, and they didn't destroy America. The crimes they committed were more or less breaking and entering, and theft of documents.

The actual terrorists engaged in a campaign of violence at the time were the Weather Underground. They had a goal of violently overthrowing the US government and economic system to replace it with revolutionary communism. If you read the very bottom section of the second link, the transcript, you can see how far they were prepared to go to accomplish it. I've heard numbers like that before, and you should too.

Shall we commence with the ironic moderation?

And thus you descend from transparency into ludicrousity.

You're attempting to twist Snowden into the role of Al-Qaeda, denying him the position alongside those long-ago whistleblowers as a defender of freedom.

Yes, the Weathermen and the Panthers and others of their ilk were a matter of national concern and rightfully targets of FBI investigation. But the FBI was more than just the nation's domestic investigative body, it was also J. Edgar Hoover's personal fiefdom. He didn't simply lead it, he steered it to his own private benefit and the benefit of those leaders whom he wished to favor. That included absurd attempts to link public figures that he disapproved of to enemies of the State for the purposes of character assasination. Not just terrorists, no. Even the Godless Evil Communists! He also worked as a chilling effect against many organizations that were otherwise inclined to be peaceful, stirring up division and mistrust to the point where you pretty much had to be a committed radical to even consider getting invoved.

Then, as now, what was meant to serve the public was being distorted to meet other agendas. And then, as now, the lid needed to be ripped off and the roaches exposed to the light of day.

And somehow, we survived it.

Hero's all

[Anonymous Coward]

In the words of Martin Luther King, one of the targets of COINTELPRO, "One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."

Re:And, in the 21st century...

[dkleinsc]

That's not the only reason they monitor everyone.

If you're building up a dossier on absolutely everybody, then you can usethe information in that dossier whenever you want to.

For example, let's say WanderCat decided to run for political office, and part of his/her platform was "Stop the NSA from spying on everyone." Now, up until now, WanderCat hasn't been interesting enough to monitor, but now, in order to protect "America" (i.e. the national security state), the NSA will want to go through everything that WanderCat has ever said or done that they know about and make sure that anything potentially embarrassing is released via a friendly journalist willing to quote the source anonymously.

That means that the only people that can actually stop the NSA from doing what they're doing are those so squeaky-clean that they won't want to.