Ashcroft's Cointelpro
By Matthew Rothschild
The Progressive
Monday 24 November 2003
It's official: Cointelpro is back.
The infamous FBI counterintelligence program of the 1960s and '70s, which spied on Martin Luther
King and Malcolm X and disrupted the Panthers and the American Indian Movement, is being revived
right now by Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller.
FBI headquarters sent out a memo last month to local law enforcement agencies telling them to
gather intelligence on anti-war protesters who were assembling in Washington and San Francisco,
according to The New York Times.
"Report any potentially illegal acts" to FBI counterterrorism task forces, the memo said.
The basis for viewing these protesters as terrorists is flimsy, as even the memo seems to
acknowledge. The FBI "possesses no information indicating that violent or terrorist activities are being
planned as part of the protests," the memo said.
So why are they being treated as such?
One law enforcement official suggested to the Times that some protesters may be acting in league
with terrorists by distracting the FBI with a big demonstration while a terrorist attack is planned for
somewhere else.
That's pretty far-fetched, if you ask me.
But the FBI is casting its net wide. The memo is concerned not only with people who commit violence
but who are "capable of violence," one official said. That could be 275 million people!
The intelligence the FBI used in this memo came from FBI counterterrorism officials, the Times said.
But much of the memo cited perfectly legal protest tactics, like using the Internet to recruit supporters,
raise funds, and coordinate activities, the Times said. The memo also noted that protesters sometimes
go to activist training camps, raise money for lawyers, and film the police. The latter activity, the memo
said, was designed to "intimidate" law enforcement.
But the ones doing the intimidating are not the protesters but Ashcroft and Mueller.
Protesters aren't terrorists.
And by equating the two, Ashcroft and Mueller do grievous harm to our civil liberties.
\CC |
