Activists challenge new Cointelpro
FBI 'reforms' mean more repression
By Monica Moorehead
On May 30, Attorney General John Ashcroft and Federal Bureau
of Investigation Director Robert Mueller held a news conference
to announce that the FBI would be turning its full attention to
combating "terrorism."
In essence, this means that the FBI will no longer be
legally restricted from carrying out all kinds of political
surveillance, from wiretapping to Internet spying, in pursuit
of forces that in its opinion pose a "terrorist" threat to the
United States. This, of course, has the full blessings of the
entire Bush administration.
The legislative arm of the government has accused the FBI
and CIA of not doing enough to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks on
the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The U.S. ruling class,
government and mainstream media are using this debate to whip
up fear among the public to help justify unfettered new powers
for the FBI and CIA.
For instance, the cover of a recent Newsweek featured
pictures of two Arab men who supposedly were involved in the
airplane attack on the Pentagon. The caption under their
pictures stated in bold letters: "The 9/11 Terrorists the CIA
Should Have Caught."
And for added sensationalism, the words "terrorists" and
"caught" were in red.
The article chronicled the movements and actions of these
two men inside and outside the United States for the past
several years. They are described as Al-Qaeda operatives.
What's really at stake?
The criticism over how the FBI and CIA analyzed and reacted
to intelligence gathered before Sept. 11 is one thing. It
amounts to an internal struggle within the U.S. government.
The larger issue is their reaction to the criticisms that
are being seriously posed by sectors within the progressive
political movement--a movement that is steadily growing in
opposition to Bush's global war plans.
Rather than investigating how the FBI and CIA analyzed their
intelligence sources before Sept. 11, this movement says, there
should instead be an outcry for public disclosure of the Bush
administration and Pentagon's war plans for the coming months
and years.
Immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks, the first
reaction from Ashcroft and Bush was to racially profile Arabs,
South Asian people and Muslims. This amounted to a terrible
witch-hunt.
Thousands of people were rounded up and detained without the
due process that is supposed to be one of the main pillars of
bourgeois democracy regardless of whether one is native- or
foreign-born.
As the nine-month anniversary of Sept. 11 approaches, how
many detainees are still languishing indefinitely in jails,
especially in New York and New Jersey?
The government used this racial profiling as a weapon to
deepen racial hatred, fear and suspicion within the U.S.
population. Islamic charities had their assets frozen and were
shut down as the government accused them of aiding and abetting
"terrorists."
But as many can see after the Ashcroft/Mueller announcement,
the U.S. government counterintelligence plot does not end with
racial profiling. It was never the intention to stop there.
The next target has always been the U.S. political movement
at home as well as those forces abroad that are challenging
U.S. imperialist dominance in the Philippines, Palestine, Iraq,
north Korea, Colombia and many other places.
Return of Cointelpro
Bestowing these powers on the FBI reeks of Cointelpro--or
Counter-Intelligence Program--during its prime. This program
was masterminded by the first FBI director, the infamous J.
Edgar Hoover, who launched it in the early 1950s following the
anti-communist witch hunts.
In its infancy Cointelpro's main targets were the emerging
civil-rights movement, and later, more radical movements like
the Black Panther Party, Young Lords, American Indian Movement,
Students for a Democratic Society, anti-Vietnam war activists,
the women's and gay liberation movements, and others.
Under the guise of safeguarding "U.S. national security,"
Hoover's operatives used every dirty trick in the book to
discredit, undermine and destroy those organizations seeking
racial justice and revolutionary social change. Cointelpro used
surveillance on the leaders of these movements, including
Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Kwame Toure (then Stokeley
Carmichael) and Jamil Ahmed Al-Amin (then H. Rap Brown).
These tactics included infiltration by FBI informants to
foment divisions, frame-ups, imprisonment and murders.
Cointelpro was never totally dismantled, even after certain
restrictions were imposed on the FBI in the 1970s in response
to the devastating attacks on the political movement.
There are still victims of Cointelpro in jail today--mainly
activists who have been imprisoned for 20, 30 or more years
because of their political beliefs and actions. They include
Mumia Abu-Jamal, Al-Amin, Sundiata Acoli, Dr. Mutulu Shakur,
Leonard Peltier, the MOVE 9 and hundreds more.
ANSWER: We won't be intimidated
The FBI and the Bush administration are hoping that this
latest announcement of the escalation of so-called
"counter-terrorism" will intimidate the political movement and
stop it from achieving its goal of building a powerful
anti-war, anti-racist struggle inside the United States.
The fact that Ashcroft and Mueller made their announcement
following the historic march of 100,000 people in Washington,
D.C., on April 20, indicates how nervous they are about this
movement's full potential. This is why they feel so compelled
to strengthen their repressive apparatus of harassment and
finger pointing.
But this attempt to beat back the movement only strengthens
the resolve of many political activists. That was evident at
the June 1 anti-war conference organized by the International
ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) coalition in New
York. ANSWER was the main organizer of the April 20 Free
Palestine demonstration.
Among the many fight-back proposals announced at the
conference was a regional demonstration to be held at FBI
headquarters in Washington on June 29 and simultaneous protests
at federal offices in other cities.
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice
told the more than 600 conference participants: "Today we have
launched a national fight-back movement to stop John Ashcroft
and the FBI from bringing back the very worst features from J.
Edgar Hoover's reign over domestic intelligence.
"Ashcroft's changes have been presented as an innocuous
update of FBI procedures," said Verheyden-Hilliard. "This has
become the preferred method of presentation by Ashcroft as the
Justice Department shreds the First Amendment and the Bill of
Rights."
"Ashcroft is facing a growing and powerful anti-war,
anti-racist movement that won't be easily intimidated," said
Larry Holmes, co-director of the International Action Center.
"We're not going to let Ashcroft, the FBI, Bush and his
right-wing gang tear up the Constitution with the complicity of
the Democratic Party and Congress.
"We're not going to stand by silently and let them open up a
war on political dissent, and stop the very necessary movement
against his war-mongering, pro-rich madness."
Reprinted from the June 13, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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